I love marketing! And today I’ll be sharing a recent interview with a physician who has the same passion that I do. Pain specialist Dr. Kevin Cuccaro felt that we could do a better job treating chronic pain patients, but what was the best way to share his message to the world?
Dr. Cuccaro become a student of marketing, and was one of the early physician pioneers who found success through podcasting, and now is the host of two successful podcasts, outside his medical practice.
In fact, by understanding marketing better he argues, we can become better physicians. We could have talked for hours! There is a lot to digest here, so make sure you listen to this episode today!
LINKS MENTIONED:
TheChangedPhysician.com – Podcast to help you learn the mindsets, skills, & strategies to create the life you want. Cohosted with Dr. Melissa Cady.
StraightShotHealth.com – Dr. Kevin Cuccaro’s resource on pain management and pain care.
Contact information for Dr. Kevin Cuccaro – drkevin@straightshothealth.com
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey, guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. I really have the honor of introducing my next guest. He is a fellowship trained specialist and an expert in the science of pain. He trained in anesthesiology at University of Chicago as well as got a pain medicine fellowship at my alma mater, University of Michigan, go blue. We won’t talk about our football team this year. He also spent some time here in my hometown of San Diego, at the Naval Medical Center in the pain medicine fellowship program. And he has a program called the Straight Shot Health, which actually led to him starting his own podcast way back when, in 2013. And he also launched a web based course the next year, he refers to himself as an online physician-preneur. And that’s why I needed to have him on the show. I’ve actually been honored to be a guest on his podcast. Which, if you haven’t checked it out, it’s called The Changed Physician where he is a co host. So bring to the show today. Dr. Kevin Cuccaro, how you doing my friend?
Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Very well, Mike, how are you doing?
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Doing well. You get all your holiday shopping out of the way?
Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
It’s all computer based, right? It’s like, you know, it makes me think of, you know, first world problems, or whatever. Because the issue this year, is since we’re doing everything, and we’re pretty good about online shopping in general, before the pandemic. But then we get all these packages, and nobody knows who’s supposed to open them. Right? Because we have me, my kids, my wife, we’re all ordering stuff for each other. And then it’s like, what do you do? Because you check the order, you’re gonna know what you’re gonna get. And so it’s been an interesting thing. We just started throwing things underneath the tree, it’s gonna be interesting Christmas. So…
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Well, at least it’s more interesting than what I give to my my family, we’re just basically sending out the same Amazon gift card, but just back and forth. It just keeps on going back and forth. So I wanted to have you on the program. As I mentioned, I’ve been on your show, which you guys need to check out. It’s called The Changed Physician. Were going to talk about how you actually, kind of, launched that. So, I want to get back into, let’s say, 2011-2012. As you mentioned, you’re a pain management specialist. What decided you to say, “Hey, you know what, I want to start my own podcast.”?
