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Tales from the PROS is hosted by Michael Georgiou, Co-Founder, and Eric Lawrence, Director of Growth at Imaginovation, an award-winning app and software development company. Each episode dives into honest, unscripted conversations, hard-earned lessons, and educational insight into how to help bridge the gap between technology and people.
If you’re a founder, exec, or innovator trying to navigate the tech world without getting burned, this podcast is your no-BS roadmap. Through real talk, personal stories, and insights from the front lines, you’ll pick up smarter ways to build software, steer clear of common mistakes, and choose the right partners in a crowded, often confusing space.
Whether you’re scaling a startup, driving digital change at a larger company, or just love keeping up with tech innovation, Tales from the PROS brings you straight-shooting advice and inspiration without the fluff.
Michael Georgiou (00:43)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Tales from the Pros. I'm your host, Michael Georgiou, joined by my co-host, Eric Lawrence. Today's guest is someone who's doing exactly that in the world of physical therapy and healthcare. We're excited to be joined by Andrew Cherry, the Chief Operating Officer at Movement for Life, a leading organization that is redefining how patient care is delivered at scale. Andrew has spent years inside a rapidly growing organization.
navigating the complexities of healthcare operations and patient experience. But what really stands out is how he and his team have leaned into innovation, not just through tech, but through bold leadership decisions that drastically improved patient access and reshaped the business model. Whether you're a healthcare leader, a COO, or someone navigating change in a legacy industry, this episode will give you a front row seat to what innovation looks like behind the scenes. So let's dive in.
Andrew, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it. Yeah, no, we're excited to get into this. I think just based on your experience, and knowing you, you know, kind of personally working together, I think, I think, you know, the audience can really, really learn from you and just what you can kind of offer. So we'll kind of dive in. And Eric, I didn't forget about you, man. Thanks for being here too.
Andrew Cherry (01:41)
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
good.
Eric Lawrence (02:02)
Yeah,
good to be here. I think a good kickoff point, Andrews, if you want to let us know a little bit about your background and the company's background, that's a good jumping off point.
Andrew Cherry (02:15)
Sure, sure. I guess just to start with me, I've been with Moving for Life for a little over 10 years. Before that, I spent a majority of my career in actually the public education space, doing everything from literally being a teacher to working in school administrative stuff. Finishing my career, working a lot in the tech side of schools, school information systems and things like that where I kind of really kind of got into
the tech side of things in that area. Before I moved over to Movement for Life, which is an employee-owned company, really proud to be an employee-owned company. It started in 1999 with one clinic in San Luis Obispo, California. We've grown to 27 locations in four states now, California, Arizona, North Carolina, and Virginia, almost 400 employees. And so,
Really proud to be in the space. One of the bigger practices that's not private equity owned or, you know, been bought out at some point from somebody else at some point. And we're very proud to be that way. And again, I can't stress enough how we're proud to be an employee on company. That just really speaks to our culture is I'm happy to be part of the leadership team that gets to lead that as a whole.
Eric Lawrence (03:22)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the nearest clinic to us where we are in Raleigh, North Carolina is Asheville, if that's right.
Andrew Cherry (03:28)
Correct, Asheville. In fact, we just opened up another location out in Asheville, what was that, right at the end of June. So that's definitely one of our, it's actually one of our fastest growing regions for us.
Michael Georgiou (03:40)
That's cool. I'm sure you're gonna open up a lot more locations as well, you know.
Eric Lawrence (03:41)
⁓ amazing.
Andrew Cherry (03:45)
Yeah,
yeah, we like to be on a trend of about two to three locations a year if we have the people trained and ready to open those clinics up. Like probably a lot of businesses, COVID threw us a curve ball a few years back, but we, think at this point, are kind of fully recovered, if you will, from that and kind of back to speed.
Eric Lawrence (04:02)
Awesome. It's interesting, I know that you have a tech background, Andrew. The space in general, know Movement for Life may have not been traditionally a technology focused company. So I'm interested to know from you if you can share a specific moment or challenge at Movement for Life that made you realize strategic innovation was non-negotiable for you.
Michael Georgiou (04:02)
Alright, nice.
