The Worst Marketing Mistake Business Owners Make in a Down Economy

FREE Business Consultation with our Founder/CEO - Just use the live chat feature on www.NewPatientGroup.com and request him.
Sign up for Live Coaching Sessions - www.NewPatientGroup.com/Live-Sessions
Sign up for an On-Demand Coaching Membership - www.NewPatientGroup.com/On-Demand

New Patient Group is a transformational coaching company offering fresh, innovative and forward-thinking coaching programs to help your practice dominate the new economy,  
Welcome to another episode of the New Patient Group Podcast. Today our Founder & CEO passionately talks about the mindset shift you need to make to avoid the worst marketing mistake made by business owners in a down economy. 

This podcast is for #businessowners #entrepreneurs #orthodontists #dentists #doctors 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, new patient group in Right Chat Nation. Welcome inside the broadcast booth. Brian right here. Welcome into season five, episode number eight, episode number seventy-nine of the New Patient Group Podcast overall. Rocking and rolling. Hope everything is good in your professional career out there, your business, your personal life. Hope everything is going well for you. Obviously, a down economy right now, uh, it'll get better. It always does. You know, it ebbs and flows, but right now it uh it sucks. Let's just call a spade a spade. And it's probably gonna get worse for a while. I think Fed just announced they're gonna raise the interest rates again. And obviously, not good news from that interest rate front. And a lot of Americans are hurting right now. Latest study is a family of four is spending upwards of five to six hundred dollars more a month right now while not buying anything extra, and in many cases buying less and still spending a lot more. And you look at the average savings account of Americans, it's just over six hundred dollars. It's kind of a scary low number. So you take that and you also look at how much more a month is being spent right now. People are hurting out there for obvious reasons. Uh it's unfortunate, it saddens me whenever I hear that. But the reality is we're gonna come through it. We're gonna be we're gonna be fine eventually. Uh but right now we're hurting, and businesses are hurting out there because any business that that people view as a commodity, uh maybe not a necessity as it stands today. Obviously, you know, dentists or oral surgeons listening out there, if someone's coming in in excruciating pain, they view that as a necessity. Uh, but most stuff, dental work, orthodontics, etc., most stuff, people aren't in severe pain, and they just view as something that is not necessary as it stands right now. Well, there is a mistake. When the economy is down, there is a big mistake that business owners do. And this is not just a orthodontist or a dentist, you know, not just a doctor that owns their own practice that's a business owner mistake. This is a mistake if you go out there and you look at plumbing companies and you look at restaurants and you look at any type of business out there selling something to the consumer. There's a very common mistake that the majority of business owners make in a down economy to try to grow their business. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. This was not planned. I had a conversation. We have a new uh coach with New Patient Group. Shout out to Stephanie, she's a rock star, she's a huge, gonna be a huge part of this team. Um, I'm a big fan, a big fan of hers. And now that Stephanie, who listens, her head, you know, your head's just getting swelled up listening to me talk, listen to me talk about you. Uh, but I am a fan and I expect big things of you. Well, she and I had a conversation the other day, and you know, when you have a new hire, part of your job out there, everybody, is is to inspire that person. It can't just be a situation where it's like, you know, Nancy, here's where we set up the trays, and this is how we clean the sterilization room. And and when people walk through the door, this is what we do, and we're, you know, we're an 80% clear aligner, 20% braces practice, or whatever it is, you know, you can just hear the person snoring now. You've got to inspire them, you've got to get them excited about the vision you have. You've got to get excited about the your real value proposition, your sales pitch, if you will. Let's just call space made. We're all in sales. You know, if we're trying to get somebody else to say, yes, I want to buy from you, you're in sales, whether you like the word or not. It's just the reality of the situation. There's nothing else to call it. Well, I got into this conversation with Stephanie, and I do this with new hires because I am very, very passionate about the reasons why we exist and how different and unique we are compared to anything that's been in this industry before. It's hard sometimes for people to see it, and I'm gonna have a little bit of a rant and rave session today, like I did talking to Stephanie on the phones. I'm gonna bounce around uh quite a bit today because this was not a planned podcast. And I talk about you know, having all these ideas, and we I've got ideas built out for seasons ahead because you got to stay ahead. But I also like to tie topics into what's most relevant today. You can't always do that, but this topic today is very relevant because it talks about the biggest mistake people make when trying to grow their business in a down economy, which is exactly what we're in. So I got a good one for you today. I think you're really gonna enjoy it, and this is why what you're gonna learn today is the real reason why, when the like like for right now, having a down economy, the latest study we've done is new patient group practices are up about 16, one six percent for the year, uh, which is a huge growth in a down economy because orthodontics, dentistry, et cetera, they're going backwards. It's gonna be a negative growth year. We'll have Chris Benson on later this year, early next, to review the numbers from this year and go over and dive deeper. I'll have him on as a guest, uh, like we usually do once a year. And we'll dive deeper into that. But when you look at a 16% growth in this bad economy as we're dealing with right now, those are astronomical numbers because, in addition, those practices that have 16% growth are not advertising. They're not spending money on pay-per-click and all this other stuff that people waste their money on thinking that that's what they have to do. So that is impressive. Now, are all the practices up? Of course not, but the ones that are down still have a chance to have growth for the year, and what's keeping them alive and not tanking like so many practices is also what I'm gonna be talking about today. So this isn't necessarily gonna grow you, you know, 30% every single year forever, but it's always gonna keep you from having those bad years, and because whenever we all have them. We all have our down years. They suck, but the reality is, as we all face them, the key is how do you minimize the downs and how do you maximize the ups while spending the least amount you possibly can along the way to do it? That's we're gonna be talking about today. Gonna have a good one for you on the other end of the intro. Uh, we'll give some updates, uh, some cool events I'll be speaking at coming up, so make sure you can come check us out. Some new live sessions we're gonna be launching that I want to tell you about. And we'll have a great one today. Before we get started, let's fire up the music.