In this engaging episode of Bootstrap MD, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming invites Erika Kappes, DO a board-certified psychiatrist and successful private practice owner, to share her inspiring journey from serving in the U.S. Army to building a thriving concierge psychiatry and wellness practice in Alexandria, Virginia. Dr. Kappes offers valuable insights on the challenges and rewards of starting a medical practice from scratch, emphasizing the importance of having a clear vision, seeking mentorship, and cultivating a strong team.

Throughout the interview, Dr. Kappes divulges her strategies for effective hiring, leadership, and financial management, providing a wealth of knowledge for physicians considering entrepreneurship or transitioning to non-clinical careers. Her passion for her work and the fulfillment she finds in running her own practice is truly inspiring. Tune in to discover how Dr. Kappes’ experiences and advice can help you navigate the path to building a successful and rewarding medical practice of your own.

Transcript:

Dr. Mike: [00:00:00] Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming, welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. Super excited about this next interview from time to time. We love to highlight physicians who are out there in the field, make it on their own, becoming their own boss.
And this next person is certainly a no exception. She’s a board certified psychiatrist and private practice owner in Alexandria, Virginia. She completed undergrad at University of Virginia attended medical school at Virginia College of Osteopathic [00:01:00] Medicine in Blacksburg. She was commissioned as an army officer prior to attending medical school, and then went on to complete a residency at Walter Reed and Bethesda, Maryland, where she served as chief resident.
She was then stationed at Fort Stewart, Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, where she worked in multiple embedded behavioral health clinics, inpatient settings, and a behavioral health consultant to army leadership. After leading leaving the army, she returned back to Virginia and opened up her own concierge psychiatry and wellness practice.
She now has a team of 4 of the providers, a psychiatric PA, 2 therapists, and an acupuncturist where they all collaborate to provide premier level care to their patient base. She also operates in the capacity of a medical director. It also leverages her knowledge of nutrition and integrative medicine to teach your staff and deliver optimal patient care.
I know we’re going to learn a lot from her today to introduce Dr. Erica Kappes.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Mike: [00:02:00] Wonderful well, this interview is, it’s taken so many twists and turns. I canceled on you, you’ve canceled on me, didn’t get a recording on it, and just so many different things, and I know that the universe, there’s a reason for all of this yeah, so I know this is going to be a great interview and love to share nuggets of information to our audience. Without further ado, let’s talk about this because, unfortunately, these days, less and less physicians are wanting to strike out on their own, start up their own practice. Maybe you can talk about your beginnings of how you were able to do just that.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah ,thank you so much again for having me, this is great. But, coming out of the army, I would say I was in this institutional mindset of having to, work in another big company where I get my paycheck every 2 weeks and get told what to do and have very limited flexibility. I did do that for a little bit outside of the army [00:03:00] for a couple months, and I knew right away that it was not going to be a good fit for me long term. I even considered leaving medicine altogether or going back to residency in a different field as if that would solve the problem. And then I decided, no, I actually want to stay in my own field and create something that I’ve been thinking of for a while. Which is a boutique, mental health practice, a beautiful space where people come and have an amazing experience and a really flexibility to do what I want to do with it.
And so I reached out to people who had similar practices that I were very, I was inspired by one of them, Dr. Brooke Shelley, who I know you’ve had on your podcast. And she helped mentor me as well as some other physicians as well who were doing similar things, mentored me how to get started.
A lot of it’s just getting that first step going. Cause I think I really didn’t know even how to start that first step. So one day I opened my doors in one room and 2 years later, I’m in a bigger office suite with 5 [00:04:00] offices newly renovated with a team of 4 other providers and myself and doing very well.
And I love my work. So it’s been a really cool experience.

Dr. Mike: And I’m curious, did was there any like entrepreneurs in your family that maybe not necessarily in medicine or perhaps in your upbringing? Did you do any type of entrepreneurial activities as a teenager or a college student? Anything like that?

Dr. Erika Kappes: The answer is no, and I think, I love my parents. They’re fantastic and brilliant people, but they, I think, struggled at times with understanding even what I was doing. Like, why don’t you just get a 9 to 5 or join a different practice or things like that? And so I think for a lot of people who are used to maybe more government jobs or the standard 9 to 5, it’s possibly a generational thing as well.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around starting something from nothing, essentially, and knowing that it’s going to take off, but being patient to let it take off. And, that’s tough for a lot of people that [00:05:00] patience, but no, I didn’t come from any kind of background like that. I think, to be honest with you, I think my family was pretty shocked and I really didn’t think , I thought I had to wait for the perfect time as we’ve talked about before, have, more practice in business, and I realized it’s really not the case.
You just got to get started surround yourself with people who also are doing similar things. That’s what helped me reaching out for people who, have blazed that trail already. But once I got into it, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so much fun. It’s such a creative process.
I’ve had a blast forming this practice, creating it, adding to it, changing things. For me, that’s really exciting! Not everyone feels that way, but for me, that’s been a really cool experience.

Dr. Mike: In what way did the military, perhaps shape you, the direction that you’re going?
And I’m thinking both positively and perhaps even negatively. And the reason why I say this is my father in law is a Navy man, been in there 30, [00:06:00] 40 years and actually, when he retired, it actually had, difficulty kind of making that transition to a civilian work, anything like that alter your thinking or, perhaps shaped you in the direction that led you to start up your own practice.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah. So I also struggled with coming out of the military and I wasn’t in there for a career. I did the HPSP scholarship, which for med students, it’s the military pays for you to go to medical school and then you do residency typically with the military. So I did mine at Walter Reed and then I, you get four years active duty back based on.
What you trained in. So I did psychiatry, which is a four year residency. You get four years back active duty. If you were like a five year surgery residency, you would do five years and that kind of thing. But I came out of it feeling very untethered, even though the military was not something long term for me, as in it didn’t, I wasn’t able to nourish more creative outlets.
I am a very creative person. I [00:07:00] think I was like an art curator in a different life, maybe. But I didn’t, wasn’t able to let explore that as much in the military. So I was eager to get out, but once I got out, it’s oh boy, what do I do now? I’m in this huge sea and I have no idea how to navigate myself.
I always felt like I was on the precipice of what I wanted to do as an open something, do my own thing, but I didn’t know how to do that. And we definitely didn’t learn that in residency, medical school or the military. The military’s set up to maybe keep you doing something similar to the military.
So a lot of people go work for the VA and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that is just not for me. And so I think I came out of the military feeling a little bit lost and untethered on the positive side. I did, you build up some resilience being in the army in my case because you don’t have a lot of control over your life or your day to day. So I think maybe that resilience was helpful during this time of the transition, but it was a tough transition for me. So I think for anyone coming out [00:08:00] of a career in the army, it’s probably or the military. It’s probably an even harder transition. I was able to tether myself finally, once I sat down and made a plan of where I want to see myself in a couple of years, but that took a little bit of time to even get to that point as well.

Dr. Mike: When you decided, yeah, that’s great to understand that, the kind of conflict that you had for some time and finally finding something that you could really stabilize you in the direction you wanted to go. Let’s talk about those early. Early years or early times when you had the decision.
You had a practice. Was it in your head that you, this is what you envisioned or, were there people out there, we mentioned Brooke Shelley out there that you modeled after, or did you, think of this, I know what I wanted to do and now I wanna seek out mentors or experts who’ve already blazed that trail.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, so I think I had a night. I remember having an idea of what I wanted to do. And then [00:09:00] I found Brooke Shelley. She was my sort of a consult business consultant. I would say on some level coach to me for a little bit. And now we’ve become friends. I consider her a friend of mine.
And we support each other from different coasts. But anyways she, I saw what she was doing. I knew that was something I wanted to do. So I really researched all the practices in, I would say, the country that we’re doing similar things that I wanted to do. And then I just cold call people.
I call it a practice in New York City with a woman who. Dr who was doing some interesting things up there and I just reached out to her coldly and she was lovely. She said let’s get together on zoom. Let’s talk. So people will respond if you ask for help or even inquire about what they’re doing.
So I found some really interesting people. And then I started crystallizing what I saw for myself and doing one little step at a time. And as I gained more confidence in what I was doing and honestly getting more business, I then was like, Oh, this is actually where I see myself. You just keep like changing [00:10:00] course.
I see the space being like this. I see the experience being like this. I want to add more services, acupuncture. I want to bring a PA on who helps seeing patients and sees them at different rate as I do. So just like making different business decisions. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that piece, just every time there’s, you get new information, you pivot and do something different.
So I think it’s been pretty fun.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, you highlighted one of my favorite words as an entrepreneurship and really a skill that you need to learn. And that is Pivot and to be able to be flexible to not and not to be tied down with perhaps, old school thinking, or the way that you think it is, and oftentimes.
I learned not just from mentors, but even from my own clients and patients who was like, we launch a particular treatment and, nothing really happens. And then, we pivot to some seems to be more palatable to the audience.