Thank
Andrew Cherry (04:26)
Yeah, let me start by saying I always make the joke when I was in the school system when I left, I remember saying to myself, I gotta find some industry that's not as far behind in tech as the school system. And somehow I landed in the one that was. Which brings a lot of opportunity at the same time. But there was certainly some times that really kind of stood out.
What's interesting is I wouldn't say there was necessarily a specific time though. I can tell you a specific time we made a decision about it, but there was really a lot of things that kind of came in, you know, really from COVID, I think was a huge one. mean, COVID just sort of thrust telehealth into our industry. was sort of being discussed and toyed with, but it really threw it to the forefront. But then, you you can throw telehealth in, but.
as you might imagine a lot of people do, how do you do physical therapy and telehealth? It's not like you just talk, somebody asks a few symptoms and write a prescription. There's follow-up, there's exercise, there's all kinds of things you have to do. So as we were kind of coming out of COVID and we were really looking at ways to...
drive revenue from different streams and reduce some of our costs really. How do we implement telehealth? There were so many questions that were kind of floating around. And probably the big thing we were looking at was remote therapy monitoring at the time, because it was really kind of new in our particular industry as well. And so we started looking at several different solutions that were out there and kind of realized, we had had a product
for a while back and it was really a much smaller version of what we've got now. And we said, know, we got a lot of what it takes to do this. Maybe it's time for us to lead this charge instead just trying to shop for a product. And maybe we can do something that's really, really unique. And so it was, again, a kind of a combination of needing remote therapy monitoring options for revenue streams.
how what COVID did with telehealth. And the other big piece was just, you know, PT recruitment. Finding physical therapists in our industry is probably the number one problem of almost any physical therapy related group. They're simply not enough and they're leaving the industry from burnout. And so, you know, how do you, how do you keep access for people? How do you get them into your clinic? How do you treat them without having to wait too long?
Michael Georgiou (06:30)
Wow, that's crazy, yeah.
Andrew Cherry (06:45)
And lastly, the one other piece that is not probably the forefront of every clinic's mind, but was of ours, which was just access to human beings as a whole. There are too many people that suffer from MSK, that's musculoskeletal. If you're not in that industry, MSK issues that can't get help for a variety of reasons. They don't have the insurance, they don't have the ability, whatever the case may be. And so this all kind of came to this culmination right as we were exiting kind of COVID.
And that's when we decided, know what? We kind of joked around and said, we were going to be PT vigilantes and decided we needed to kind of take matters into our own hands. Decided, you know what? Let's solve all or at least as many of these problems as we can on our own. Because we were fortunate enough to be in position to do so.
Michael Georgiou (07:20)
Yeah, love it.
Yeah, that's cool. kind of, yeah, you took the, really took the initiative to, to just kind of go ahead and do it and not, not just wait and not rely on others, you know, and, kind of other tools and stuff. Cause there's so many tools out there and it's difficult to really have control over it. Right. If it's not your own, you know, kind of property, your own IP, at least in the software world, it's a, it's a little, it's very difficult to really be able to, to scale it and to allow it to.
make the impact that you want to make as an organization internally and externally. Yeah.
Andrew Cherry (08:03)
No, for sure. And
I think a lot of it has to do with, I don't think we're unique. There's so much tech out there and they come in, they maybe solve one problem, but then you have to solve five. And so they may solve one problem here, but then now you have this new problem of how do you get all your people to work with five different systems that may not work together, ⁓ may not function correctly. And so now you may have solved a problem, but you created three more.
Michael Georgiou (08:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Andrew Cherry (08:28)
Right. And so I think that was another huge aspect of it as well is, you know, technology has been coming into this industry pretty fast. I think personally, I think it because there was a bit of a vacuum in it. Like I said earlier, when I came here, I was like, wow, there's not much here, but it's really kind of come in fast. But that also creates disjointed systems, you know, sometimes. And that's not a critique of any one. It's just a reality of, you know, there are a lot of different systems out there. And for a physical therapist specifically,
their focus is the patient. They're not sitting on a computer with three big screens where they can have three different screens up and roaming through things. They need things to work better and more efficiently. so that was a big hurdle that we were seeing as well.