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Practice on almost every corner and the modern-day consumer viewing you as a commodity. So, why is it the best time in history to want to practice? The answers are all right here. Welcome to season five of the new painting through audio experience. And now your host, the founder, and it's the new painting group, managing partner of right now, and impressive motivational speaker for the finest companies in the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Hey everybody, welcome in. Before we get started, and really want to jump in because today's gonna be it's gonna be good. Uh, it's gonna run probably a little bit longer than I normally would. Um, but between the rant and rave session and tying that into the worst marketing mistake you can make in a down economy, uh, today's gonna be very well worth it. All right, I'm gonna throw it all out there on making sure your mindset is shifted uh from many, many of the mistakes that people just make as business owners in all industries. And as we do though, we're gonna always tie that back into the healthcare industry from a business owner standpoint. A couple updates really quick. So I'm gonna be speaking for dental monitoring at the Mother of Pearls event. Uh, that's one of Jamie Reynolds, Dr. Jamie Reynolds, uh, who is a friend of mine and I highly respect. Uh, that's their event. So gonna be speaking there for dental monitoring. I believe we're there October 6th, and we're gonna be talking about uh debunking the biggest myths around digital solutions and orthodontics. Uh so we're gonna look forward to that. Lots of stuff. Like I leave here uh and let's see, what what date do I leave? I think I leave Wednesday of this week uh to go to meet with align corporate uh and rally. Shout out Matt Miller, looking forward to seeing all of you, looking forward to just uh you know re-engaging and uh just a big fan of your all's. Obviously, we've been partners for a long time, so looking forward to taking that to the next step. And so that'll be good. And we've got the Synergy event coming up uh that we're gonna be speaking at. We've got Nisso in Philadelphia that we're gonna be speaking at. Uh just talked to Orthofy yesterday. Uh, we're gonna be putting together a national workshop that is an in-person workshop, and we're gonna be putting that together either the look for that, the final October weekend or the first weekend of November, right around that time frame. The city has not been announced yet, but that is something that is going to be worth getting tickets and taking your team to. Uh we can all go out to dinner after. It'll be very interactive, and and I want you to be looking for that, and I want you to watch OrthoFi and us start advertising that. Um, it's gonna be great. Uh it's gonna be a really good one. We're also gonna be doing some national webinars with OrthoFi. Uh, gonna be, like I said, talking to a line this week in Raleigh. Uh hopefully get some more speaking, uh, you know, get more consistency there. And just a lot of cool stuff going on. Remember, the live was so the website is new, uh, the new patient group site, and we've integrated a lot of new ways to work with us. I mentioned this on the last podcast. Uh just go check out our on-demand memberships and then our live sessions. The live sessions are really cool. You know, our one-hour workshops, they're 97 bucks. Uh, my Brian Wright live sessions are 97 bucks. The on-demand, or excuse me, the virtual boot camps are more of an investment, but they're also going to produce more of a return. So look into those as well, just some upcoming topics. And it's really cool because our whole site for the most part now is is it's e-commerce. So you can go right on there, you can look for what you're wanting, and you can buy it right away and just uh keep rolling inside your practice. As I travel around, I have really noticed I was talking about quite a few things on the intro, and as I've been traveling around this year, looking at the new patient group practices, and then also, you know, you get into sales conversations with prospective customers, which I'm gonna dive into today how those conversations go. And there's a reason I'm gonna do it because it'll show you the difference in mindset where the majority of people are versus where I call them the top one percenters. If this is the first time you've listened to this podcast, I call them the top one percenters. The reason I call it that is you know, if you go to an event and the event has 10 people there, or the event has 10,000 people there, there's only gonna be about 1% of that room, if not less, actually take any of the ideas they learn and actually go back to their practice and effectively implement even one of them. Forget the hundreds they learn, even one of them. And inevitably, implementation is is the difference maker between the ultimate successful and the ones that are just consistently just trying to figure out, hey, what's my next step to keep the business alive or to grow it? It's all implementation. Now, if you focused all on implementation and you forgot that you had another practice down the street that did what you do or whatever, you'd be better off than focusing your attention on outside stuff that's going on that you can't control. And that's not the point today, but really the reason why I'm bringing that up right now, that the point from that is that the people that are growing this year uh in a in a really bad situation from an economic standpoint, they have a trait. And and I've noticed this trait consistently throughout my throughout my career, because it's what I I