Dr. Erika Kappes: I think even like the people who work for me, if you ask them.
I hope to God, they say they love working here. It’s [00:11:00] I find it a great place to work. I’ve made the experience really enjoyable, but they have ideas to that. Sometimes I haven’t thought about, but, my mind is full of all kinds of different things. But for example, the. The PA Lauren who works with me, who is just like amazing. She’ll come to me with marketing ideas and she has different marketing ideas than I have. And I’m like, yeah, I never thought of that. Let’s try that. Let’s reach out to this group. Let’s, so she’s really helped market our business in a way that I hadn’t even thought of in a prior.
And so it’s been great to get other points of view. And I’m always open to that, which is one thing I love about business. It’s You can do all kinds of things. You have a lot of freedom to practice and design things the way you want to. And I’ll be honest with you, even getting to that mindset was like a hard coming out of the army.
Cause I was like, Oh wait, I am my own boss. You have to keep reminding yourself of that.

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Dr. Mike: I’m sure the general isn’t asking the private for, military advice. But it is important that we have our monthly staff meetings and so often, we’ll ask, each 1, they may not say it individually. They might email it to me or talk to me privately. And basically the question is, no. I want you to name is there something that you’re currently doing, or is there, do you feel that there’s a different method where it could help your job better? Whether you become more efficient. The way that we room patients, the way that we answer phones, the way we deliver information, you’re not in that.
So I ask everybody, from the medical [00:13:00] assistant on up doesn’t matter. It’s all a very information is valuable and they want to work. They want to have a long, hopefully they won’t have a long working relationship with you as well. And, oftentimes those questions, those concerns don’t get answered by higher ups.
It’s unfortunate, but it is very important as an employer to be able to be given that opportunity.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, no, exactly. And I think, people want to feel like they’re part of something interesting and part of a creative process as well. I take everyone’s, recommendations, very seriously and consider implementing them if I feel like they’re in line with the practice.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, so let’s talk about that because one of the things that we had mentioned previously is your ability to assemble a team and some things along the way that could be useful to our audience.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah. So actually another thing coming out of the army you don’t get to choose your team in the army.
So you look around, that’s who you’re [00:14:00] with, regardless of what you want. So , that’s what I was used to. So when I opened the practice, it was just me in one room and I pretty, pretty quickly realized I had to bring on extra people. So when I started doing that it was a challenge for me because I had to really instill this level of trust in them.
Like I will, this will turn into this, by the way, I’m sitting here, I’m pregnant. So obviously at the time, so obviously like the writing is at the wall that I’m going to go out for a little bit. And there was no lease sign for a new space yet. And, there was a lot of things still hanging in the balance, so I had to say please trust me.
I, this is what this will look like eventually, and this will all be, this is what my vision is, and I need you to have that shared vision. And it can be tough for people to really trust like that, because, I think I said it the last time, one of the most addictive things in, I guess the world and America is a paycheck every 2 weeks.
So like the same paycheck every 2 weeks. So when you are coming away from [00:15:00] that, it can be very scary. And I totally acknowledge that because that was my experience as well. And I had to say I know that this is how this is going to look, but please trust me. So I had to really find people who had a shared vision.
And that is that took some time and that, really sifting through who could stick with me, even if there were times that weren’t as busy as others. And so I found that team. They’re wonderful. Every element people who work with me are just amazing people. It’s been a great experience, but it did take a little bit of it was like a trial and error at first.

Dr. Mike: So let me talk about, did you have any hiring tips or hacks that you felt led to you to that perfect team that you’ve assigned?

Dr. Erika Kappes: Honestly, going through gut, I think sometimes like we ignore our gut when it comes to like personality difficulties. And you have to like really listen to that intuition.
And sometimes, myself and my business partner would interview and he is extremely logical and a numbers guy and he’s amazing. But we may have [00:16:00] had different like intuitions, maybe like I’m, and so you really have to be on the same page. And if you have, if you notice red flags in your gut, you have to go with it.
In my opinion if you notice things that aren’t you aren’t sure that’s going to work out. The relationship of, contractors or people employed is a very can be difficult relationship. And it’s you want it if there is any friction there. It just, I guess my recommendation is go with your gut if you feel like something is off.

Dr. Mike: Yeah and one thing too, that I probably shared last time with you is, when you’re building up your team, don’t just rely on yourself to do the interview. I’ve had it where we were interviewing a PA, and I quickly thought the interview went really well, she said everything I wanted to hear and then we did a quick kind of tour around, in the office and meeting some of the staff.
And I, when the applicant left, I talked to my other PA at the time [00:17:00] and he says, what did you think about her? She says, I did not like her at all. What do you mean by that? He says, look how she treated Jeanette. Jeanette’s our medical assistant. She did not even acknowledge that person in the room.
Only wanted to converse with her and myself. And the end, so they’re obviously there, she probably had some status, ideas of who to talk to and perhaps the quote underlings aren’t the worthy. I’m talking to as a deal. I did not notice that you picked up on it right away. And so having other people getting different perspectives, sometimes they know, an interview, they know, most people know how to interview and they know what to say.
What they’re saying behind the scenes is maybe a different story.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Absolutely. And so I actually learned that exact thing a couple months after I started interviewing is have multiple people interview. So now I do that. I have different, if we’re going to bring on someone else, I’d have the interview 1 of the [00:18:00] therapists, but I definitely don’t just rely on myself or even my business partner, Cody, even though I trust his judgment, it’s just that sometimes we’re so deep in the weeds with things.
So it’s good to have that outsider.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, so let’s talk about 2, let’s start for the export. You got the team. You got the vendors assembled, you’re working a cohesive unit.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah like I said, I think, just really, taking everyone’s viewpoint seriously. I think I hope that they would say they love working with me.
I give a lot of flexibility with scheduling. When people see patients, when people don’t see patients as long as they’re meeting the standard that I see for this practice which they know, because that was outlined to them when they came on board. And that’s 1 of the reasons they like the practice.
As long as that’s going on I don’t micromanage. I try not to micromanage. I do check on the clinical work at times, and I’m always around for especially with the physician’s assistant with any clinical questions. And I’m always [00:19:00] available for anything, whether it’s, concerns things that need to be adjusted, clinical questions.
So I think that’s a huge thing as well, being available to people like quickly and not just Oh, I’ll call you back tomorrow. Like I’m always available for people, whether they just want to talk or whether they want to talk about business related matters or patient related matters. I think that’s been really helpful and I think that if you would ask any of my staff, they would say that, I’m always around for anything that they need.
They also have an expectation of a standard and I don’t even have to voice that they know, because I model that standard myself.

Dr. Mike: That’s great. They need somebody to model after. I’ve had situations where I deal with clients. Business clients and, I had this 1 doctor said, you know what they’re not making like they used to in terms of work ethic and everything like that.
But then I know there’s a pattern. He went through PA almost every month, and if it’s not the PA, it’s you.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Probably you.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, it’s the king of micromanaging. [00:20:00] To some extent, obviously, I like to start when I’m hiring. I usually have them on a trial basis, for 3 months or something like that, whether you like us and we like you and then once you’re able to do it, it really is important.
At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, it ultimately, it falls on you. It’s not necessarily for you. It’s, what you’re going to do. Was it the way that I gave wasn’t that clear? Did I not give directions? And oftentimes, not to say everything is a lot of it falls on the employer or the boss.
At the end you want them to be proactive. You got to get away. There’s no way you can run a practice when you’re micromanaging everything go insane.