A lot of dissatisfaction, and probably in common with a lot of your audience, right. So we as physicians, you know, we went into healthcare, almost all of us, I think, because we wanted to help people get better. And so when I did anesthesia, and then I had initialism pain, I did my fellowship in pain. And I was always interested in helping people get better. Now, if you’ve been practicing for awhile, you kind of know that in the field of pain, there’s not a lot of people getting better in a traditional practice. And so when I was in the military, and we had six other fellowship trained physicians, all really, really well trained. I was finding it very frustrating that we would do this stuff, obviously, in a physician pain world, we’re heavily interventionally focused. And we were doing all these injections. And I couldn’t tell who was getting better and who wasn’t, literally. Some of us were super conservative, and some of my colleagues, again really great guys and gals, but they were super aggressive. I would walk into a room and say, “Is an injection appropriate?” And some of my colleagues are like, “Where is an injection appropriate?” And it didn’t seem to matter. So I thought it was the military model at the time. And then I left military medicine, I came to Oregon there was no full time pain specialist where I was. I was super dedicated to like evidence based practice, I was following the guidelines. And within six to eight months, my outcomes were no different than what I was seeing in the military. Meaning people would walk into your office and they’re like, “Oh, you know, Dr. Carl I feel so much better”. But then you look at the chart and if I had done injections in their back and month after that, they were seeing the orthopedic specialtist for injections in the knee, month after that the rheumatologist getting injections in the shoulder, and then they were back to me saying either their back or neck was hurting again. I just didn’t like that. I’m like, something’s wrong. Like we’re supposed to help people get better. So they go back to living their life not seeing more and more physicians and getting more stuff done. So I started taking a really critical look at the evidence and data behind what I did. And I’m sure it’s not shocking, again, to your listeners that when you look at the outcomes for pain, they’re horrible. And I’d say the majority of the things that we do in medical care, have little to no evidence that supports them, when you’re looking at objective data. And the outcomes are atrocious. And when you’re doing things to people, that you think that are actually harming them, even if you’re getting paid to do them, and you went into medicine to help people get well, there’s a lot of dissonance with that. So I spent a lot of time going back and studying pain, again, looking all the science that we weren’t actually taught in fellowship. Which is kind of weird, because I came from a pretty good program. So the science of pain is actually advanced quite a bit, the practice of pain is still stuck about 60 years behind. Yeah, and really the model that we have is not set up to help people get well. And I was recognizing very, very quickly, in a typical medical practice, there’s no resiliency and there’s no flexibility in order to create that better pathway. Meaning we’re all RVU generated, or heavily procedural based, the procedures make a bunch of money, there’s no time to the education to really incorporate behavioral health techniques to get in a true multi disciplinary team. And yeah, so that’s that’s sort of what accelerated my path into more of a physician-penuership domain. Meaning, I started looking at how does behavioral change occur? We’ve had actually a talk, I think, on our podcast about that, because that led me into direct response marketing. Because you were like, well, who changes behavior or gets people to take action? It’s marketers. And then that kind of lead into my podcast and trying to do two things. One is, get people aware of the discrepancies in health care, or more of the sick care system, like what can you do for your health? And the second thing is, then how do you create actionable programs, that people can start and go through and actually have transformative results. And so that that is sort of been what my focus has been over the last seven, eight years now. In working again, mostly with clinicians kind of trying to transform how they approach and treat pain through understanding it differently and applying different principles. So that’s a super long way to say it was mostly from dissatisfaction with the current medical system, and not seeing people get well.
Now, back then, or currently, do you have your own practice? Or do you work for a hospital system?
No, I’m completely independent. And I had a small, almost like a micro practice for a while, but I just closed it this last year. And the reason was, to get your referral volume to make that even worth doing is really, really hard to do. And you have to actually educate, again, mostly the clinical population, because most people when it comes to pain, aren’t thinking about helping people get better. From the primary care perspective, it’s often, well who can I get to write these opioids for them. And that is not my focus at all. It’s not the opioid side. So that physical practice, I’ve actually shut down this year, but the vast majority, even up until that point, 90 plus was working with either healthcare systems or clinicians and teaching them pain. So I had a couple of large scale grants in 2016, I got an extension on those in 2017. Had a couple big projects this year, with health care systems and some tribal health clinics in southern Oregon this year. So that’s where I’ve been really kind of falling in that space.
So why back then, because I’m thinking back in 2013, there wasn’t a lot of podcasts out there. Why did you decide to use that medium? Then let’s say, go to your local your, your society, and put out a paper and all that. Why did you decide to use that medium?