passionately teach. And I've noticed this trait, but I've also noticed how hard it is to convince the people that aren't already doing what I'm gonna be talking about today, it is so difficult to flip your mindset into doing what I'm gonna be talking about today, because it's so the opposite of what you've been told your entire life. You know, when we have a sales call, and you know, just like we teach all of you that when you're on a sales call or a new patient walks through your door for the first time, your main goal is to listen to what they're telling you that they want, right? It doesn't mean that you don't also educate them on what they need. Of course you do that, but your main focus is around how you can help correct and make beautiful what they want. All right, and and we all know what they want most of the time is not really what they need. Well, it's so funny how how clinical analogies, how they work so perfectly with business. It's also funny how sports analogies, which I'm gonna tie some things into that today too, how sports analogies also tie so perfectly into business. Take this for example. So you have a patient that, and all this, you know, I'm gonna get off on some stories here, and like I said in the front, there's gonna be plenty of tangents today because this is partly my frustration uh that that's coming out today on why it is so hard to get people to think differently about what's going on inside their business. You take a sales call, let's take it as a new patient coming through your doors, and you asking that patient, you know, Mrs. Jones, and this is what TCs, this is what I'm about to say, new patient group clients, you know this, but if you're just a listener uh and or maybe you're an on-demand member, you haven't got to this particular course yet, what I'm about to say, we uh we adamantly teach not to ask this question for a lot of reasons. One of them is because it makes you the same. And the question is is Mrs. Jones, what brings you in today? What are your biggest concerns? That is a normal question that if you role-played with a thousand TCs, that's what they would all ask, right? And because our customers, I'm not gonna tell you what we what we teach to active, that's not what today is about. And I wouldn't teach that on the podcast because you know, as much as we teach here, there's also some things that are gonna be obviously exclusive for the ones investing their hard-earned money in us as their as their team of coaches that they trust to take them through the goods, through the bads, be a shoulder to cry under in the ups and downs, the thick and thins. You gotta save the stuff for that. But what do the new patients respond whenever you ask that question? They respond things like, well, this front tooth I'm not happy with. Or maybe it's the social six they're complaining about, right? They're not gonna use that terminology, but that's that's what they that's what they're basically saying. There's other examples as well, but it's almost always aesthetics, with a rare rare exception. Now, you know that's not what they need, but they're telling you that's what they that's what they want. Well, you take our world for a second, and and when we dive into their business, uh, you know, we you know, we talk about in our sales call, we talk about our passions, our vision, why we exist, why we're unique. But the conversation transitions over to learning more about their business pains, their business sufferings, if you will. Because our job is is to prescribe, again, using the the clinical analogies, it's our job to prescribe which service of ours is gonna most effectively solve their biggest headaches and their biggest pain points in the shortest amount of time. Here's how those conversations tend to go after we go through, and I'm gonna actually talk about a couple of the things I talked about with Stephanie yesterday just from a a vision standpoint, you know, what our sales pitch actually looks like. Because it's important uh for you all to know just really the whole conversation I was having with her, I'm just gonna kind of vent and and and go on today about it. When you have these conversations, what you what you hear most often from doctors are things like this. So after we ask them about their pain points, well Brian, you know, our our our no-shows are are pretty high. We're just getting bad patients. You know, they're no showing us, and we just we just need to find the right patients. Or Brian, you know, our conversion just, you know, it isn't what it used to be. And I see that it's going down, and I just, you know, patients are just shoppers. They're they're just shopping more than ever before. They're just shoppers. We need more good patients. They're not good patients, uh, so our conversion's down. Um I hear things like we need to focus more on our our brand and and having more likes online and and and better five-star reviews, which uh better five-star reviews is always a good thing, by the way. That can never be a bad thing. Always should be a focus. More you can get the better, because you never know when you're gonna get a one-star. So the more you have, whenever you do get the one stars, it doesn't bring you down as much. And by the way, this is off the cuff, but I I I think that it actually validates your good ones. You know, if you have 500 reviews and they're all five stars, I gotta tell you, there's people out there going, something's fishy about that, right? Now, if you have 500 reviews and 498 of them are five stars, you've got two one stars. Okay, now it validates the 498 are actually real. So there's a weird psychology uh that goes on there. And I have seen some businesses actually purposely, like if they're in the thousands with five-star reviews, I have seen some purposely have a one-star review written just to accomplish what I have said, and those are businesses outside of healthcare. This is a whole podcast and a teaching in itself, so I want to dive into that. But there's there's psychology around why an occasional one-star is great, as long as you, you know, you don't want five if you have a hundred reviews, but for every five hundred, if you have one, it's a good thing. But you notice whenever they whenever they talk about their problems and their headaches, you notice a very common trend with what all of them say. And this is the challenge, you know, if you haven't listened to last month's podcast, it would be a good one. Really, it'd be a good one to listen to before this podcast. But definitely, if you're not, if you don't do that, definitely after this podcast. Because it talks about some things that I think