Grow Your Practice: The One Hire That Changes Everything

[00:00:07] Welcome to the Grow Ortho Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Zach Dykes, joined by Dr. Bryce Gilliam, 2024's 40 Under 40, America's top young dentist, the co-host of the TV show Making Modern available on Macs, and owner and operator of Elevation Orthodontics. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bryce. Thank you so much for having me, man. We got a snow day, so I get to, I got a little change of scenery. I'm at the house today.

[00:00:34] I'm loving it, dude. I love the cap, the smile on there. You're looking fresh to death. I appreciate it. A little casual, but you know, hey, it's a snow day. It's a snow day. We actually got snow down here about four weeks ago, and it was real snow. It wasn't the slushy stuff. And it was awesome. First time I actually seen real snow. Did your whole entire city shut down? Yes. And you'll get a kick out of this and everybody listening. There were people sitting on the back of trucks throwing out salt,

[00:01:04] because we don't have like salt things here. They were literally just throwing out salt on the back of a pickup truck, and it went viral. That is hilarious. Hey, man, you got to do what you got to do. It's something new. They're trying to fix it. I love it. They were trying to make it proactive. Exactly. It's just like running a practice. You've got to be proactive. You got to just go with it and make it work. It might not be pretty right then, but you can fix it later. That's right. That's a good analogy.

[00:01:33] So today we're diving into the question we get all the time from new practice owners. What's the most important thing to spend money on when it comes to marketing as a startup? And we'll be breaking all of that down. And for those running an established practice, stay tuned because we have a part two coming very soon and you're not going to want to miss that. So let's jump into it. Dr. Bryce, what's your approach when it comes to marketing a startup?

[00:02:01] Yeah, this is a great question. So let's just jump right into it. Um, this is basically my idea of getting you the most bang for your buck or putting your practice on some type of like a steroid for growth, right? The very first thing that you want to do, and this is going to just be very general. This is not what we're talking about today, but the very first thing that you want to do is you want to align yourself with a legitimate partner,

[00:02:26] somebody that will, um, you know, do your website for you, do digital ads, SEO, all that digital stuff that maybe you're not great at. You want to make sure you find a company that is, that is a true partner, not just somebody that you throw money at and, and you just kind of get a little bit of return on investment, but somebody who will actually sit down with you, they'll ask

[00:02:49] you questions. They will help you to come up with ambitious, but realistic goals, and then also be a resource to help you reach those goals. And I mean, of course, you know, hip is a great resource to handle all of those things. I really love working with them. But again, this is not meant for us to focus on that today. Really what we're wanting to focus on is what you can do your, on your own,

[00:03:16] that you have control on. And while that's working in the background to really take your practice to the next level. Dr. Bryce, I appreciate the shout out, but I want to know your views, uh, and just hear your strategy for fast growth within a practice. The first thing that you want to do, if you're trying to grow a practice fast, you're going to, you're going to hire somebody in the first hire that I want you to make. I want you to make a rockstar hire of an assistant, right? You're going to make, um,

[00:03:44] the assistant your first hire because that's going to be your right hand. That's going to be the person that allows you to see more patients to be an extension of you. But the second person, which I believe is really important. The second person I want you to hire is a full-time marketing coordinator. So, you know, just making sure I'm catching what you're putting down. You're talking about full-time because most startups are only like two days a week. Yep. That's exactly right. And I,

[00:04:14] full-time is, is very important here. Yeah. I do understand that most startups are two to three days a week, but with your marketing coordinator, it has to be a full-time job because like I said, I believe that this is the most important person in your practice next to you as the doctor. But if you really want my opinion, I think that that person is going to be more important to your practice in the long-term than you are as the doctor. That's pretty bold statement right there,

[00:04:43] because, uh, I, it's important, but, uh, you know, so I just have to know what exactly does a marketing coordinator do? What is their day to day look like to elevate them over the doctor? They will create campaigns and they will help to build and nurture your existing relationships with those dental professionals. They will send over some referrals. They will be the ones that takes the deliveries. And then they'll also be able to create social content. They'll set up those

[00:05:12] giveaways. They'll shut up times for you to visit schools. And they will also be the direct coordinator to other marketing partners, whether it's hip, whether it is, um, billboards, TV, radio, whatever it may be. They will be the ones that talk directly to them. They're also going to be the person that schedules the doctor to doctor breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whatever you decide to do. Um, and a little side note about that. Whenever you have someone schedule the initial appointment

[00:05:42] for a doctor to doctor meeting, if you have someone other than yourself as the doctor do it, it makes you look a little bit more prestigious. Right. And so think about it. There's a lot of like big CEOs that they can make their own reservations, right? They can call, they can make these, these meetings, but they don't. What they do is they have their assistant does it, do it for them. And since their assistant does it for them, it gives them this, this kind of feel that they're