Dr. Erika Kappes: I don’t have enough time in the day to do that.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, and you have to give them and you have to give them responsibility and sure there’ll be times where you want to check up, there and make sure that everything is there.
But we have it. So each person is accountable, accountable on a regular basis and they have to know what was done at the end of the week or end of the quarter. What have we done to [00:21:00] exactly accomplished?

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, exactly. And, for the P. A. obviously, I, from the clinical side of the house, I’m a supervisor and I really was watching, to make sure her clinical acumen was, up to snuff. Obviously personality is great, but you also want someone to be technically very good at their craft. So she’s amazing, but that, I obviously, you have to check on that when you first hire someone because that does fall under your license.

Dr. Mike: 100 percent for sure. So let’s talk about again I like talking about those early days. Sometimes it can be pretty painful, but I think a lot of lessons can be learned from those. We have a number of people listening. They’re looking to start up their clinics, let’s just talk about the things that we often have to talk about expenses and money.
I think last time you did, you told me you weren’t inherited some big fortune to start up your home.

Dr. Erika Kappes: No, I wish,

Dr. Mike: What were some ways that perhaps, did you bootstrap your way? Did you take loans? Some things and, what should we be spending money on?

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, [00:22:00] I didn’t come from wealth or anything like that. But I also did not take any loans out. I started small and didn’t spend a lot of money on overhead at the beginning. So I live in the D. C. area. Rent is extremely expensive around here. So there was a little intimidating, but I started out small 1 very cool room essentially, that I decorated a really funky way. So people were like, oh, this is neat. They thought it was very intentional even though i’m like, this is all I could get right now. But that was okay and then I just because I was paying so little on rent to start out with I was able to save a lot of money and then once we were ready to move into a bigger space we were able to afford that as well as completely furnished the space, which obviously was a massive expense, but I had saved.
I didn’t let my like lifestyle flex based on the money I was making. I think a lot of people do that. They start making more money. Suddenly they’re, driving a hundred thousand dollar car and buying Chanel shoes. Like I wasn’t doing all that. I [00:23:00] was, I recognized that there was something I was, banking for the future happens.
Cody, my business partner is like a money is a numbers guy. So he also would keep me in check with that. Because he was tracking the books and everything. But I think, you want to like, make sure you know what your long term vision is because, we all have a tendency to want to flex our lifestyle based on making more money.
And it’s really, that’s where you get in trouble, you can’t save like that. I did not take any loans. I think that, some of my friends did, and I think that’s reasonable, but just for me, I didn’t need it because I wasn’t bringing in any huge machines at the time. I think for some places like aesthetic practices, you do have to have bring in lasers and all that kind of stuff, which is, great, but you do probably need loans for these types of things.
But for me, I was, psychiatry practice, the way I started, I didn’t need all that.

Dr. Mike: Yeah. And I tell them, cause as I run med spas, I didn’t get my first laser until eight years in practice. Doesn’t necessarily have to be the first [00:24:00] thing that you want to do. So you spent money, not too much on the furniture and the decorations.

Dr. Erika Kappes: No, I did, but this was after I had money.

Dr. Mike: What was your first, besides your business partner, what was your first hire?

Dr. Erika Kappes: So my first hire was Dr. Farrell. She’s a therapist and a couples therapist and a you know an individual therapist so I so she would take all my therapy patients and we started marketing couples therapy. Because insurance doesn’t cover couples therapy anyway, so it actually fell perfectly in line with the practice.
And then we brought on an acupuncturist, which I actually did have to invest some into the very nice bed that we got and all of the acupuncture supplies. But that was just quite a bit of, I would say expense, but that was, because I had saved money, it was, it ended up being totally fine.
And then when I knew I was going out on maternity leave, I knew I needed to bring another medical provider in, so I brought in the PA and then another therapist as [00:25:00] well.

Dr. Mike: What about ancillary stuff, your print desk or any of those?

Dr. Erika Kappes: I actually didn’t spend a lot of money on that. I did most of that, Cody and I would basically run the calls ourselves.

Dr. Mike: Oh, wow.

Dr. Erika Kappes: So I, at the beginning, we didn’t spend a lot of, the startup costs for me Brooke, Dr. Shollet was, her advice was like, just get going with it, obviously do the basics and just get going with it. And I think that if I had waited around to have everything perfect, I never would have gotten going, gotten off the ground.
It would have been like, wait for the perfect, time to do this, for the perfect website. If you wait around for that, it just, time goes by so fast, you never get to it.

Dr. Mike: Yeah. There’s never a perfect time. I make X amount, nagging for this. And sometimes you just need to do it.

Dr. Erika Kappes: No, you just need to do it.
And, eventually, like I told you next week, our new version of our website’s coming out. It’s going to be beautiful. But obviously that took me some time to get the bandwidth to redo that once I had the new space set up. So it’s not as important [00:26:00] initially. Yes, you want it for marketing. You want it nice for marketing, but if you really want to refine it, you have time to do that once you are into business.

Dr. Mike: So what started bringing in the patients for you? Did you do your own ground game marketing?

Dr. Erika Kappes: I hustled. I was getting coffee and lunch with every therapist, other physicians in the area.
Every single week, about twice a week, I was meeting face to face with internal medicine doctors family practice doctors, concierge physicians in the area, therapists. Like women’s health specialists. Cody was bringing donuts to concierge OBGYN practices just so we got our name out there. We also send out a bunch of postcards with our name on it saying we were open.
We’re taking new patients. So I did, we did invest some money into marketing. We started running some Google ads, not a ton, but just enough. So you could find us in the area and basically it was word of mouth. It was my foot game. I was in all of these events. It was exhausting.[00:27:00]

Dr. Mike: And what compelled them to sit down with you. Was it the donuts? Was it your sparkling?

Dr. Erika Kappes: I think they were actually surprised. They were like, wow, we don’t usually have doctors reaching out to people said that so many times we don’t usually have doctors like reaching out to us like this. And I was like, oh, okay.
And so they were like, happily wow. And then they’d start referring patients to me because we’d already had this conversation and I felt we could collaborate on patients. I also became acquaintances with a concierge internal medicine guy in, in old town, Alexandria, he and I sat for coffee.
We, talked about our, the way we do business and he started sending me over patients and vice versa. So I wanted to connect with like minded people.

Dr. Mike: And if all of those different things that you did, what you think had the most impact in terms of marketing or bringing in.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Honestly, sitting down with people.
For me in this area, it’s this area is a lot of getting your name out and reputation. This is the D. C. area. And I think it helped a lot because I suddenly get referrals like, oh, my [00:28:00] therapist knew this other doctor who mentioned your name and they, sent us over here. It was a lot of work at the beginning.
I did enjoy it because it was something different than just my old nine to five job of seeing patients all day. So I was like getting dressed up, going out for coffee. It’s fun. And you were doing it for like your, essentially your child, your business that you were forming.
So I felt really like excited about it. And that went a long way. I went to practices to visit. I gave a couple talks at a couple local practices.
Dr. Mike: I love it. And it’s funny in this era of internet and social media, I have docs saying, do I need a dance on ticktock?
At the end of the day, I always felt it has the biggest impact is what my partner calls. You have to have a great gown, ground game. Yeah. And like you said, you’re not too big to actually sit down and have coffee with your providers. And if you have that mindset, I think you’re really missing the boat, [00:29:00] as you said.
Yeah. It was a breath of fresh air for them sitting down and getting to really know them.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah. They were like literally the amount of times I heard, we’ve literally never had a doctor reach out to us like this. Yeah. And I was like, oh, yeah, and I’d have at the time, some people were still wanting to do zoom.
It was 2022. so I think the early 2022. so I do zoom kind of coffee with other providers a couple of practices wanted to do zoom calls with me with all the members of their practice, just so they knew I was out there and I became friends with some of the other providers. I got to know people in the area myself.
And yeah, it’s funny. I don’t even have, I keep saying I need to get an Instagram page for the practice because I know people do. I don’t have any social media for this practice and somehow I feel like it makes it a little more mysterious and cool. But I also know that like social media is a thing now that I may have to get on board with, but I’ve done all of this with no social media.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, it’s one thing, I tell them and I come from an online background, marketing [00:30:00] background. You shouldn’t be spending all that money on Google and face if you haven’t done the ground game. Yeah. So essential.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, it’s and honestly, I got that idea from Dr. Shellay. She done an amazing job of connecting herself to therapists and physicians in her area.
And she’s, well known in that area. And that’s how she did it. And so I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. And I modeled, I knew that was what I figured this is a similar area, urban area. Yeah. People know each other here, and that worked for me. So I very much value that piece of advice she gave me.