Michael Georgiou (09:10)
Yeah. No, I love it, man. I love the story of it. mean, it's, know, Eric and I have talked about this in some previous episodes, just kind of about how some companies don't really have that self-awareness where they, you know, they, yeah, they want to make money and grow in revenue and scale. We all have that goal, obviously, as a company, but it's really like you had this intention, this motive to improve.
the overall experience for patients, right? And for the clinics as well. And that would be a kind of a byproduct of success for growing your company too, because if you're gonna help them out and you're gonna solve these challenges for them, then by default, it's gonna help you. And I love that you guys did that. I think that's very powerful. Just kind of having that self-awareness and really doing something about it and just making like a positive impact, man. You know, I think that's Yeah.
Andrew Cherry (09:54)
Let's go.
Yeah, thank
you.
Michael Georgiou (10:06)
and I think you touched a little bit on this before, but you think there are any other like kind of big hurdles, Andrew, that drove innovation at EverFlex? and how did you really overcome them to keep the kind of the momentum going? Obviously, you know, you, you, you built EverFlex, right? And, you know, you, you did it for those certain reasons that you mentioned before.
And for those who don't know ever flex is a product of a kind of movement for life at least at least now But yeah, if you can talk a little bit about that, that would be great
Andrew Cherry (10:39)
Yeah, there were definitely some hurdles. And I would say the biggest one, we were actually just recently talking about this and we were talking about this in terms of our own clinics, not necessarily Epiflex specifically, but our own Mover for Life as a whole. And we often ask ourselves where we're at in a particular time. there's a...
Michael Georgiou (10:41)
Yeah, I want to hear him. Yeah.
Andrew Cherry (10:59)
There's a, I can't remember if it's a book or what, but they talk about whether you're Apple, the Ritz-Carlton or Walmart, right? Like, are you an innovator? Do you deliver an amazing experience? Or are you all about efficiency and value and, you know, cranking things out, right? And, and I think movement for life at its core, we're closer to the Ritz-Carlton than anything else, which is, you know, we want to provide a great experience that gets people better.
You know and that we want to feel good. We really talked about atmosphere a lot and the ability of our providers But it was a switch because to do this project we had to become a little more Apple then we were that we were probably comfortable with and what I mean by that is You know Previously when it came to technology, you know, we were the customer
in the Ritz-Carlton model, right? We were like, we were paying dollars and we had high expectations out of our vendors. And so we would complain and leave it to them to fix all those problems that we were having. And this really flipped this on our head, our team a lot, because it was like, hey, we no longer could just complain about the solution. We had to come up with the solution. And we had to come up with a solution that met the needs of everybody. And that was a...
I don't know if the right word is a culture shift, because it really wasn't a culture shift. It was just more of a mindset shift that we really had to kind of wrap our brains around. Because a lot of times we'd be designing things or when our initial product went out there and we were testing ourselves internally, people would say, well, I just don't like the way this works. And we're like, well, you're an employee owner. This is our product. You need to give me a solution, not just tell me it doesn't work, fix it. ⁓
Michael Georgiou (12:37)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cherry (12:39)
That was interesting, you know, I mean, cause we really trying to get our whole team, all, 400 employees, cause a lot of them touch it in some way, or form this product. you know, we're, we are Apple in this sense, you know, defining our own fate, you know, and how this product goes, you know, like we can't just complain and expect someone else to come up with a solution. So that was, that was a tough shift, I guess, because
We just never been in that before. I think we're through that now. mean, in fact, I would say we're on the almost the other side of it now because now we have just ideas coming out of the woodwork and people have really bought into it, you know, and I'll get videos.
I was just thinking, know, Andrew, what if we did this, this, this, and this, and then I'll get a video from somebody or I got one particular employee who's always thinking about reflex and I'll get a literally a phone message. I'm driving home from work and I just had these ideas and he always lists them off right about all this stuff. And so they've kind of put that innovator hat on. But at the same time, they are also having to work in the clinic because we, we are a customer of our own product.
And so they're working in the clinic and thinking about the patient side, because they're trying to deliver that Ritz-Carlton experience to our patients and saying, how do we also make sure we kind of keep our culture ingrained and we don't just become a tech company? And that's always been really big on us as well, we, in when we first started working with Imaginovation, that was a big component of it. We did not want to be a tech company. We wanted to be a physical therapy company with tech.