[00:06:08] busy and that they are meaningful and powerful. So I would recommend that you use your marketing coordinator to do the same thing. Now, after you start to build a rapport with the doctor, then, Hey, you can text them, you can call them yourself. But for that very first interaction, I think it would be really great if that person could schedule it for you and it would really kind of set the tone for you. Yeah. It helps start an established status right away that it's not just

[00:06:35] you as a doctor, just trying to bootstrap it. Like you've got people there, you and the dentist will know, Oh, they can actually take care of my patients. There's more than just one person on this ship. And I think that's a big, big thing for people to understand. That's, that's some gold nuggets right there. You know, the other thing that this marketing coordinator really does is, um, they will be, you're kind of your central hub for any of the reports that need to be ran. This is when you

[00:07:02] get to talk about, should we add more to the marketing budget? Should we make cuts to the marketing budget? This was unsuccessful. This was successful. Those are the things that you're going to always have to process as a business owner. So you want to make sure that you're, you're doing that in a timely manner. You don't want this to take up your whole entire day. You need to be seeing patients. That's where you get the most bang for your buck. So you need to be seeing patients and being patient focused. This person will be focused on the other things.

[00:07:27] So Dr. Bryce, what kind of person are we looking for here? What are the skills, the personality traits that make a killer? And I'm not talking about your run of the mill, a killer marketing coordinator. So I think this is the hardest part, right? To find that right person, because it's going to be a person that has to have so many different characteristics to make them amazing at this role. Um, what you're really going to be looking for is you're going to, of course, you're going to be looking for an outgoing person. They need to be well-spoken. They need to be

[00:07:55] charismatic. They have to make people like them. So being charismatic helps that. They need to be self-motivated, organized, creative, and fearless. So it's going to be hard for you to find somebody that's creative and organized and then fearless as well. And the reason that it's important to be fearless is because it takes a lot of courage to walk into an office and say, Hey, I'm new here.

[00:08:21] Uh, send us some patience, right? And it doesn't feel like it should be scary, but I promise you, if you've ever done a cold call, it is very, very, um, intimidating. And you want someone that has the confidence to go in there and knock that out of the park without, um, being too arrogant because there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. A thousand percent because you can come off flighty. You can come off as overbearing. Like

[00:08:49] there's, there's that line that you have to tow. And I think that's really important because they are the face of your practice. They are the one that is out in the community, making these connections. So it has to be somebody that you can trust and make sure that they are representing you because they're investing in the community and you're investing in them. That's right. You want to make sure that they, they walk and talk and even look the part, right?

[00:09:15] You're the new kid on the block. So you want to make sure that this marketing coordinator is professional and represents where you're going to be in the future. Not necessarily where you're at right now. I mean, where are you at right now? You just opened a practice. You're probably sitting there, uh, thumbing your fingers around and waiting for patients to come in shooting Tik TOK videos just to kill the time. Right. But we, we don't want to come off as if we're just the new basic practice. We want to come off like we're a well-established practice.

[00:09:45] I'm not saying that you have to go out here and make, make it up and make it, um, more than it actually is, but let's be a little bit professional. Let's be, um, a little bit forward thinking and kind of represent really well from the get go. I like that you, you stated that you're acting like the practice you want to be instead of the practice that you are. And I think that is a great way to run everything in your practice.

[00:10:11] You, you don't want to be fumbling around trying to find patient folders or their files or whatever you want to. Oh, I know where they're at. They're here. And you already are building systems for when you get there as well. And I love that Dr. Bryce. So we've got this amazing person on board. They're part of the team. They're making things happen, but we're still talking full time. Like that's,

[00:10:38] I'd still kind of blow my mind. I'm not even going to lie, Dr. Bryce, but how does this actually work in the practice? Because again, you're only open a few days a week at this point. All right. So I want to talk about this in a couple of different ways. One, it's easier to hire somebody full-time than it is to hire them part-time. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it is easy. People look for full-time positions all the time. They very rarely look for part-time positions. So hiring for a full-time is easier, right? That's going to start you off.