once you hear them, they're they're obvious that they're true. But but people just aren't, again, they're they're not thinking that way on the topics I talk about on there. And another reason why I did the podcast today is because I think this is a good follow-up to that podcast. So you notice a trend whenever you hear the the things that you hear on our sales calls. A trend of it's never them, right? It's always an outward blaming of why the numbers are down. Like in my entire career, you know, as you dive in, you do get people, you know, sh they will admit their weaknesses. But if you went and did questionnaires inside a practice and you gave the questionnaires to the employees and you said, Tell me what's wrong and what could be better about the practice, and you gave a questionnaire to the doctor and say, Tell me what's wrong and what could be better about the practice. Nobody in in my entire career has ever gone, well, I could get better. Like it's never them, ever. It that that one TC would ever go, you know, um, my sales abilities are just they're lacking, or I feel like I'm not innovative enough in the TC room. And I just, you know, Brian, I I just I gotta get better. Never do you hear that. Never do you hear from the doctor, you know, I just I'm not a I'm not I'm not leading my team. Like I just I I'm not a good leader. Culturally, I need help. Um, I need to reshape and rethink, you know, what what a real successful business looks like in this new economy. Um I just need help. You never hear that ever. And you don't because humans, for the most part, are outward thinkers. So whenever they have a patient not buy and tell the pay, you know, sometimes patients will flat out tell you, look, I like you, but the other practice is cheaper, I'm gonna go with them, right? But whenever a practice hears that, they immediately go, patient's fault. Bad patient, price shopper. Or you have a virtual consult. This is another one we hear whenever we talk virtual consults. You know, ah, those are just for price shoppers and their smile direct patients, or you know, the Invisalign concierge, or you know, they're they no-show at a high rate, bad patient, don't want them. That's the thought process. The thought process or the never crosses their mind, ever, not once, that maybe the reason the person is price shopping is because of them and their inability to place real value on why somebody should spend more. Or maybe they're no-showing you because of your process that is the exact same as the other two places they are looking at. And the thought process doesn't cross their mind either that they are living now in a commoditized world that we talked so much about. You can't do anything about it. You can either complain about it and ignore it, or you can face the facts and the reality that when you're a commodity in the mind of whoever you're trying to sell to, the reality is everything changes. Because what your quote unquote services under your roof, that's all secondary because you're not selling that. You're selling experience. That's what you're selling. It's it's which experience is better. Period. End of story. It the orthodontics or the dynasty just comes with it. It's just an oh by the way thing. And getting that mindset to shift is so hard. But the point of all this is that what we're told in the sales calls is what people are thinking, and they're also telling us what they want, right? Same way in your consult. People are telling you what they're thinking from their perspective and what it is they want. Well, the problem with both of those scenarios, a new patient inside your practice or a sales call with us, is that what they want isn't what they need. It's not even remotely close to what they need. Now, the want that the patient just said, the social six, if that was their complaint, sure. Is that a need too? Yes. But it comes in a bigger, a bigger beautiful package, right, to get there. We got to correct the byte, the functionality, it's way more than aesthetics. And it's the same way on the business side. Is that it's not that, you know, more likes on social media or you know, getting a better quality patient consumer to call your practice. It's not that those things are flat out wrong, but they're part of a bigger picture. A big overall umbrella, if you want, about a whole business perspective and what your practice looks like. The challenge, though, is how do you get people to actually think that way without completely losing your sale? Because if you focus, just in the clinical example, if you focus too much on the functionality and the bite and the clinical consequences, if you focus too much on that, they're gonna go somewhere else and buy, maybe even for a higher price, somebody that just goes social six will knock it out of the park for you. You know, seven-month Invisalign case or whatever the treatment modality is is prescribed. We do these all the time. Let's rock and roll. TC will get you taken care of. She'll present you money, get your investment all taken care of, answer your questions, we'll get you rolling. Can't wait for you to join our family. Boom, done. And then there's other practices that dive into this 45-minute clinical spiel, and while what they're doing and teaching is right, you lose, you lose, and you're likely to lose that patient to the other practice. And it's the same way in business. Whenever you hear somebody tell you what they think is the problem and what they want help with, it puts us in a significant disadvantage from a sales perspective. And these rants today are all going to be tied back into the biggest mistake you're making when trying to grow your business in a down economy. Because our services with New Patient Group are all designed to fix you. Fix your team. Now, it doesn't mean that you're totally broken. There's lots of things in life that are fixed. Not because it's completely broken, but parts are broken. And in order for the whole part, you take a car. You know, if you have a valve pipe blowing your engine, the whole car, the radio works fine, AC works fine, oil system works fine, tires work fine, but the but the whole car doesn't function in harmony without that valve in the engine being fixed. So it's okay to admit faults, but the challenge when somebody sits there and says it's the patient's fault, as an example, when you have coaching services that are designed to improve culture, through exceptional leadership, to improve conversion, by teaching very new processes to this industry that are very different than what industry consultants teach. And the result is increased conversion. You guys all know the