Michael Georgiou (14:10)
Thank
Andrew Cherry (14:13)
And so we think that's really important in that sense. And so it's an interesting kind of balance, I guess, that we have. And our team's done a really good job of maintaining that. It's always our customers first. They've grown a lot to become innovators. I'll call it innovators when it's appropriate, right?
They take care of our customer, but then they bring the ideas and when we help develop them, you know, and bring it to life. So that was probably really the biggest hurdle. It was changing our culture in that way to develop a product. It seems small. It doesn't seem like it'd be that big of a deal, but it really is a big change.
Michael Georgiou (14:53)
That's so cool, man. No, I love that. It's crazy to think about how, like, technology can, I mean, even if it's not like a goal that you had or not a goal, kind of like the purpose of why the business kind of was started, right? It wasn't really to be a tech company, but how technology is introduced and it can really just shift culture. It's like, it's so, I don't know. For me, it's just strange, even though, and we're a tech company and it's strange for me to even think about it. It's like...
how companies can kind of just transform and improve as an organization when they introduce technology to improve the organization. Just really cool. Yeah.
Andrew Cherry (15:29)
No,
and it is. I mean, we've sat through a lot of calls in the past of you get the tech call from the company that says, oh, we're going to buy this and we're going to save you $100,000 a year, or we're going to save you two hours a day and you lost. Great. And you get it. And then at the end of the year, you're like, well, that didn't make me $100,000. It didn't save me two hours a day. And it's
Michael Georgiou (15:37)
.
Yeah.
Andrew Cherry (15:53)
in our situation, like we had to make that work because if it didn't work, we had no one to blame but ourselves, right? And then I think again, that was definitely a big change.
Eric Lawrence (16:02)
It's interesting because you're talking about this shift for the company itself to kind of change their thinking of how to approach it from enhancing a product.
If this is something that I run into pretty often is since we're basically like on the forefront of innovation, when I'm speaking with people, I'm usually speaking with the person who's wanting to innovate at their company. It's very rare that I hear like get a call from a business owner who's like, I hate technology, help me build this, you know, it happens sometimes, but oftentimes it's somebody who's at an organization where they are the innovator and they're trying to.
Basically motivate everybody within their organization. They're basically the one that has to sell it internally to get a product or a project moving forward and I am interested since You're basically one of those leaders at movement for life from your perspective Like what would you say was the biggest? Cultural or leadership shift that you had to make to drive innovation at Everflex
Andrew Cherry (17:06)
You know, I think it started when I got here. I had spent a lot of years in school tech and working with contracts with vendors and stuff like that. when I originally got here, I felt like we had sort of an attitude of just like, had to use this. It just isn't what it is. It wasn't meeting our needs and nobody was sort of pushed back. I was used to that and.
kind of like to do that, to be honest with you. I mean, to me, as a person who runs a product, I actually would appreciate that because it's going to help me make my product better, right? And so the first thing that I felt like I did to help change where we were going is to let people know we had options. And sometimes those options seem insurmountable because people don't want to change. It's the change management of whatever you're using for us. Like it's an EMR system, right?
we were on EMR system and was, there's a headache and, you know, and like, well, you know, first question I had is, why don't we change EMR systems? You know, and everyone's like, well, we can't do that. That's a big headache. I'm like, well, how long do you keep, you know, keep taking it? And, and, know, there's, some point there's a, the balance becomes, you know, becomes in favor of switching, you know, you can only have so many headaches and so many roadblocks before you switch. You know, and then, so it was,
Michael Georgiou (18:17)
Thank
you
Andrew Cherry (18:21)
But that's hard, change management in a big organization is a headache. mean, there's no doubt about it. And so that was the first thing I think we had to get through was like, we can shift, we can change. And so I think that was sort of the biggest piece. And then I think the second piece was just kind of trying to convince people that we could do it. And it is possible to build our own.
product of this magnitude, which what you guys helped build us is a pretty large project in scope. And I think a lot of people are like, well, we can't do that. And it's like, well, we can. We have the expertise in terms of what has to be done. We don't have the expertise in how to develop the code base and all those pieces. that's where Imaginovation came in and helped us.