Dr. Mike: We’re coming to the end of the interview. This has been amazing. Lots of great information and nugget for someone easier considering opening up their own practice or perhaps you’re out of practice right now. And maybe it’s a little bit stagnant. I get some great ideas to accelerate the process.
Yeah, any last minute thoughts or advice you’d give to that those, perhaps early practice owners out there.

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, just keep added and [00:31:00] let it grow organically and don’t rush things be patient. Organic growth was really big for me, rather than cancerous growth. Also, for people who are stuck in jobs, I don’t like, and they want to open a business.
Just do it. It’s the best thing ever. I love my job. I literally love what I do. Sometimes I’m like, is this seriously my job? It’s so awesome. And not, like I said, last time, not many doctors will say that about what they’re doing. So I feel lucky. I just hadn’t having a really good time.

Dr. Mike: If somebody wanted to reach out to you and perhaps pick your brain as someone else did for you yes to go.

Dr. Erika Kappes: I’d love it.

Dr. Mike: Where would be the best place for them to reach out?

Dr. Erika Kappes: Yeah, email me drkappes@district-wellness.com, but and it’s I would love to share any pieces of knowledge or help people out. So feel free to reach out.

Dr. Mike: All right. Wonderful dr. Kappes again, her practice is called district psychiatry and wellness.
You can go out, check out her website. We’ll leave that in the show notes. Thank you for your time [00:32:00] today. It’s been illuminating.

Dr. Erika Kappes: It’s good. It’s good to talk to you again. It was even better the second time around.

Dr. Mike: Thank you. Thank you for listening. As always, you’re going to have ups and downs in your business.
It’s always important to seek out mentors, find out people who may be doing what you want to be doing, seek them out, get their advice and keep moving forward.

In the final installment of our series “Building a Profitable Private Practice,” Dr. Anne Truong shares her expertise on creating recurring income through membership programs. She discusses how to set up a membership, create valuable content, and attract members to generate revenue from both current and prospective patients. Tune in to learn how a membership program can help you build a thriving cash-based practice, whether you’re a specialist or a general practitioner looking to support your patients’ ongoing health journey.

GO CASH – Join Us in the Upcoming Medical Practice Profits Challenge – Starts April 30!

Transform your medical practice by saying goodbye to declining insurance reimbursements!
For more details:  

http://practiceprofitschallenge.com/

Transcipt:

Dr. Mike: [00:00:00] Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. If you’ve been following along, we’ve had our good friend and practice expert, Dr. Anne Truong, she has a very successful eight figure sexual medicine practice in Virginia.

And in the last few weeks, she’s been sharing us great information about finding your niche for your cash based medical practice. We talked about how to attract new patients or recurring patients or older patients using social media as [00:01:00] she does it and how she does that tremendously well, and today we’re going to be talking about my favorite subject is recurring income using memberships. It’s great having a patient come in for a one time payment. How about them coming in where you get paid every single month?

And even then it doesn’t really have to be your own patients. She might, she’ll be talking about how she uses and attracts prospective patients who are paying her income and they’re not even her patients. You can talk about how she does that on today’s podcast. And if you like the information, we’ve got a challenge that’s coming up rather very quickly.

It’s called our medical practice profit challenge. Three days with us on how to transform your practice into a cash practice machine. But I want to introduce to the program. Dr. Anne Truong, Anne how are you doing today?

Dr. Anne Truong: I’m doing great. I’m glad to be here and to talk about membership and how to make money while you sleep. Now [00:02:00] that is I think a phrase that Warren Buffett used to say, right?

And as physician, we’re like I don’t make money unless I see a patient. We’re gonna break that boundary right now and say, yes, you can. And we figure it out for you. So you want me to dive in and talk about that?

Dr. Mike: Let’s dive right in. Let’s talk about memberships today.

Dr. Anne Truong: Right?

But I wanna review a little bit and the first we talked about last week, we talked about niching down, meaning narrow down the customer and the service you do. And then we talk about how to attract them because they have to know what you do to know and trust you to buy from you. But now. That they haven’t, maybe they haven’t bought from you yet.

And we talked about being on YouTube and producing the content that they are looking for. And they now start to see, Oh, Dr. Mike. Oh, so he does knee pain and remember whatever it is in the customer mind, what’s in it for me. Why should I listen to you? What’s in it for me? And you want to say if you’re producing the [00:03:00] content, what you want to do, you want to get that customer information.

You want to get their email. So you say, okay, I have a free ebook or free guide to help you with the knee pain. So if you go on the link, and my profile or in the description, you’ll get it. So they go to that link. They’ve give you their email and then you get their email and you give them a free book and then you start talking to them.

You write email to them to tell them about what you do, and tell and to also deliver value as well. Now, where I’m heading with this is that let’s say Dr. Mike do knee pain. What do people with knee pain have? They have problem walking. Maybe they’re overweight.

They have arthritis. They can’t play pickleball right, so, what so you think about that you go, yeah, I’ve had a coach in 2018 and said when you solve a problem you create [00:04:00] another problem. It’s so interesting because, when you solve a problem, another problem occurs.

Let’s say you have somebody with their knee pain. Now , they’re gonna want to lose weight. They want to get stronger. They want to play pickleball. What other thing can you give them to solve the next problem? And that’s what I think about membership. Because when you create a membership, you can do one, you can make money one to many instead of one to one.

When you see a patient in the office, it’s one to one. It’s dependent upon how many hours in a day can you work. And that’s it. It’s you, unless you have other providers, right? But it’s one to one. How about if Mike and I can show you how to make money for one to many, and I’m talking about one to a hundred thousand, one to a million, one to 1000. That’s what I did. I created a membership where they don’t even have to be my patient where somebody watches a YouTube [00:05:00] video of mine and I tell them about a membership that I created to help them with sexual dysfunction. They joined that membership. And once they join that membership, they pay me a monthly fee of $97 a month and then I, in that membership, I create a material that five module that they can listen to with some actionable item because you gotta give them, you gotta give them something actionable that they have that they can get value from, that they can see result.

You don’t deliver result, they’re not going to stay with you. So I give them actionable item they can do to see result. And then I go in there live to coach them on on how to execute and how to implement. And you can put other bonuses in there as well too. So the key is to create a source of income that you can go from one to many and that’s membership.

And that membership could be a safe, for me is where I coach men on how [00:06:00] to restore functioning again through diet, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction. That’s really it. But you can also use the same thing for someone with knee pain. You can create a membership with someone with knee pain. How do you do that?

Stretching. that you need to do for knee pain. Exercise you can do at home when you have knee pain. What type of brace, right? What type of equipment? Maybe you need to do functional electrical stimulation. Maybe you do a massager with that and then sleeping position and diet, right? What type of diet should you be eating if you have arthritis?

And what type of exercises should you avoid if you have knee pain? What type of exercise can you do? All that information can be lumped into your membership when you deliver that value. And then you go live twice a month or maybe weekly to coach them to answer their question so that way they can implement it [00:07:00] to get result, right?

Think membership like Netflix or Amazon Prime. Why are we so addicted to Amazon Prime? I’m addicted to Amazon Prime, right? Because it’s so easy. I pay I don’t even know what the annual due is. It’s $99 now a year. I pay a due, but I I don’t have to pay for shipping. And I can order it tonight and get it, even tomorrow within two days, right?