Um, that’s a good question. I have never thought about that, to be honest. So I did, I started doing a lot of presentation and speaking. So speaking for medical events, and I really, really enjoyed that. The actual podcast side, I think honest to God, like right now you hear everybody saying, oh, podcasting is the future, you need to start a podcast. Well, they were saying that back in 2011-2012, it was the same thing. It’s just there was nobody podcasting at the time. And I thought, well, this would probably be a good way to do this. It seemed like an interesting medium. And I like talking like we’re talking now. So that’s really what precipitated that. I think, again I haven’t had a chance to really think about it as much. You know, why did I do that? But I think it really just came up. There was no strategic plan. I knew I didn’t really want to do a blog. And yeah, I think it was just became an easier media and I took a course from a guy who was a well known podcaster at the time, slipped right into it. And yeah, just been kind of doing it since then. That particular podcast, I don’t publish nearly as persistently as you need to do. Like I’m sure from your experience, the key to podcasting is making sure that you’re on a consistent publication schedule. That was probably the biggest learning thing I got from that.
So it’s so it’s still active, but you’re not as frequent.
Yeah, I haven’t closed that particular podcast. And this is if you’re, if you’re thinking about podcasting, there’s a couple of different things that you can use for it. One, you can do it for education, right. From a marketing standpoint, you can use it to educate who your audience may be. The other thing, and what mine sort of transitioned to over time, it became very easy way for me to speak to experts about pain, like some of the world renowned ones. Lorimer Moseley, everybody knows him down in Australia. If you have a podcast, it becomes a very easy way to connect with people, because you’re like, “Hey, would you like to come on my podcast?”, and then you talk to them, and then you do whatever. So there’s sort of a network effect with that. And so what I do, I guess I’m sort of blowing my cover here. But what I do with that particular podcast now is use it as connection. Either to promote people I’ve worked with, so now they have an audience to see the good things that they’ve done. And/or to connect with people that I think are fascinating. It’s easier than saying, “Hey, can I pick your brain for your 20 minutes in a coffee shop?”. People don’t want to have their brains picked in a coffee shop. But if you want to talk on a podcast, people will definitely talk on a podcast.
You’ve alluded to this, but just just want to be sure, what has led from that podcast, what is what kind of doors have opened for you?
I think really connecting with people that you normally wouldn’t have an opportunity to connect with. You know, if you’re looking at from a business side, it’s probably a little bit harder now than it was then. It just sounds so much better. Like, there’s something in it the interviewee that you have, if you have something to offer them. You know, if you’re doing something like hey, I really like what you do, but I want to sit down and talk to you. Other than the good graces and someone feeling good about helping somebody, which is a great reason to do it, there really isn’t anything long term for that individual. But if you have a podcast now, at least they know, you know, if I go and educate you, and I asked you these questions, and we’re having a great discussion, somebody else may hear about that. And they may discover me that way. And so I think a podcast and again, you can do this in different media, but a podcast is so much easier to have a great discussion. And so it allows that kind of give and take relationship in a way that is beneficial to both parties. I mean, I’m always kind of shocked if you have somebody who refuses a podcast. People forget, like, once you have a podcast episode up, it’s there forever, unless the podcast stops publishing. And people will find stuff that you that you published 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago in some scenarios that you would never have ordinarily connected with. So yeah, it’s it’s always great for the podcaster because you can connect with people that you really want to talk to you. And it’s great for the person being interviewed, because now you have this asset that’s sitting in the interwebs that basically it will last as long as people are paying the hosting fee. And that’s pretty amazing.
Yeah, it’s just so funny. Just yesterday, I get an email from an interview I did pre COVID, I can’t even remember. And they liked something that I said back then and I’m like, I don’t even remember back then. But you’re right, it’s permanent. And you have all of these distribution channels. I mean, why not take advantage of it? I’m just kind of curious, just kind of being a geek, did your audio equipment change from 2013 to today?
No, so the guy I took the course with, I’m not even sure if he does podcasts anymore because he did it for so long and then kind of transitioned. He wanted to be like the Tony Robbins that didn’t cuss. His name’s Cliff Ravenscraft. He’s hardcore and used super hardcore audio file. So we’re in this course and he’s like, this is what you need. You need this microphone. And I’m like, that’s a $600 microphone. You need this, I didn’t get the $600 microphone. But you know, he said get a soundboard, get an external recording device, get this. And because of that kind of foundation, which was overkill I think a lot of ways, but I haven’t had to change anything. Like it’s all hardware. I’m sitting I’m looking at it right now. And it’s still working really, really good because it was quality equipment, and so I haven’t had to do anything there. Which is kind of nice. Right?