numbers. The numbers speak for themselves. But if you dive too heavily into those on a sales call, you risk losing the person on the call. And the reality of the situation is, is we do lose people quite frequently on the call because they don't identify what the real problems are. The vast majority of business owners think that they need to dump money, and I cannot believe how much money marketing companies out there make. It is unbelievable. Like I was in a sales call the other day, and this guy told me how much he was spending, and I was like, we're we're $1,500 a month less than that company, and we do 30 more things. And the things that we do similar to that company, I looked at their work, like we do them way better. These companies just charge an arm and a leg. And they do because they are offering things that people want. I use an analogy quite frequently, and sometimes it gets me in trouble. And honestly, I don't care. Because it is a it is a really good analogy, and I used it on the phone with with Stephanie when we were talking the other day, and it really got her to think. She's like, that's something you need to be talking about all the time. Like that really got me to pause and open up my eyes. You know, as business owners, most business owners have a have a really blind view of what's really going on. They're seeing things through lenses, or they're looking into the mirror, and the mirror is showing them a false image of reality. And when that's the case, it's very difficult to convince that business owner what they actually really need. Because what they're seeing in the mirror is something completely different than what reality actually is. And the analogy I use with that is the cheeseburger and the anorexic person. And for anybody out there that suffers through anorexia or has a family member suffer through it, and we have as a family, it was on my mom's side many, many years ago, it's a really sad, sad thing. Especially as it gets worse. It's a really sad, sad thing. Because in many cases, there's absolutely nothing you can do. Why? Because no matter what you do, if you have a false body image, you're gonna see what you're gonna see in the mirror. And it's a it's a sad process to watch. Thankfully, our family member overcame it, but it got very, very close to to death, just simply put. And and no matter how much you try to help, no matter how much you try to motivate, no matter what you try to do in rehab, that mirror is still showing those people that they need to lose weight. So what they're searching for are things they do not need, but things they want. They're searching for diet pills, new exercise techniques, etc. etc. That's what their hundred percent focus is on. And it's sad. Because what they really need is food. Food with a lot of fat, you know, weight gainer shakes, hamburgers, etc. etc. That's what they need. But the reality is, is it's not what they want and it's not what they're looking for. And business owners, because you're looking into a mirror that's reflecting the wrong images, this is exactly what you do with your business. And you see it with weight loss all the time with these companies that promise big, gigantic things without you having to lift a finger. You know, some kind of five-step process to get your butt into shape when in reality that is what people want. That is why these weight loss companies do so well for themselves, is they promise people all kinds of things without them having to work. And there are so many companies out there in all of your spaces where it's the same way. Ah, we're gonna do this, this, and that for your practice. Just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride. You're not gonna have to do anything. Which business coaching 101, I would tell you that if any company ever tells you that they've got it and you're gonna just sit back and relax, I would run from them as fast as you possibly can. Because the reality is when you live in a commoditized competitive industry, you have to get off your butt, be an entrepreneur, and put your business first. And you have to work hard. You don't have to do that forever if you set it up right, but you do have to do it. And that is why these weight loss companies and these other companies just promising the world do so well, because that's what people want to hear. They don't want to hear, hey, look, that's not what you need. You need to get your butt in the gym. You need to track your calories, you need to cook better, you need to eat better food, you need to change your lifestyle. Nobody wants to hear that stuff. And that is why these companies that say, hey, yeah, we've got Diet Pill 101, or we've got, you know, the six-week plan of just follow and eat our food, and everything's gonna be fine. You can just sit around and be lazy. That is why they make millions, because that is what people want to hear. That is what people are actively searching for, and that's what they want. But it's not what they need. And this false image of your business is causing you to spend all kinds of money on things you don't need to spend money on, and it's causing you to work harder, and it's causing you to put band-aids on the real problem instead of an actual solution to the real problems that are actually going to fix them both short and long term. Because I think we can agree what what an anorexic person really needs is a cheeseburger. And that's our situation as a company. This is me telling Stephanie, our situation as a company is we are selling cheeseburgers to people looking for diet pills. And it's the perfect, perfect analogy to what we face with any sales call. And it's what we face, and the reason why we don't get as many sales calls as we otherwise would is because people aren't even looking for the solutions we have, with exception. You know, you take my other company, WrightChat. Nobody wakes up in the morning except for the very forward thinking. And it's why WrightChat's already developing some huge names in the industry because they think totally different, which I'm gonna relate back to an athlete here in just a minute. You look at WrightChat, nobody, or the very few, wake up in the morning and go, hmm. Business is down a little bit. Need to grow. You know what? Let's uh hmm. You know what? I bet we missed two, three, four new patient calls last month that went somewhere else and bought. Let's go find a solution that's gonna that's gonna answer that as if they're sitting at my front desk, remote end of my software, speak like they're sitting on my team, schedule the person where the patient never even knows. Everything works out seamless, patient's