And it deliver a value for me and i’m all i’ve been an amazon prime member for at least a decade as long as they have it. It’s sticky, but that’s what you want to do with your membership. It deliver value And that way they pay you monthly. So I just created a membership for somebody that treat knee pain. Because you know what you do that because you’re always updating information people want to be in a membership because they want to learn, and they have a problem and they want a community.

They want a community where they can bounce [00:08:00] ideas off. They want a community that they can access the expert. So that way you can answer their question and guide them to a success path. So think of a membership and it doesn’t even have to be your patient. It could be from somebody online that goes straight to your membership, but you can even have a patient that you just treated the knee pain on and they can join that membership so they can continue their improvement over time so that means that you can have an in office practice treatment that would, you know and then you can have a membership with people that are not your patient yet with your customer and then also your patient, but that membership lives in forever because you are because you’re always going to be adding people into that and there’s reoccurring income. Reoccurring income mean that, I have right now about 500 people in my membership at [00:09:00] $97, about 48, 000 that I get every month. That’s it. If I keep the same amount of members, but if I add in 50 members a month, that increases and to another 10, 000.

And if I add 50 members every month, that increases as well. Not bad good amount of money that you know doesn’t require a lot of time from you and you can do one too many. In my membership, I have members all the way from New Zealand, Nigeria and United Kingdom and in Vietnam as well too. So I love the international community, but I love the aspect of one too many because when as physician when we figure out how we make money for one too many, then you know when you will never have to worry about your bank account, again because once you figure that out and [00:10:00] figure out what your customer want and that the sky is the limit . This is the part that I’m most excited about my business is to create the membership and helping doctors create the membership too, because oftentimes that’s definitely thinking out of the box, right?

We’re always trained during med school, residency, fellowship training, one to one treatment like this. But when we start thinking about one to many, we’re like, Oh, how do I do that? It’s teaching is what we do. We teach our patient, right? You do a treatment. When they come back for follow up, you teach them what to avoid, what they need to be doing, right?

It’s the same thing. You’re teaching your customers. Some of them are, they’re not your patient as well, but you can have a wide impact. Imagine if you’re if you’re endocrinologian, you teach somebody how to live with thyroid. And you teach somebody how to manage their diabetes better. Oh my god.

Doctors, are you listening to this? Whether [00:11:00] you’re an endocrinologist, whether you’re a GI doc. Imagine GI doc teaching patient how to live with IBS or live with Crohn’s. Oh my God. I would sign up in a minute. If I have IBS and I have a GI doctor that’s teaching me how to live with IBS, I would sign up in 30 seconds.

What? Because patients are dying for information from credible, a doctor, but right now we’re not out there. So they’re following somebody that, right now you see people that oh, I have this condition, I figure it out myself, and I’m going to teach you how to do it.

They’re not even doctors, they’re not even in the medical field, right? So I feel that as physician, you have a moral obligation to teach people at the right way on how to live with the chronic diseases, like IBS, thyroid, diabetes, arthritis, or even [00:12:00] aging skin. I have a dermatologist friend that I’m coaching her right now on how to go on social media and create a membership for younger skin after 50.

How’s that? Like the baby boomers is by it’s right now 58 it’ll be by 2050, we’ll have 68 million baby boomers. And it’s a 47 percent increase from 2020 to 2050. Baby boomers are people that are over 60, but they’re living longer and longer just think whatever specialty you are, you can create a membership and what the impact that you make it will be so powerful because you are helping people live better live, and you are the best source for that.

Or else somebody online that. Just figure it out themselves are making money and having the reach that you should be having that you could do as well too. And all you need is a roadmap, and a [00:13:00] mentor and a coach that can guide you there. And Mike and I can help you build that membership in, and it’s consistent with your niche. Consistent with your service and consistent make it so that you can attract customers online as well, because I just talking about IBS. I’m excited about it because I hope that there’s a GI doctor listening to this, that you can build a community and build a financial stability.

We’re just creating a membership, for IBS. I was talking to an OBGYN doctor the other day, and I was coaching him and he’s gonna do a membership on bladder issues in the continent as well, bladder incontinence. How big of an issue is that? Everybody, I know every woman gets that after the age of 50 because of menopause.

You can even create a membership for a menopause lady, how to live better when during menopause. And so my membership is for men with erectile [00:14:00] dysfunction or even just sexual dysfunction on how to regain right. A performance against without medication without surgery. And I just launched it like less than a year ago.

And I’m going to that is going to be my retirement. My membership is going to be something that I’m going to nurture and probably do it to the day I die. Because my medical knowledge is with me to the day I die. And why should I stop? So it really makes my heart ache to think of doctors totally leaving the medical field, doing something unrelated because, think of four years of college, four years of medical school and, the residency training and all the sacrifice that you do.

And now you’re just leaving medicine because of burnout, because of how the healthcare system is. Our healthcare system is not the best right now for doctors, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to live with it [00:15:00] or deal with it. There are ways that you can create a steady revenue income that is online and creating membership that is consistent with your in office practice.

AI: As a doctor, I wasn’t used to asking for help, especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine. But then, I found PhysicianCoaches.com. In an instant, I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of life. On areas I was afraid to ask. Dealing with burnout, starting a side gig, money management, even help with my marriage.

And the best part? Nearly all experts are physicians themselves. After reading their profile in a quick chat, I knew I found the right mentor for me. At physiciancoaches.com, help from professional colleagues is just a click away.[00:16:00]

Want to stay up to date with physician experts and entrepreneurs?

Join The Lounge to stay informed with physician insights and stories.

The latest physician, investor, and entrepreneur info emailed directly to you. Join The Lounge at bootstrapmd.com/thelounge.

Dr. Mike: Amazing stuff. And again, if you miss it is like what I’m saying is it’s revenue. Even after she starts, wanting to see patients right now, she’s seeing lots of patients, but she’s also bringing in revenue from people who probably will never be your patients.

You mentioned, from Africa and from California and Florida and things like that. Some do become patients, but she’s able to get recurring revenue with that. Is it [00:17:00] difficult to start one of these things up? What are the kinds of things that you’re giving?

I know you’ve got information, but you’ve also got products, et cetera.

Dr. Anne Truong: No, it’s actually not difficult at all because there are now software that it’s essentially when you have a membership, you just gotta figure out what software you’re going to use to store the information in. And that could be kajabi that could be searchy that could even you know we even have the software the doctor boss and you can even put the doctor bosses are marketing software, but you can even put a membership in there as well, too.

You just want something that you can store the modules where they can go in and consume the material. And you can put a calendar in there to see when the live training is. But that’s pretty much it. And it’s up to you what it is. It could be a worksheet in there. It could also be a material that you want them to read.

It’s essential. Think of it like a storage place [00:18:00] that they go into to get that. And then you go live and zoom like this and a zoom account, like 20 bucks a month you can go live in zoom to talk with your members, find out what they need. And now you have AI that you can get the Zoom meeting transcribed.

I use fathom F-A-T-H-O-M. I know you use something else, right? And it, yeah, you can get the Zoom recorded and transcribed, and then when it’s transcribed, you can make it into PDF. And you email that to your members or you can store that in the platform that you have your membership at. And the platform, that doesn’t cost that much, probably less than a hundred bucks a month.

And you have the zoom account. And so you want to figure out the material that you want your members to have by mapping out a success path. And so in my membership, I have a success path, that I have recorded. So what you do you record the video, and I record five videos and they’re [00:19:00] like 20 minutes each and what I tell them to do, first you do this, and then the next one I tell them, okay, what progress that you have, this all recorded and then in there, I also have a diet plan that they need to follow exercise plan and a list of supplement.

What’s so good about membership is that you can insert in the supplement that you recommend. And they either buy from you, from your office directly and you ship to them, or , go on Amazon and get an associate mem link. So you don’t have to be a big influence.

Anybody can have an Amazon associate link by setting up an account with Amazon. And what that means is that let’s say if you are recommending a supplement that your members take, you can get a range of from 2 percent to 10%. And if you have a bigger following, I’m now qualified to be an Amazon influencer store.

So I have [00:20:00] a store on Amazon and I get between 15 to 20 percent of whatever the price is, so more so the larger following you have, the more money you make as an affiliate, so you can set up an Amazon associate account. And then if you recommend, hey, take this natural toxide here.