That’s very cool. And just so that people on the audience know that name of the podcast is Straight Shot Health Talk.
Okay, awesome. So you got your practice, you got this podcast that you’re doing on the side. When did you decide to say, Hey, you know what I want to do a second podcast?
Unknown Speaker
That one came about with, with a desire to meet dynamic people again. So in the pain world, there’s a lot of passion surrounding pain. The conversations oftentimes get overshadowed by the whole opioid issue. There’s some really fantastic people. And there’s some amazing things that occur. But there’s a lot of anger too, and they’re rightly so on many different sides. And that kind of negativity gets a little rough at times. And so with the podcast, my co host, Dr. Melissa Katie, who is also anesthesia and pain trained, who doesn’t do interventions anymore. We’re like, well, we need to get around positive people. And the people that we enjoyed to be around were entrepreneurs, and specifically physician entrepreneurs. And so the reason we started that podcast, then was to connect with other physician entrepreneurs, so that you in some ways maintain your own sanity. Becuase I know you’ve felt this way, Mike. Like, when you’re thinking on your own and working out in the ethers of the internet, you feel isolated, right? Nobody seems to understand what you do. Everybody looks at you like you’re crazy. Like, what are you doing practice for the hospital? You’re not employed? You’re doing this thing, blah, blah, blah. And, it’s hard to talk to people. You can’t necessarily talk about the purpose of a podcast, or lead generation, or creating solutions and things because people have no idea what you’re talking about. So with that particular podcast, again, it’s meeting physicians, predominantly entrepreneurs. And the other back end of that is, to encourage physicians specifically, there’s this whole burnout thing. And I don’t like the burnout, per se, but there’s a lot of physicians feeling trapped. And our purpose there is to say, there’s so many opportunities for physicians, if you’re thinking differently. And that was another reason to do it is meet a lot of people who are already thinking differently, encourage other physicians to start thinking differently, because ultimately, the solutions for the future of healthcare are going to come from us. But they’re not going to be in this, you know, the traditional medical model is not going to be where healthcare transformation comes from. It’s going to come from physician and entrepreneurs devising the solutions for the 21st century.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
I’m curious, how did you and Dr. Katie meet? You meant before? Or like some type of podcast physician society that you got together on?
It was pain. Yeah, we met through pain. Now um, we had another colleague, another physician colleague, there’s like, there’s a couple like lights out in the dark. We all started connecting. They introduced me to Melissa, we actually went up to a more pain specific event in Seattle, I think in 2018, and just kind of hit it off. She interviewed me for a project that she has, I think I brought her on to my podcast. We had started another podcast, we’d briefly run for about 40 episodes I think, it was more pain specific. And then we decided to transfer into a positive audience. Yeah, so we had a project before The Changed Physician.
So what are your observations on having a co host, versus doing it on your own?
Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Oh, so easier, so much easier. So much, the hard thing with that particular podcast when I started, it was just me. Because I made the mistake of you know, one of the things in entrepreneurship is you learn to model right. And most podcasts, were doing these interview based podcasts, which they’re still doing now. And I’m like, everybody’s doing interview podcast, I’m not gonna do an interview podcast. I’m gonna do solo episodes. Well, generating solo content that you can then discuss in a way that flows well is really, really, really hard to do. And especially when you’re not sure if anybody’s listening because nobody’s listening to you when you start. With a co host, what that allows you to do is, it’s just so much more dynamic, because there’s always this dialogue. Like you and I, because we can have a conversation, now we have no idea where this podcast is going to go. As long as we’re not babbling it should be interesting for the audience.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Hey, don’t give away all my secrets here.
Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
They’re gonna get something out of it right? And so the advantages of having a co host, what we’ve even seen, with when we have a guest on now we have two of us. Oftentimes one of us will take the conversation in a way that I didn’t even anticipate. So it’s synergistic in a lot of ways. It’s more fun and then the other part is of course, you can split the labor. Melissa’s more technically minded she can do things with like editing than I have no idea what she does. I can do a little bit more on the marketing side. So and you have a built in accountability buddy too. That’s the other thing, like even when you feel like not doing it all the sudden, you get the email, hey, we have an interview in two hours or whatever. And so, it’s been great to have a partner.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Now, just to name that podcast, that’s called The Changed Physician, I encourage you guys to check it out. I’ve had the pleasure of doing two episodes with you. You’ve also been able to attract some really interesting guests. I’m trying to see the one that they came across. I forgot his name, but he’s from the UK. He’s big in productivity. He’s got a couple million followers. It’s kind of one of my bucket list wants to get. How were you able to get ahold of him?
Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Melissa just reached out. And again, it comes down to, you have a podcast and it really comes down to to reaching out to individuals, and then making sure that it’s in a way that is constructive, right? You’re not asking for anything other than time, although that can be a huge deal. What’s really great about Olli is, he’s just a great guy. And we had reached out to him before he had a million YouTube subscribers. But, you know, he’s actually he was very conscious. And he’s been publishing stuff for, he’s young, he’s like, 25-26 I think, he’s been doing stuff online for at least 10 years. So he started in his late teens. And, he is just a really giving guy. He’s like, you know, I always want to make time for people who are doing things and so he was happy to do it. Now there’s been a lot of other people who have a million plus YouTube subscribers that haven’t responded. So it doesn’t always happen with everybody. But you know, you ask and people who understand will often say hey, I remember what it was like when you’re starting something new or before I had, you know, a million or even 100,000 subscribers. So it was fun to talk with him and also to get his perspectives on a different style of medicine. Because, if you watch some of that episode that he did with us you know, there’s always this grass is greener thing with with physicians. Oh, if you go to the UK better for you, you go to Canada it’s better. We’ve had Canadian doctors on and it was really interesting to hear their stories of burnout. And then Olli is like, completely different. He makes way more money through his online ventures than he will ever make through medicine. So to see how he did that was a treat.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
Yeah, and I think last time I checked he put his medicine medical career hold, just because he’s just doing so well online.
Yeah, so the system they have is a little bit different. So the junior doctor, which is kind of like being a resident, in the United States. And it’s really, really typical, apparently, in the UK health system that when you finish that junior doctor status, a lot of them take like a year off. So we’re like, oh, this is something that you’re doing, actually a lot of us are like you’ve been killing yourself for so long, take a year off and then they go into whatever next where they’re doing general practice or they’re gonna try to do specialty training. And so, he was aware of this, he wanted to take this break. I’m not sure if he will go back and if he does in a limited manner. But yeah, it was it was really interesting. because that’s so different, you know, what we do here is like, medical school, residency, fellowship. Where can I get started? It’s like, freakin take a break, you know? Relax a little bit figure out what you want to do.
Yeah, I guess the only break is because I trained in Arizona and I was just waiting for my California license to come in.
Forced vacations, right? Licensure or hospital privileging or whatever.
I do want to talk about something that we both have a love of, is direct marketing. And you kind of talk to me about how I got into it. I’m interested in how you got interested in that. It doesn’t seem like something that would be part of a pain specialist curriculum to learn about.
Yeah, well that that comes down to that frustration.
Yeah.