Michael Georgiou (18:56)
Yeah, for sure.
Andrew Cherry (19:14)
So it was really kind of that like, can do this. We can pick matters into our hands. We are big enough to do this. We've conquered other things that are bigger than this. So why not? Why not do this? Right? so, but I think once people started rolling on that, that confidence kind of jumped in. a big part of it's our president and CEO, Kelly Sanders. And she, she's very careful.
and what she takes on. But once she takes it on, she gives this team confidence that it can happen. And so that's definitely a big help as well, because definitely from a company-wide perspective, she has a ton of confidence from the employees and the people in there, which also helps. And so I think that's a big piece with her leadership as well to drive that. ⁓
Eric Lawrence (20:03)
Yeah,
Michael Georgiou (20:03)
It's kind
of like this fearless approach really. like this, you're in a sense, right? Cause I've seen a lot of even larger organizations where it's like when they want to innovate in some way or another, you can almost like sense this fear. like, they're so scared to start it. It's like, because yes, it can cost and all that, but you have to see, you have to think that the macro, the big picture of...
Eric Lawrence (20:03)
was there?
Michael Georgiou (20:28)
of what can happen when this is done and if it's done right and the benefits, the impact that can come from it.
Andrew Cherry (20:35)
No, 100%. You have to have an entrepreneurial spirit, I think, and that's something our company definitely has. Not just our model and how we do things. You have to have that. You have to have that. I one of our directors said in one of our early meetings, you have to have the attitude that you're okay with being the tip of the spear. When you're the tip of the spear, you're the one cutting through. You're not gliding through because somebody already cut through. You're the one actually doing the cutting. And if we want to be the tip of the spear, we're going to have greater resistance than the end of the spear.
⁓ So those were two huge components that we really wrapped our brain around. just, I think once we kind of got into it, know, people sort of just changed their focus on what was happening. And again, I mean, I think we started with, you know, the first couple of weeks asking for things and.
Michael Georgiou (21:03)
Hmm.
Andrew Cherry (21:18)
Again, not getting a ton of feedback. People didn't quite know how to react to a lot of things, but now we get tons of feedback in a positive way, in how we can grow when they feel like they have ownership of a product as well, which is also huge.
Eric Lawrence (21:32)
That's awesome. Yeah. I am curious to know for, for when the decision was made, cause it sounds like, you know, Kelly providing her support was a pivotal moment, towards the comp, like the organization getting the confidence to pursue this. And I'm not sure if you would describe it as like kind of like a linchpin moment or maybe water wearing away at rock from your behalf of, of like, Hey, we should do this. We should do this. But was there any like data driven backed like a,
approach to, hey, this is going to make sense for us or like any aha moments that you guys ran into where there was that shift of we got this, we know we can do it.
Andrew Cherry (22:11)
You know, I don't know if everybody would agree with me on this company-wide, you know, from a leadership perspective, but I'm going to tell you what I believe it was. Like a lot of companies, COVID was rough. I mean, we are a business where people come in and we treat them in person and often face-to-face kind of interactions, right? I mean, you're right there. And COVID was rough on multiple levels. You know, just...
Michael Georgiou (22:23)
yeah.
Andrew Cherry (22:35)
everything you can possibly imagine. No one really wants to even live that nightmare, but people, our visits went way down, employee difficulties with things like that. mean, it was really tough, but we definitely think came out of that as tough as it was, feeling like we could handle that and really come out stronger than when we went in.
Michael Georgiou (22:40)
Yes.
Andrew Cherry (22:58)
You know, we can do anything. And I think our team has that feeling. Anyway, to be honest with you, I mean, they're a very confident team as a whole. And this probably the...
Any apprehension we had wasn't because we couldn't do whatever it is we want to do. was more we didn't have the expertise in that area, right? Which again, not to sound like it's some commercial for Imaginevations, but I think that's what helped us, right? I mean, it was because we said, all right, we don't have this expertise. Let's find a partner that has it, right? That can deliver that confidence that we had. And we went through it.
Michael Georgiou (23:22)
No, no, no, no.