They go to Amazon with that link and you make a little bit of money from that. So you can curate it in your membership to what you want the members to do to have success. And figure out what you want to do monthly. And then what a membership you got the thing that you got to get people in, and how do you get people in? What I said about doing niching down and getting leads in with the content creation from our last episode. So it doesn’t take that much work. It doesn’t take that much software. It’s just zoom. And then, a platform to store it in where patients can where members can go in and consume the material, that the main thing is [00:21:00] take action. Do not overcomplicate thing. Do not think of the detail. Just take action and learn from that and correct it as you go.

Dr. Mike: This has been tremendous. Again, thank you so much. This episode is going to conclude our series on transforming to a cash based medical practice but if you like this, we’ve got something that’s closing real quickly. And that’s our medical practice profits challenge three days of how to run a successful cash based medical practice that’s coming out very quickly, and you want to talk a little bit about it I know we’re about to close the doors to this, this might be one of the last times you can get in.

Just talk about the medical practice profits challenge, please,

Dr. Anne Truong: Right! So i’m excited about this challenge. It is a challenge, a three day challenge where we’re Mike and I are going to show you the road map on how to decide how to niche down what customer? And then on day [00:22:00] two we’re going to talk about how to create a content that is to attract your customer. Day three, we’re going to deep dive into how to create a membership and create an offer that is irresistible, and that challenge start on April the 30th, and at 8:30 PM eastern standard time or 5:30 PM pacific time, and it’s three days in a row.

So April 30th, and then May 1st, same time, and then Thursday, May 2nd, at the same time. And on the third day, Mike and I will also take Q& A, and we’ll perhaps do a hot seat as well. Because what we want to do is to have you take action. And to have you take some valuable information that we’re going to teach you that you can insert right away into your practice that will hopefully, make more money for you, or help you have more clarity [00:23:00] on what you need to do, because Mike and I, when we first started our cash based practice and with me with my online digital marketing experience, I had to figure it out myself.

I had to reach out to different coaches to learn about online marketing, but they weren’t in the medical field. They were, selling, they were selling people how to market it with talent, telling showing people how to coach. No one was in the medical field. I had to figure it out. How do I take this information and insert it in a medical practice for doctors?

And I made a lot of mistakes, and spend a lot of money on those mistakes, but we finally figured out we finally have the blueprint now to really fast track. Yeah, to get your result and to help you avoid all the pitfalls as well. And so that’s what we want to do in this 3 day challenge to help you start [00:24:00] thinking about a cash based practice and how you can leverage your expertise and credibility as a medical doctor to attract your best customer and create a reoccurring income, such as a membership.

Dr. Mike: Awesome. Okay, guys, it’s probably one of the last times you’re at, you’re going to be able to access to it. Doors are closed. They’re closed.

So you need to go to this website practice profits challenge, that’s profits with an s practiceprofitschallenge.com all the details in there again starting at april 30th. We hope to see you there. And we’re super excited to bring you this information. We look forward to adding more cash based services because as we said in the past you can’t rely on insurance as Anne said, referrals through other doctors is dying or I’m even dead.

It’s up to us. It’s up to us physicians supporting other physicians to build it. We have been blessed to have successful practices, and we hope to see the same for [00:25:00] you. And any last minute thoughts before you end the call today?

Dr. Anne Truong: Yes, so if you’re a doctor that feel like you’re burnt out, you’re not enjoying what you do, you feel like you’re on the hamster wheel, there is a solution. Even if you just come and listen we want to input some ideas into you and start you having you think outside the box, and you as a doctor, you have the expertise and the credibility and there are many things that you can do outside of the medical practice as in online to impact and still help many people. There are millions, hundreds of millions of people out there dying to learn from your knowledge and dying for you to help them.

You just have to get in front of them to tell them what you do. It is that easy, but they need to know who you are. They need to know what you do, and they need to know what message you are delivering [00:26:00] to them and we can help you get there. Attend this challenge and once you do that you will learn the road and the blueprint to really financial independence and freedom because at the end of the day, we all want our freedom and we want our financial stability and our health as well.

Dr. Mike: All right in and out starts. Now it’s a practice profits challenge go to practiceprofitschallenge.com . We look forward to seeing you there and sharing our details and knowledge with you. And as always guys, thank you for listening to the bootstrap MD podcast. You’re going to ups and downs in your business, do everything a little each day to keep you close to your goals and keep moving you forward.

In this episode, Dr. Anne Truong shares her expertise on attracting patients to your medical practice using social media. She emphasizes the importance of creating content that addresses your target audience’s questions and concerns, and discusses strategies for identifying these topics through reverse engineering and investigating what patients are searching for on Google, YouTube, and Answer the Public.

Dr. Truong explains how to create engaging content, such as videos, that showcase your personality and expertise while avoiding technical jargon. She also shares tips on effectively using platforms like YouTube, which can help you establish a long-lasting presence and attract potential patients to your website or landing page. By providing value and nurturing relationships with your audience, you can convert them into patients who know, like, and trust you.

GO CASH – Join Us in the Upcoming Medical Practice Profits Challenge – Starts April 30!

Transform your medical practice by saying goodbye to declining insurance reimbursements!For more details:  

PracticeProfitsChallenge.com

Transcript:

Dr. Mike: [00:00:00] Hey guys, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming, welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD, the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. If you joined us last week, we’re doing a series of how to bring cash based services into your medical practice Whether you’re first starting out or perhaps you have a practice insurance based looking to add some cash services, or perhaps you’ve got cash services now, you feel that you could be a little bit more successful in doing so we’ve got an amazing expert here.

Her name is. Dr. Anne Truong. She is a medical practice owner. She has a very successful sexual [00:01:00] health practice in Virginia last week. If you missed it you’ll definitely want to go and get that recorded. We talked about finding a niche for your cash based medical practice. And now we’re talking about real stuff here, guys, how to attract patients online and has been doing this very successfully using social media.

Perhaps you’ve even seen her on her YouTube. I think you said you have over 40, 000 followers,

Dr. Anne Truong: 65, 000.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, it’s amazing. You’ll definitely want to listen. This is going to be incredible. And again, welcome to the program. So let’s dive into it. How can we attract more patients using social media to our medical practice?

Dr. Anne Truong: So the key to any successful practice is to get leads to get patient into the door, right? Because once you treat the patient, they may get better or they may leave you or they move out. But you always need to have an influx of leads in. So that’s [00:02:00] called leads because they’re not quite your patient yet.

But how do you attract them? Because right now your doctors may think, oh social media is so overwhelmed, blah. And they just go scrolling on there to be entertained, right? So there are two re two things why people go on social media. Social media to be entertained or to learn.

Something, right? So the different platform have different purposes like YouTube. It’s entertain or to learn and I love YouTube and YouTube is actually considered a social media platform. It’s different but it’s also a social media platform. I love YouTube because it’s owned by Google, and Google is a larger search engine and whatever you put on YouTube it actually be searchable on Google plus if you put your content on YouTube, it stays there forever for years on end versus Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Do you know that if you put a post out on that it [00:03:00] may stay longest, like one day, sometimes just minutes, minutes and it’s gone. So think of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok as like you’re standing on the highway. You’re standing on the highway, you see all these cars going by and I 95, that’s the post. You’re standing there and when your post comes out, boom, it just goes by somebody like that because it doesn’t stay there for days or years or you would we would think that a post stays there, it doesn’t okay. And those other platform is you know pay to play meaning if the post goes has more engagement or more views they’ll show it to more people. But if your post doesn’t have engagement, they won’t show it to people. So let’s get back to what social media platform should you be on YouTube and why do you need to do that?

Because that’s how you’re going to get people to know who you are and what you do. The last episode we talked about niching down and let’s say you’re a doctor [00:04:00] and you do you treat a patient with knee pain. You put out content meaning you create videos on youtube that is geared towards knee pain. So i’m working with a doctor right now where i’m coaching her on how to attract patient online to go to her practice. But the patient needs to know who you are and what you do and they need to know and like you and trust you.