Yeah. And it comes down to again, you’re looking at the date on pain, and you’re looking at it as it’s universally atrocious. Then what kept coming up is these few kind of indicators, and they were all behaviorally oriented. Like changing and coping style, changing and pain beliefs, distress management and things. And so I’m like, well, we need to actually work at helping people to kind of facilitate change within them. And then as they do that they can move and they can exercise, and we decrease fear, avoidance beliefs and all this other stuff. And I remember thinking, well, how do you get people to change their behavior? Right, because we aren’t doing it. And that first actually led to the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, which is all about organizational behavioral change. And that one blew my mind because it was like information doesn’t change behavior. Which, I mean, you know that I know that it sounds so stupid to say, but at that moment I read, I was like, holy crap, this explains everything. Because we’re always handing out a form and thinking that the patient is going to all of a sudden, radically transform. If I give them this little sheet of paper that says quit smoking, they’re going to quit smoking. No, it doesn’t work. We know this doesn’t work, right. So I made this thought. And this was one of the little hints of, of luck. I’m like, well, who gets people to take action, and I thought, sales people do. And so then I started listening to a bunch of podcasts and watching interviews with salesmen and marketers. And I didn’t even know what marketing was at that point. And the more I learned about marketing in the sales process, the more I saw, it was directly relevant to behavioral change. Because if you can get someone interested, you can develop that interest into a motivation. And then you can then get them to want to take an action based on that, because now it’s in their best interest to do so. That’s a skill that’s super useful. And when you look at marketing, as we had talked about. There’s two types, there’s like the advertising brand marketing, which is what we typically think of when someone says, oh, you’re advertising and that stuff is garbage, unless you’re Coke. Unless you already have, you know, everybody knows you, and you’re just trying to keep a level of presence, it doesn’t help you. Yeah, a direct response, then you know, when you start seeing it, and you start seeing it everywhere, it’s just amazing. And it’s been utilized for over 100 something years, the sales principles that they’ve been doing in the early 1900s, they’re still using them now. And then what I also love about it is then if you start looking at the psychological literature, so from social psychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, now we’re knowing why these things work. Why did these triggers actually work? And yeah, so it started in an interest of trying to get people to change behavior and now it’s just a fascination, I just love it. I think it’s the most fascinating thing. I like breaking down ads like to see how people’s funnels lay. Because it’s, just intellectually fulfilling to me. I just love it.
I know. But what it does, though, it actually kind of ruins it for some people. Because like, we’re watching something on TV, and to my wife, like an infomercial comes up. You know why they’re doing this, right? This is all scarcity and urgency that they’re doing here, you know? And she’s just like, lay off. I think you did kind of do the same thing, you got to break these down. What about, you mentioned the Heath brothers, are there other books that you’ve liked?
Well, specifically, the Heath brothers, I think was a big one. It depends on if you’re looking at marketing, or if you’re looking at pain and health, or just the way that you think, because that’s what the marketing is really kind of got me into to thinking about, how you think about things. Completely unrelated to everything we talked about, there’s a book called How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett, that is really about how our experiences are constructed. And that kind of pulls together a lot of stuff that I learned from the science of pain, and pulls together some of the marketing principles. There, was another good one this particular year, again, kind of relating to information and behavioral change and much more relevant to the political situation. That was called Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me, which is, again, there’s a couple psychologists involved with that. Aronson, who’s a big, pretty well known guy. It talks about cognitive dissonance theory, which again, is kind of related to marketing principles again, and tells you why we have such a polarized society. And, some of the, you know, the dangers and opportunities there, which are kind of frightening. So I would probably start there if you’re going to start with anything if you’re if you’re new on the physician journey, and you’re kind of wondering why, like, if we know lifestyle, and this lifestyle and behavioral changes necessary, we’re spending 90% of healthcare dollars on the treatment of lifestyle and behavioral disease, ie chronic diseases, and why what we do doesn’t work. I would start with the Heath brothers book, The Switch. Because that kind of gives you an introduction of really, this whole idea of handing out the pamphlet, and then complaining that your patients are non compliant is completely ridiculous. We’re not doing what we need to be doing.
So do you, in your own practice, do you use some of these strategies?