Andrew Cherry (23:35)
exhaustively thorough search for that. Right. And then I think once we found that piece, we're like, all right, now we can do this. They got that part of it covered. We got this part of it covered, you know, and then we grew to the point where we brought it, you know, brought more of that expertise in house as well. And so I think that was the big component was just like, all right, we, you know, we can do this. And we just came out of it. We're feeling real confident and, and, and also just, you know, feeling like we had to take some matters into our own hands.
Because just wasn't, everything was happening then. We're coming out of COVID, costs were going up, inflation in general was, so we just had continual expense encroachment, things like that. And there weren't sufficient alternatives. And so it was like, we need to do something here. And we also felt like, to your point earlier, think Michael, you said it, if we do this right, this will also help other practices.
Michael Georgiou (24:10)
yeah. Yup.
Andrew Cherry (24:28)
They're dealing with the same thing we are, but maybe don't have the resources to do, you know, to build a product.
Eric Lawrence (24:34)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (24:34)
Yeah,
and I think we've all seen it too, right? That the companies that don't innovate in some way, right? I mean, I think we saw it with definitely the hospitality, like restaurant industry. man, during COVID, it was brutal, like, oh man. So many of them failed because they didn't have even just simple ways to have like a way to order. And then you notice like Uber Eats and everything kind of skyrocketed, right? And their sales went up, but you know,
Andrew Cherry (24:48)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (25:03)
And that's just one example, but yeah, mean, healthcare too. It's just having like a very personalized experience, even if it's digital, that you guys found a way to kind of personalize it and be a little bit more human than just the ordinary type of technology that used to be out there. And I think that's very critical, especially with AI and everything now. There's a lot of fear with, it's good. I love AI, but there's...
you know, there's depending on how you use it as well and just all that kind of stuff that's happening. would be a different conversation for a different day. know, lots of good, but lots of fear too around the world. And I think it's just about kind of having that, that human component to how you, how you innovate and making sure that it, it, it aligns with your company values, right. And your customers on a very human level. And that's
Andrew Cherry (25:34)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (25:55)
In my opinion, that's really like, it's having that balance. And that's really what's gonna make you successful.
Andrew Cherry (26:01)
No, and that was a huge component of it was like I mentioned earlier, we wanted the product to feel like it was part of our culture. We wanted to feel like it was ethical with RTM when you're billing people for remote therapy monitoring. And so when they saw that item on their medical bill that they would not go question like, well, that didn't give me any value. Why am I paying a $10 copay for that or whatever the case may be. And so we want to make sure it was something that they felt like, that had a lot of value for me. That was worth it. And so those are all huge components.
for sure.
Michael Georgiou (26:30)
Yeah. And I was going to say as well, just one thing I'm very interested in knowing is like, I touched on AI a little bit, AI a little bit, like a minute or two ago, but with just the industry of healthcare, kind of patient care, physical therapy, where do you think, Andrew, things are going when it comes to like, whether it's tech, policy, patient behavior, consumer behavior, even just healthcare trends on a high level?
Where do you think that's going and how is, I would say movement for life and EverFlex preparing for that?
Andrew Cherry (27:05)
So you did it on it. AI is coming in every direction possible. Some very legitimate AI, some people claiming it's AI that I don't even sure is AI. They just throw it on the list and make sure they have it. ⁓
Michael Georgiou (27:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. It's everywhere. You see it everywhere. It's so it's just
like I'm almost sick of I'm like, it's just crazy. It's everywhere. But go ahead.
Andrew Cherry (27:25)
Yeah. Yeah. there are some, I mean,
there's some really great stuff. We're actually, if we're, using a product right now that uses AI prediction health, that is an amazing AI tool, just amazing. And it is literally saving, I would say an hour to two hours a day of our providers time. We've never had a product that
Michael Georgiou (27:36)
Mm.
Wow.
Andrew Cherry (27:48)
providers have been so excited about personally, you know, in terms of just them saving time. so there is some really great uses for it for sure, right? And hats off to that company. doing a wonderful job in that area. But that's a huge component of it for sure. You know, I would say that it's...
PT, again, there wasn't a whole lot of tech involved, or maybe gadgets, I'll call them gadgets, little technology items that were in the clinic that were used. But in terms of your modern day tech platforms and software as a service type of platforms.