How did they know that online by seeing you on a video, right? It’s not just a post with a picture of you. Seeing you on a video and seeing how you are how you act how you talk, right? And so the way to attract is to create content or material that people are looking for.

So let’s say you’re on YouTube, you type in knee pain. If you create a video that says a knee pain while walking, what that video will pop up and that person will say, Oh, I’m walking, I have knee [00:05:00] pain. They want to watch that video. And you talk about why you have a knee pain while you’re walking and what are the treatment and they see that they like it, they will follow you. So that’s the whole journey of that. Having said that the last time we said niche down, this time we’re saying create the content. How do you create the content that people are searching for? That’s why niching down is helpful because once you know what services you do, you’re going to know who is that customer.

I want you to figure out who is that customer that you love to work with, that you look forward to seeing, that is willing to pay you, right? For me, for myself, it’s a man in his fifties that has sexual dysfunction, that’s a business owner, or an executive, it’s fairly healthy.

It’s either marry or divorce or dating a younger woman play sport, play tennis, or even pickleball. So I want you to get down to the granular detail, what they [00:06:00] do, what they love, what their occupation is. And then you go on Google that you can type in the Google search bar.

What the, type in knee pain while walking and you see all the topic come up, those are the search items that people are searching for. That’s how you do investigative work. So it’s like reverse engineering. You investigate what people are searching for, and then you create content about that. So that way, you know that people are searching for it. So that way you creating the content that your customer are searching, not create the content that you think the patient should know about. There’s a big difference, right? Big difference. And you give patient what they give your customer what they want.

All right, and you give them what they need when they come into your office. But you got to give you how do you attract people online? Is that you create the content that they’re searching for? [00:07:00] So that way they can find you so you go on google search and then you can go to a site called answer the public and find out what they’re searching for and you can even go on youtube and do under search bar type in knee pain and then you’ll see all the different topics that pop up and and each one of those is one video.

You answer one video per question , and when you record you want to avoid technobabble. You don’t, you want to talk like at a fifth or fourth grade level. I, it’s called kitchen table talk. All right, that’s what people talk when they’re eating dinner at the table that you want to record at a fourth grade level.

There’s an app called Hemingway that you can input your text in there. It’ll tell you what grade that is. So you want to record at fifth grade level. So that way people can easily understand that and can relate to that as well. You don’t want to say the word ACL or [00:08:00] lateral collateral ligament because that, yeah, a confused mind will not buy.

So if you lose somebody, they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna follow you. Avoid the technobabble, talk at a fifth grade level, and do investigation on what the customer is searching for. And that’s how you’re gonna catch their interest, right? Because, if you’re putting out content that people are not searching for, they’re not gonna find you.

All right, so you have to get out there, doc. I know that sometimes as a doctor we’re not comfortable being on camera or showing our personality. If you want to have freedom if you want to get away from the insurance and you want to have the process of your dream, you need to get out there.

So that way your customer can find you right because they don’t know what you do. They don’t know who you are. They’re not going to come to you and the days of referrals are over, all right, if you’re dependent upon referral from the doctors in town [00:09:00] or the health system in town, it’s over I can tell you that with me.

I found out how in around maybe 2015 or so when I had three neurosurgeon and 10 orthopedic surgeon was feeding me patient throughout the year. They got bought over by the health care system and the health care system brought in their own pmr person. So guess what? All my referral got shut down because they had to refer within their network, and they wouldn’t refer it out to me because I’m not part of the network.

If you’re dependent upon referral, that’s referrals are very finicky, right? If you’re dependent upon a word of mouth, that’s also finicky as well, too. You have to go out there and create your own stream of attraction, meaning you have to be out there for your customer to find you. And that’s how you get to social media.

You create the content that they are searching for. What I just show you how to do create [00:10:00] the video. So that way they get some actionable item on there. Just know on social media. There’s two reason why people are on there. They’re there to learn or they’re there to entertain as doctors. I guess we could entertain.

You could do a combination of both. There are doctors that are in. That have big following on social media that are very entertaining, but it’s also educational as well. I, some, I’m not a funny person, but I can, have inject some personality into who I am, but be authentic, be who you are.

As long as you deliver value people will follow you, no matter what. And as doctors, already, as doctors we are an influencer because we have the expertise, and we have the credibility. People will die for the expertise and the credibility that we have as a medical doctor. All you need is reach.

Meaning the audience to follow you. So if people see what you do, then what they’re going to do, they’re going to go to your profile. They’re going to find out, Oh, okay. I wonder what Dr. Mike does. [00:11:00] And then on there will be his website. And they’ll click on your website and they’re going to try to find what you do or they, or you can create a funnel, which is essentially like a one page website. Is a one page that would will show them exactly what you do. I would suggest a funnel that instead of your website. Because a website, a lot of doctors website can be confusing and it doesn’t if somebody go on your website, within 30 seconds, they should know exactly what you do for them.

We always remember, how do you attract your customer? It’s what’s in it for me? Because if you attract your customer, if they see in your message, what’s in it for me? Why should I spend time my precious time listening to you? Because they want to know what’s in it for me. So if they land on your website, and if somebody has knee pain, they land on your website, and you have a picture of somebody with Botox and fillers on a shockwave machine, they’re gonna bounce, they’re gonna leave.

Because they’re gonna, they’re [00:12:00] not gonna say, hey, I have knee pain, I, Dr. Mike is not doesn’t look like he treats knee pain, so I’m not gonna spend my time here. That’s the reason why your website should be very targeted on your niche and geared towards your customer that you want to achieve.

And we covered that in the last episode. This episode is how to create content that will attract your customer. You create the content that they’re looking for, and you talk in their language, and then you bring them from social media. To a page that specifically talk about what you talk about for instance, what the example I gave is knee pain, right?

You don’t want to bring them to a page that talk about Botox and fillers because they’re like, Oh, what’s this? They’re going to just leave you. So you want to talk about knee pain or, how you attract leads is that you can give them something away for free, like a free guide or free worksheet.

That will help them [00:13:00] to five, five things you can do to get rid of knee pain in a week. So you tell them that and they download that. And when they download that, you have their email. Once you have the email, it is gold. Getting somebody’s email is gold. In fact, I get their email and a cell phone number.

That way, I can text them as well, too, because sometimes email can land and spam. And an email is not 100 percent deliverable. I get their tech number and I converse with them by text. Now that we started getting their cell phone number, we get patient book fairly quickly. We get them engaged very quickly as well.

That is something that we have available in our software that that we use, which is the Dr. Voss software. So having said that, create the content that people are looking for by do reverse engineer by finding out what are they looking for on Google, on YouTube, and going to answer the public.

Those are the main three [00:14:00] area. And then creating a landing creating like a link on your profile that will bring them to that landing page that tell them what you’re doing, give them something for free, and the goal is to get their email. Don’t expect somebody to see you on social media. They will buy from you right away.

No, they won’t. They need to actually studies have shown that they need to have seven different points of intersection with you before they buy from you and 11 hours of consuming your material before they buy from you. That’s a lot of time getting to know and trust you. And I find that so true.

I produce I’ve been on YouTube for the last 3 years and we really took off since May of 2023. And what we find is that what patient come to see us. And would pay us 12, 000 after they consume at least about, a hundred of my videos and [00:15:00] been following me for at least like three to six months.

And so just put out content out there, just put it out, be consistent and put out content because consistency is key and quality. And educate and quality. And then once you lead the material, you can interject in there that you can say, oh, this is what knee pain is. It’s about this is what you do about it.

And then you say, if you wanna find out more information I have a free guide that you can check out. Go to my, the description to get that or go to my profile to get that. So that’s how you get a track, a customer online to into your world by getting their email and hopefully they’ll go to your website and now with the advent of AI and chat box, it’s even more powerful.

So now I actually put a chat box, on my website, on my landing page, [00:16:00] in my funnel, now to interact with the customer when they land on my website and the chat box you see what the chat box that little thing that’s on the bottom right the bottom left of a web page and it looks like a like a dialogue box.