All the time. I incorporate, change theory and marketing principles in my presentations. If I’m doing a CME event, I will build them like I do a sales presentation, because it’s the same thing, right? Because, we’ve all been in a boring, super boring CME lecture and the person’s like blabbing out data or whatever, and it doesn’t serve anybody. But if you’re like, okay, what am I gonna do with this audience? If I want to change their behavior, I want to increase the level of awareness in them. How am I going to structure my presentation in a way to do that? So what’s my introduction going to be like? How am I going to take this concept and simplify it in a way that makes it interesting to them? So I use it all the time. I mean, everything that I do kind of defaults back into, how do we how do we influence people? How do we persuade them? How do we get people to change? What’s the best way that I can communicate? And then learning that foundation from direct response marketing, then it kind of flows through you and everything. You’re talking to people live you do it, the way you write an email, it happens, if you’re doing not even a sales presentation, any sort of presentation it’s reflected in that. Yeah, so I use it all. It’s, it’s fundamentally changed my life and how I see the world and it’s fun. It’s like the matrix, right? You step into it, and it’s a whole different world, you can never go back. But I’m glad to be there. And luckily, we’re not stuck in a weird submarine thing, shaved heads and eaten nasty mush like they were on The Matrix. It’s actually better.
I thought that was just Oregon. Okay. But yeah, as you mentioned, with that, you go down that rabbit hole. Because not only has been it for hundreds of years, you know, it’s like within the Spider Man movie. With great power comes great responsibility. When we see things where they take them to the nth degree, you realize, those same techniques are used to form cults. Right? And why, I was turning on HBO, and they have the documentary on the Halley’s comet, Heaven’s Gate. And it’s just like, how were they influenced? Well you watch some of these things you know, it’s the authority figure. It’s changing the behavior. That’s why when you look at this stuff, you realize how powerful it can be and especially if it gets into the wrong hands. That’s what can happen. But if you can utilize it and understand it, I think will make you a better physician.
I totally agree. I totally agree. And I think the best marketers who understand the responsibility behind that, like John Carlton I’m sure you know, is a writer. In his course I think lesson one is, I will not use these things for evil like literally. There’s a little page in there, I can’t remember if you’re supposed to sign it. But because it is, it’s a tool and you can use it in a really bad way or you can do it in a really good way. Rather than to duck, put our heads in the sand and say, I’m a physician I don’t have to learn this stuff blah blah blah blah blah. You better learn it. Because if you’re not learning it, then the unethical dude down the street, who you know is a hack, he’s learned I guarantee it or she. And is going to pull your patients away and do substantial harm. So learn as much about sales and marketing as you possibly can just so that, at a minimum, you can defend yourself and others from from the bad users and perhaps use it on the good side. Like I don’t know, the dark side and the good side of the force.
We could talk about this forever, I know you’ve got to go. Where can we go to get more information about yourself, podcasts, website? What’s the best way?
Well for your particular audience probably the best place to go is Thechangedphysician.com The Changed Physician that’s our podcast between me and and Melissa Katie. A little community there, we’re always looking for interesting guests who have wonderful stories and are you know transforming themselves and not settling. And so that’s probably the best place to go. If for whatever reason I sparked an interest in pain, you can go to straightshothealth.com and some of the work that I’ve done there is there. Or they can just email me Drkevin@straightshothealth.com is probably the easiest way.
Kevin, thank you so much. You’ve got a great brain for understanding all of this, putting things together, I love what you’re doing in the community. Just kudos to yourself and you know, all the best for you and have a have a wonderful holiday.
Dr. Kevin Cuccaro
Yeah, you too, Mike. And it’s always fun to talk with you. And I was just thinking as we’re finishing like, man, we need a physician podcast. Or some sort of secret group where we can talk about sales and marketing. How cool would that be?
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming
But thank you for having me on the show, it was a pleasure. You know, it’s always great to talk to you. I love what you’re doing, and have been doing it for so long. You’re like the godfather of physician-prenuers. So it’s absolute pleasure to be talking to you. But thanks for having me on the show.
Well, with the Godfather, right, I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. So thanks, everybody. Thanks again, Kevin. And as always, guys keep moving forward.