happy, and I add 30, 40, 50 more new patients a month. Or year, excuse me, that otherwise had. I would have had. People don't think that way. Or maybe your practice is doing well and you're like, I want to take it to another level. Yep. Let's go start answering new patient calls that we're currently missing. People don't think that way. And they don't think that way because there's no data sheet that says there's your problem. Right? That data is the invisible data, and the invisible data is what hurts a business more than anything you will ever find on paper. But the challenge with that is nobody's waking up in the morning looking for it. You take, and there's going to be a podcast exclusive what I'm about to talk about right now, but you take conversion. People do search for TC training, they do search for phone training, but people do not search for phone training for the reason phones exist in a competitive commoditized environment. There is psychology proven, there's books about this, that the phone call and how the receptionist handles it has just as much, if not more of an impact than the TC exam and financial presentation when they're inside your office. Now that is a foreign concept to hear for most of you out there, but the reality of the situation is it's called the power of presuasion. There's a famous book about it, not persuasion. So Robert Cialdini wrote them both. His bestseller is persuasion. The one that's even better, though, is the power of presuasion. And it's how you psychologically prepare people for the sale and how you psychologically prepare them to already know they're going to buy from you prior to them ever walking through your door. So when people look for conversion help, they don't look for phone training. When they look for phone training, it's scripting and things like that, which absolutely does not work in this new economy. You wanna, you wanna try going on a first date with a script and see if you're getting a second one. Not gonna happen. You go on a first date and and you you're you, your personality, you know, and and you build the no-like trust factor. And when you do that, you're likely to get a second date. That's what a first call is. That's a first date. A no-show in your practice, what that is, is somebody that just told you, you know, Nancy, I had a great time tonight. I can't wait to do this again. I'll call you soon. Meanwhile, in their head, they're like, no chance am I calling you. And they leave, and you never call the girl, and boom, done. That's what a no-show is. Told you I had a great time with you, can't wait to see you. Boom, two o'clock Tuesday comes, you know. Barry's supposed to show up to his two o'clock appointment, never does. Well, you just got stiffed on a second date. That's exactly what that is. So phone training is a sales pitch that is psychologically supposed to set the person up ready to buy from you. But that's not what people look for. Patient experience, when you start talking patient experience to people, most people are like, no, we're good there. My team's nice. So it's extremely hard to convince anybody that thinks that patient experience means people being nice. You know, there's this study, and this is a really cool study. I'm playing golf the other day with my best buddy Rob. And Rob's practice is here in Houston, just open up a second location in the woodlands. And we're out playing, and the the cart girl comes up. She's like, Do you want anything to drink? Rob and I are like, No, thanks. You know, have a good day. And before we tee off on that hole, Rob turns to me and he goes, Here's a cool study for you. And this has just come out. Rob's a I love golf, but Rob's at a whole nother level, from how good he is at playing it to how much he loves it. And he's like, They just did a big study on cart girls at some of the most prestigious country clubs in the United States. And they were asking, you know, just different questions, and they kind of they found the ones that made the most money in tips versus the ones that that didn't do that well. And they started diving into okay, why does why does one do better than the than the next, and blah, blah, blah. Well, they found that the ones that do the best in tips, their presentation skills were different. So when they came up to a to people, all they did was say, hey guys, how you doing? Oh, we're doing good. Okay. What are you gonna be having today? You know, I've sold a ton of beer, you know, I've got some liquor in there for you, it's awesome, that's going like crazy. Which one are you gonna have? That's how they presented it. And their their sales and their tips went through the roof. And you think about that and you go, really? That did it? And the reality is, is yeah, because packed in that is psychology. And packed in that is presentation and verbiage skills that the other cart girls were not, they didn't have, they weren't using. But the challenge with that is there's not gonna be anybody, and just using this as an example, it's not gonna be a cart girl wake up in the morning and search for, okay, how do I make more sales by presenting differently? No one's gonna look in Google for that. And it's the same way as it relates to most of you out there. You're not hitting the internet putting in things because it's just like like I didn't know what I didn't know until I heard that story. I'm like, geez, that's what we teach for a living. It's like it's revamping, reshaping, reimagining everything from phone call to every single thing that goes on inside your practice for literally your new patients, your existing patients, your employee, you, everything. We have coaching around on things like I just described. But just like the patient that doesn't know things clinically is not gonna come in there and go, hey, let me yank my mouth open for you and show you one of my back teeth that's really bothering me. Of course they're not gonna say that. They should, but they're not going to. It's the same situation that we face is that the questions that are asked and the problems that are identified aren't really the problems. It doesn't mean that it can't still be helped. It doesn't mean that it's not real a real problem, but it's not the real problem. The real problem if you have no-show problems, which by the way, if you have one a month, that would constitute a no-show problem. Because if you're an orthodontist charging six grand a case and you have twelve a year, well, that's $72,000 of revenue that you potentially lost. Now you're probably not gonna close every one of those, but you take your conversion rate. Let's say your conversion rate, let's