You put your, you ask them for their name and their email and their number, and they ask a question. And then now you can have an AI bot that will answer their question. In our software, Dr. Boss software is just a marketing software that we use. When we work with doctor and it’s part of our coaching program, you have access to that is that it will interact with the customer 24 7. And the goal of that bot is to try to get the the customer’s email as well. It’s a schedule an appointment or whatever you want it to do. And you yeah, and you can do the same thing on social media. For when somebody, you can tell somebody to DM you. Message you on [00:17:00] Instagram or Facebook and the bot can also answer the question as well too.

So with the advent of AI, it’s so much easier to do. We have about between 50 to 75 leads a day from social media. From YouTube, mainly on YouTube that come into our office. When I say lead, these are customers, and I have their cell phone and their email, and that I can talk to them through email and through text about what I do, how I can help them.

So the key I want to stress on here is that they don’t become your customer right away. They just want to know you. They just want to know what you do, what you’re like. And then once they know what you do and what you’re like and they like you and they trust you, then they’ll buy from you. But that takes time.

That takes nurturing. And that takes nurturing and you creating the content and you send it to them through email. And the content that you create the one [00:18:00] that they’re looking for. But once they’re in your world, you want to start talking with them by telling stories of testimony, telling stories about you as well.

That’s another strategy in itself.

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Dr. Mike: I love the idea about finding like what are the most frequently asked questions using answer the public. Another great way to do it is just hear it from your own patients or hear it from your staff.

They like, I’m sure as a clinician you would get the same questions over and over again. Take those 10 or 15 questions. Those can be 10 or 15 videos. Ask your staff. Hey, what kind of questions you got out? Oh, maybe there’s this new medication that’s coming out. We’re getting a lot of inquiries about it.

That is a great source for videos that are gonna be watched and rewatched [00:20:00] too. What do you think about those ways to get new content in?

Dr. Anne Truong: Oh, absolutely. Usually you have the top 10 questions that your patient asks. And you can actually answer it on social media and you can even make it into a worksheet or a PDF or a book.

You can say, the top things you can do to alleviate knee pain. 10 things you can do to alleviate knee pain. You can actually dictate it, have it transcribed. And then I forgot the software that can make it into PDF. I believe it’s Harpa. Have you used that software?

It’s an ai software or even a descript or is a designer?

Dr. Mike: Descript is one way that you can go and chat.gpt has now if you pay for their higher end one they can do something like that as well, but really doesn’t matter what the source is.

We’re, they’re making it easier and easier. And I do want to cover one more thing too, is when we’re talking about, let’s say you’re going to [00:21:00] do YouTube for videos. You don’t have to go crazy in terms of buying equipment or anything like that. Even in our phones, you’ve got, you can get quality videos.

And if really, at the end of the day, just turning on your phone, having maybe your staff or your spouse or even yourself Hey, ask me this question. For me it’s much easier for me to just talk about it and actually sit down and actually go on my computer and write something for that’s whatever the best way for you to get content out the fastest way, more effective way.

That’s the way that you should do it.

Dr. Anne Truong: Absolutely. And now there’s new equipment that’s coming out. Like I’m using a camera. I upgraded, but this is a camera I’ve used for the last three years. And it’s this one, 50 bucks on Amazon, right here, 50 and it’s high quality, high definition camera.

I don’t use it now because I upgraded to another one. This one is a webcam that’s 300, but it’s also [00:22:00] sits in case in a teleprompter. If you are worried about, whether, you need to read off of something. This one sits in a case and there’s a teleprompter and then the word just pop up and I just read right into the camera.

So it’s nowadays, it’s so much easier for doctors to be on social media to educate and don’t overcomplicate it, Mike said, you can get just a 50 bucks a camera like this. The microphone I have is 50. The dynamic microphone is probably much less now. I bought this I bought this four years ago.

And it’s still my the only microphone I use. I have a light that I think I bought for 50 bucks. Like again, three years ago as well. I have one on my left and one to my right here. And that is all you need. Honestly, you don’t even need a lot. You can sit in front of a, window and that will be enough light as well.

The [00:23:00] key is to do it, right? To record. You can even use your phone to record. In fact, the phone is, it has a better camera than most webcams. And just record and make sure that you just have good audio because sound is important because somebody listened to you and they’re static and that sound is not clear.

They get turned off and they leave. So you know $50 microphones, probably even some are even cheaper now than it was before when Mike and I, let me tell you when Mike and I started doing this, no one. Tell us that we have to figure it out ourselves. We had to learn from other marketers.

Does that work with doctors or not familiar with doctors do? And we have to figure it out ourselves. We made a lot of mistake and probably made a lot of, financial mistakes. But we figured it ourselves and now we know what works and we know and we’re giving you the fast track road [00:24:00] to be an influencer and how to attract customer to become your patient online because we have found that out over the years on how to do that. And there is a strategy. I went to a conference recently and that, and I told the doctor that doctor go I’ll just go home and record a bunch of videos and I’ll just put it out there.

And I said there’s a strategy on how to put out the videos and the content you can’t you don’t just sit down in front of a camera and you just blur it out. There’s a, you have to reverse engineer. You have to investigate what patients are looking for, because you can be talking about. Some like something that they’re not looking for.

So they’re not going to listen to you. How many times have you heard from colleagues or other doctors that produce material and online you have a hundred views or, no comment and you get frustrated, right? It’s because you’re not giving them content [00:25:00] information they’re looking for.

You have to know what your customers is looking for and then you produce that content for them to pay attention to. It’s right now we live in a world of attention and attention is currency. You can get their attention and maintain it for a longer amount of time. That is your money. That is your money.

You get their attention to a point where they give you their email, their cell phone number. That is money.

Dr. Mike: Yes, this has been tremendous. Again listen, re listen to this and give you a nugget bottoms of info here. And if you like that, we’ve got something called the Medical Practice Profits Challenge.

How about three days of PowerPack content for you to transform your practice into a cash. Practice machine. You want to talk a little bit about what’s going on,

Dr. Anne Truong: Right? So it’s a three day challenge and it is we challenge you [00:26:00] to up level your practice and to for you to go out of your boundary to make something of your practice to have the practice of your dream.

So the 1st day it starts on April the 30th at 8:30 Eastern Standard Time nighttime and 5:30 PM Pacific Time. But 1st day, we’re going to talk about niching down and how to pick what niche you should do and then we’ll give you some homework to do. The homework probably take you five to ten minutes and then that’s going to be referred to for the second day. We’re going to talk about content.

We’re going to dive deeper into what we talk about today of how to produce content that your customer want and that they want to go deeper with you and then we’ll give you a little worksheet as well, too. And you can share that and then on the third day, on the third day we’ll talk about creating an offer and a [00:27:00] membership and then Mike and I will do Q&A and maybe some hot seat as well. Because the key for this is that we want to over deliver and giving you some actionable item that you can do right now for your practice that may move the needle and Mike and I want to be able to help the doctor be able to build the practice of your dream, be free of insurance, get out the hamster wheel, get out of burnout and leverage your time because in the end, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth.

When I realized that I have 187 a hundred thousand hours on this earth, if I was gonna live up to 80, I realized I’ve got a lot of hours on this earth and I wanna make sure that I live the life that I want and not and make the impact. We hope that you can join us on the three day challenge, and you will definitely get some good information that will make a big difference for your practice.

Dr. Mike: Awesome. [00:28:00] So if you want to register for it, it’s coming up quick starts on april 30th the medical practice profits challenge, go ahead and register. So when it’s fresh on your mind go to practiceprofitschallenge.com. You go ahead and register secure your seat now, look forward to having you there and yeah excited to bring that on. Hey, why don’t we give them a sneak preview on what we’re going to cover on the next topic?

Dr. Anne Truong: Yeah, so the next topic that we’re going to do in the in this series is that we’re gonna talk about how do reoccurring income. Now that exciting because all of us want to make money while we sleep.

And we’re going to talk about that at the next time. We’ll cover that also in the medical profit challenge as well.

Dr. Mike: Right again, thank you. And thanks for everyone for listening as always. You’re going to ups and downs in your business. If you don’t know where to start, we always [00:29:00] recommend getting a mentor, getting a coach, getting someone who’s actually been there and done that.

It’ll keep you closer to your goals and keep moving you forward.