Most of the AI that's being currently interjected is how do we make providers time more efficient, right? And how do we maximize billing and or save some level of human resources somewhere, right? By automating certain tasks. There's still a lot of headaches in some of those. I'd say the most advanced stuff is that one I just mentioned in the providers time.
there is more coming out with, you know, in the patient area. We actually use by definition some AI in our identify your injury tool ⁓ that we have and we want to expand on more in the future. But that certainly has some, you know, there's a lot to that when you get into those particular areas. But we personally at Moving for Life and EverFlex,
Michael Georgiou (28:58)
Okay.
Andrew Cherry (29:11)
We don't see tech as ever replacing the human interaction part. We strongly believe that what it's going to do is enhance the provider. It's going to make their decision making better, quicker, and things like that. So we really firmly will never replace physical therapy in our world or physical therapists, should say, in our world. But it will make them better. And we do think that tech-enabled PTs will replace what I'll
I'll call traditional PTs at some point, just because it's just like anything, it's gonna make them better and more efficient. I talked to a doctor a while back who was working on an AI model in the general medicine area. And he said something that I thought was important, was, AI when it comes to medical, it doesn't show up to work with any problems.
Right? And when you talk into a doctor, a PT, whatever, anyone diagnosing you, they're not coming in after a fight with their wife or not sleeping the night before. Right? The things that all cause all of us to make bad decisions. Right? And not intentional bad decisions, just bad decisions. And I look at it that way in terms of the healthcare area, what AI can do is help prevent bad decision-making. Right? Because it's like a double check or whatever the case may be, right? That you...
Michael Georgiou (30:06)
Yeah, true.
Mm.
Andrew Cherry (30:25)
that it gives you another option. It can recognize those patterns much better than a human can. And so once it recognizes those patterns and it helps educate or inform the actual doctor who then can also see the things that AI really can't. The combination of those two things is I really believe where I believe the value is. I think most of the people in our company would agree with that. I think those are the huge components. I also do think that there is a huge component of
There's just too many people that don't have access to good medical care. I don't think that, while it's not perfect to have only technology solve those problems, that's better than nothing. And until somebody else presents a solution, in my opinion, that's better than that, it's better than nothing. And that's one of the reasons we built our tool, right? Which is, know, we do have patients that come in and we estimate their payment. And sometimes they go, man, my insurance only covers that much. I can't afford.
$600, right? Or whatever the case may be. it's like, well, we do have a tool that we don't want to you empty handed. Can you afford one visit, right, instead of 10? And if they can, we can get them set up on this tool. as you both know, that tool is designed to actually reduce the number of visits they have to come in. And they leave with something, which is better than nothing. ⁓ is it as good as working with a human? I don't think it is.
Michael Georgiou (31:38)
yeah, for sure.
Andrew Cherry (31:44)
But it's definitely good enough in most cases, right? And so I think there is that. And then obviously it's only gonna get better over time. we'll find, humans will find better ways to use it. But that's pretty much where we see it mostly coming in right now is just making the jobs of providers faster, more efficient, more accurate. That's probably the big piece.
Eric Lawrence (32:06)
Yeah, that's
good to know. And I think you kind of touched on one benefit that EverFlex is providing as a platform is just the availability piece. If somebody simply can't afford to set up a, you know, a multi-visit program with a PT, they at least have something that can give them guidance at home. And the only other question that I have, Andrew, is now that the platform's been out for a year.
Michael Georgiou (32:21)
Thank
Eric Lawrence (32:34)
What have you found from the PT practices that they are benefiting the most from when it comes to EverFlex?
Andrew Cherry (32:42)
Practice-wise, there's a huge benefit. I mean, for us, Movement for Life, we've tracked now, we've been on it just over a year, and it is generating approximately...
300 to 320K a year for us that we were not previously getting in some of the remote therapy monitoring areas. And we've reduced our tech stack. We estimate about 240,000. So that's a pretty significant swing for us. mean, that's, you know, I mean.