say it equates to getting eight out of those twelve. Okay, well, you just lost forty-eight thousand dollars of revenue that you otherwise would have had. And I teach, there's gonna be a podcast about this when we dive into some number podcasts later on, it may be this season, maybe next, but whenever, that every loss you have, you need to multiply that by two. Why? Because you also lost their sister, you know, their little sister, little brother, whatever. You may have lost their friend, you may have lost both of them, but you've got to at least multiply that by two. But because you're blaming the patient for the no-show, you don't view you as the problem, your systems, your processes, what you do differently and unique compared to the other two places they also scheduled at from the time you hang up to the time they show up. Those thoughts never even cross your mind. So you're not searching for it. And if you do come across a company and we're in a sales pitch with you, you don't view it as value because you don't view it as you. Same thing with if somebody comes in there and they say, you know what? Gosh, can you get that Invisalign price down to $5,500 and I'll buy, and you're at seven grand, and they leave, and you're like, another bad patient. So you go out and search for you know marketing companies that can get you better patients. Meanwhile, the reason that person didn't buy with you for $7,000 is because the experience and the sales process from A to Z didn't put enough value on the in the mind of the price chopper in your mind to get you to get them to pay higher dollar. And the reality is, and if you take this, and this is the only thing you ever learn from this podcast, is that when you're a commodity, everything changes. Everything changes. You are in sales. Period. End of story. And if you want your employees to implement things, your culture's got to be great. If you want your employees to implement things, they have to be trained by experts in those things. And inside your industry, consultants are not experts at non-clinical things. Because they come from inside your practice and they don't see the real problems either. This is why if you watch last month's podcast, or you do after you listened, after this one, go listen because this is the these tie together perfectly. I'm on the phone with Stephanie, like I said, and you know, she says, you know, what's your pitch? You know, why'd you create this company? She's just picking my brain. And I said, Well, well, years ago, I I started this company because there's there's three things that business owners struggle with, most of which don't know they're struggling with it because they may not view it as a problem, but they also don't understand how much higher of a level it can go if they stick with it. And if you look at the playbook of the most famous companies, you know, the Ritz Carleton didn't wake up one morning and go, you know what? I want to create a hotel that's famous. That's not how they think. It's not how people think. Would it be nice to become famous? Sure, but that's not, hey, I'm gonna create something famous. That's not what they think. They go in and create something that's unique to their industry by doing three things better than everybody else. The culture they create inside their doors, the employee experience they create, and how they train their people uniquely compared to their competition, and how they do the organic online marketing. Period. They do those three things at a superior level, all of them, to everybody else in their industry. It's literally that simple. Now, nowhere in that recipe was there advertising, pay-per-click, nowhere. Postcards, flyers, billboards, TVs, radio ads, nowhere. It's not a part of their recipe. In fact, 80 to 90 percent of their marketing budget is invested inside their doors. And I was telling Stephanie that look, there's a very specific playbook that almost every famous company on this planet uses, and it's what I just told you. The problem with that playbook, and the reason why 99% of companies in any industry just can't wrap their head around it, is that playbook requires you to look in the mirror and say, it's my fault. My employees aren't implementing things. Well, that's likely my fault. You know, our conversion's down. Well, that's because your team isn't trained on sales when people are shopping. That's because your experience is lacking. That's not an insult, it's just a reality. Every business needs experience training on an ongoing business on an ongoing basis. Every single one. It's not a criticism. It's how can we be better now than we were a week ago? That's the mindset. Because you can close a price shopper at high dollar, but you can't do it the way you're doing it today. Why? Because you're a commodity. That's why. So I'm having this conversation about the pillars, and I told her that when I originally created this company, you had to get that whole thing with us. We had to have full control of the time patients shopped, to the time they called, to the time they hung up, to the time they showed up, to every single touch point. Digital workflow, exam process, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When I created this company and it was just me, that was the program. One payment a month, all the marketing you need inside and outside your doors, one company, not a consultant, division of your business that's going to be with you forever. And on the surface, it's a really great thing. The problem is, is okay, what if Joe's under contract for another year and a half with somebody and wants to do it but can't. So it's like eventually we broke things up, and it's like you don't have to buy the whole thing. But if there's ever proof, and and this is again, I'm having this conversation with her and I'm ranting to all of you, but I think all of this is going to be tied together into a beautiful business lesson that I hope all of you take to heart. If you look at our online marketing clients only, and you look at the turnover, it's high. If you look at our coaching clients only, the turnover is extremely low and the growth is extremely high. If you look at our coaching plus online marketing clients, the the turnover is extremely low as well. And the issues that we have with just online marketing clients prove everything that I created this company, it's proof that it's reality. If you're just doing online marketing with us, most of the online marketing clients they don't shoot the content. They're not engaged, they don't show up the meetings, they don't look at the data we send them. And let me ask you a question. If that were