[00:11:06] But what I want you to do is on the clinical days, that marketing coordinator is going to be your front desk person. This is going to give them the chance to build their communication skills, to learn about those frequently asked questions, and to just be over the top with their patient experience, which will help them when they're communicating with other offices. And then on the non-clinical days, this is the time that they get to start creating marketing plans and campaigns

[00:11:34] and answering phones and making those deliveries. So yes, it's a full-time job. They're working in one role for two days a week, and then they are working on the non-clinical days as another role, but together it gives them full-time. And all of those times that they're working kind of builds what they're able to do. I like that. That's an interesting way of positioning this because,

[00:11:59] again, like you said, hiring part-time, it's going to be hard. It's going to be difficult for anybody to do that. But full-time, way more interesting benefits, that sort of deal. But when you have them understand, and again, they already know how to talk to people. They're the face of the company. Other than the doctor, they know how to connect. That's going to be so huge

[00:12:24] for your front desk and phones because you don't want a grumpy Gert over there turning people away with their attitude. You want people that, oh man, I felt like I was welcomed and I wanted to be here. They were just so engaging. They made me feel amazing. A lot of success is based on people's experience and how you made them feel. And so if you can find that right person to make everyone

[00:12:50] feel special, then you're going to win. This person's clearly rock star. They're crushing it. They're a monster at their job. But why put so much emphasis on this one position when there's so many other positions that you could go and fill for the second one? Wow, that's a good question too. I think the reason why I think this is so important is because when you start looking at your biggest expenses, and a lot of times when we're talking specifically about

[00:13:20] marketing, it's the cost of acquisition of a patient. And a referral is the cheapest and the absolute best type of acquisition of a patient, right? Yeah. And the reason why is because that means there's less money out of your pocket. That means that that person that got a referral knows kind of what to expect or at least has been

[00:13:48] told by someone else. So those have the highest case acceptances as well. So not only are they actually coming into your office because they were referred to it, but you also have the best chance of closing the deal on those patients as well. So you just get the most bang for your buck with that type of patient. So you know, you may have the other digital marketing and stuff going in the background

[00:14:12] and that stuff is bringing in patients as well. But that is going to have a higher acquisition cost, right? You get these referrals to come in and you really want to be around 60% referral based. Then no matter what you add for your digital marketing, it's just gravy on the top, right? You're just getting more and more. And that's how you expedite this growth experience. And I'm just thinking of if you've ever had meat in the freezer and it's just rock hard,

[00:14:43] that's, you know, digital marketing is like trying to warm that up. But if you already have this nice plated dinner and you've got like down the line, there's like the next plate and it's like slightly warmer than what the, you know, frozen piece of meat, that's way easier to prep than that. And that's exactly what, you know, warm, warm referrals are is, is you're just on that prep line and getting things ready. You can't ever look at marketing as I'm going to give

[00:15:11] my marketing to someone and never do anything. I honestly thought that I could do that. I thought that I could pay enough money in market and, you know, I don't have to do anything internal because I, I didn't really want to be doing this whole dating everyone all the time thing. Um, but the reality is you, you can do that. It's just your cost of acquisition goes up way high. And at the end of the day, you've opened a business and the business is for you to make money.

[00:15:39] And the, you know, so if you're looking at it from that perspective, you need to get that cost of acquisition down where you can make more money and put more money in your pocket, where you can go on more trips or give to more charities or whatever you want to do, but you need more money in your pockets to do that. Yeah. It's better to have money in your pocket than Google and Facebook, because they've got a lot of money in theirs already. And that's right. They're okay. Yeah, they're okay. I think that they'll survive without that. And, you know, for bigger markets, you know,

[00:16:08] thinking about like New York city and everything, the cost per lead on a digital platform is astronomical. Like I've seen, you know, cost per leads above $200 and it's so hard to get that down to a manageable, you know, number because of the saturation there. And some markets are easier than others, but how awesome would it be if, you know, little Johnny comes in and they were referred by, uh,

[00:16:35] Susie and you didn't pay anything for that lead. Your goal is to get those referrals where you've paid zero dollars, uh, to get them. And more of those will get that number down significantly. Yeah. And you're building the long-term personal relationships that really stick because we are inundated with ads, but those long-term relationships, people want to connect to something real is going to go so much

[00:17:00] further and faster than any ad could ever do. Yeah. And I honestly think this is a really, you made a really good point. This is something where the private small startup office can outperform the DSOs, right? Because you, you put this marketing coordinator and you're building this grassroot or ground up type of marketing system. And those DSOs and the bigger companies, they don't have, they have the resources

[00:17:30] to do it. They just don't have the desire to do it. And so I think that this is a really strong and easy way that you can outperform those DSOs and really kind of carve out who you are in your local community. It's like going to McDonald's or going to a mom and pop place that's been established for 50 years and you feel like your home, it's like, you're both going to get fed, but which place do you actually

[00:17:56] feel like you belong. That's right. That's right, man. It's a good, good point. So that is our episode for this week. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for part two, where we would discuss marketing for an established practice. Also, if you have any questions you want answers to, make sure to put them in the Google form that is in the episode's description. Mark Twain said it best. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. So get out there and get started by making the changes you want to see in your practice

[00:18:26] now. This has been Zach and I'm Dr. Bryce. Thank you for watching the Grow Ortho podcast. Small, big guys.