If you look at that reduction in tech stack costs as you know as income because it you know, basically it is this certain degree it's almost a five hundred forty thousand dollar ish game that we have a year which is significant in a industry that you know profit margin is
five to 10 percent in a good year, right? Because we're all trade time for money, right? And that's what this industry is. You're always trading time for money. And so the more efficient you can be, the better you can be. And RTM is something we've not had, something like this in the past. And so that really is a way to, it really does, is beneficial to patient. But it also helps a lot on that side, which I will also say, I know it wasn't exactly the question, but
We have found the patients like it a lot more than we thought as well. There was a lot of question about will patients really like this? And they do. They like being able to message their provider in between visits. They like the reminders. They like all those components that gives them a... We've heard the comment, I like that I feel like I've got control over my healthcare. It's not just I show up and you give me some stuff and tell me go home and take care of this. I feel like I got some control on what I do and that makes me more invested.
Michael Georgiou (34:27)
I love that.
Andrew Cherry (34:30)
And I think that's a huge component.
Eric Lawrence (34:32)
makes sense too, because the ailments that people are dealing with when it comes to physical therapy, it's ever-present. They're dealing with the pain throughout the day, so it's always on their mind. So if the technology can keep up and provide them with additional hand-holding rather than you show up once every week and that's it, that's the only interaction you get, then you're able to be ever-present.
Andrew Cherry (34:58)
100 % and that's a huge component that again a lot of people really really like
Eric Lawrence (35:02)
Amazing, amazing. Well, I do want to take a quick step away and
At least bring up the sponsor of today's episode. So that is Magic Tasks. So this episode is brought to you by Magic Tasks. It's the only task management app we actually enjoy using. So if you think about it, most task tools feel heavy and frustrating. Magic Tasks is different. It's sleek, intuitive, and surprisingly fun. Whether you're managing a team or just staying on top of your own work, it keeps you focused without getting in the way. Here at Imaginovation it's a daily part of how we run our projects. So be sure to check
out at magictask.io and see how enjoyable task management can actually be. And Andrew, thank you so much for being a part of this. You know, it's, it's really great, I think for people to understand, you know, the sort of innovation that they can bring to their own organization. Cause I think everybody's fighting that there's people on the side of we want to try to change how our organization approaches its technology and there are people that are more.
Like let's keep status quo. So for somebody that's been able to affect the change that you have at movement for life, just kind of getting that sort of insight from you, I think it can help a lot of people apply it to their own situation and think about what can I be doing to push our organization forward?
Michael Georgiou (36:21)
And also, Andrew, yeah, you know, just from kind of knowing you for, for, uh, you know, several years now, we're working together, um, and just learning more about, um, you know, your organization and how you lead it, man. I mean, I definitely consider you an amazing leader. Um, just how you've worked with, with, you know, different teams, how, how you are with your people and, and not just innovation is just, it's a piece of that, but it's kind of, thinking like even deeper here. It's just.
how you are as a human being and just with your business, It's awesome just getting, knowing you and having that kind of connection, that relationship. So thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it.
Andrew Cherry (37:00)
Well, thank you both and I appreciate the compliment, but I also got compliment my team where that's what makes it, know, teamwork makes a dream work and I know it sounds cliche and funny and whatever, there is, we have an incredible culture, we have an incredible team and to me, I'm just lucky enough to represent that team and all the stuff that, know, ideas and concepts and things that come out of it.
Michael Georgiou (37:09)
Absolutely.
That's cool. where can everyone find, you know, kind of the website, any shout outs to the websites?
Andrew Cherry (37:30)
Yeah, mean, know, our company's moving for life, which is just movementforlife.com. But EverFlex can be found at geteverflex.com. So just by all means, check it out. And we're real excited where it's at and even have some fun little things in the hopper that might expand where we're going based on some connections we've made over the last couple of years. And so we're excited to see where that kind of goes as well.
Michael Georgiou (37:56)
Amazing. Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate it, man. yeah, thanks again for being on this episode, kind of just sharing your story and your experience and really appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. think people are going to really love this. So thanks again. All right. Thank you everyone for listening. Tales from the pros. And until next time, this is Michael Georgiou, Eric Lawrence, and our guest, Andrew Cherry. Thank you so much, everyone. Take care.
Andrew Cherry (38:09)
All right, thank you guys.