to happen with a patient in Clearliners and they didn't wear them, didn't show up to their appointments, constantly made excuses, missed a Zoom meeting maybe that you have to check in on them. What do you think the results are gonna be? Well, they're gonna be crap, and then they're gonna blame you. Well, that's the world we live in. You know, all the employees, they don't want to shoot the content, so that's why we're not doing it. Boom, culture. I don't want to shoot the I don't want to shoot the content. I'm too busy. Boom, culture, business mindset. That's a clinician mindset, not an entrepreneur mindset. Because an entrepreneur says, I'm gonna work in my business 24-7 until it becomes on autopilot, do whatever it takes. That's busy. Busy isn't eight to five and then shut it down. Busy's 24-7, seven days a week for however many years it takes to get everything on autopilot to where then you don't have to work. That's busy. So you tie all of this together and it creates a really difficult situation because you live in a world that offers people what they need, but it's not what they want. You know, this is an industry that is very much, if you go to big events, it's very much an industry with people that get on stage and teach you how to pour more water into your glass. More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more patients, more this, more that. We're a company that tells you you need less and you're gonna grow twice as much. It's just the reality. You know, it's funny when we start implementing our new patient experience, and and when I call it that, it devalues what it really is. I mean, we're talking some ridiculous, ridiculous, high-level hospitality, customer service, verbiage presentation skills from A to Z. But just like the cart girl example that I was talking about, nobody would even think of that. So therefore, it's never something you're gonna search for help. So when people hear new patient experience, they stop it, yeah, my people are nice. Yeah, we're good. Because they don't know what they don't know. And that's okay. It doesn't make one person smarter than the other, but the reality of the situation is because they don't know what they don't know, they're not searching for what they really need. The answer is just, ah, let's get more new patients. And it's this constant outward focus that is having them constantly cycle through over and over again the same pains anytime the economy's down, and having you not grow as much as you otherwise would whenever the economy's up. Even in your good years, you should be another 10, 15 plus percent up while spending less. If you do, what eventually I'm gonna tie this into. So you take this big picture and you say to yourself, and this is me again talking to Steffi, you say to yourself, we've got to adjust in order to meet the demands of what people want. Because the reality of the situation is, is no matter what you know, if you don't have things people want, you're done. This is this is the same analogy for all of you. If you can't be okay with saying we're gonna straighten out the doesn't mean you don't educate them on the big case, but if you're not okay with just well straighten out the social six, make you beautiful for that wedding, get you all taken care of. If you're not okay with that, you are going to struggle in this economy. You are gonna lose starts to other practices that leave the back, the back teeth jacked up, but the front teeth looking absolutely gorgeous, just like the patient wanted. That's the reality, and it's the reality we live in. If we constantly only offer what all of you need, we're screwed. We're out of business. Because we have to have things that you want. And that is why on the front end, you know, I talked about those updates on our one-hour workshops for $97. You can go right to our website, you can go right to live, the main menu live, scroll down through our one-hour workshops for $97, our virtual boot camps for $2,297 that you get all kinds. You get an on-demand course to keep for life, some codes, you get a lot of really cool stuff with it. Our Brian Wright Live sessions for $97. We've got a lot of cool things to offer that you can just take a little bite working with us. Test out the content, little stid bits at a time to help you change that mindset, grow your practice that lead you to become a private client. Or on-demand memberships that really allow you to test out our content for a nice low monthly, month, uh, monthly investment. We offer these things because it's more what people want out there, and it helps. It's not that it doesn't help, it does help. It doesn't fix the overall arching problem, which is the entire business, but it absolutely helps you target areas of concern and helps you improve them. And I was talking to Stephanie, I said one of the things that we changed was the messaging around originally why I started this company, those three pillars. Those pillars now are business owner experience, employee experience, customer experience. Those are the three pillars. Because when you looked at our pillar one, leadership and culture, we do so much more. I mean, we do life coaching. Here's the reality with the life coaching. You know, if your personal life is a mess, you're gonna suck at work. It's just the reality of the situation. So, doctors out there, if you're wondering why Nancy just is lazy and not doing a good job from her clinical skill set, you know, or she's your receptionist, well, you also have to take in account what her personal life looks like. Because if her personal life is a disaster, of course she's not gonna be good at work. And that's part of being a leader. Dive into that kind of stuff, help them through that stuff. But it goes for the business owner too. If your owner experience sucks, you're not gonna perform well. So these three pillars are all designed about creating your dream life by customizing, personalizing, creating your dream business. It's creating your dream team by teaching them skill sets that your competition, when those patients go and face, I say competition in air quotes, because it's not really your competition, but when they go out there and they find two other opinions, there's no way those team members are going to present the way we're teaching. Not a chance. And then from a customer experience standpoint, it all relates back to the customer and having a patient experience that is so ridiculously high level for any business, forget that you're in healthcare, that people almost cannot say no to you because they feel so obligated by the end to hand you their money. If the team is carrying it out at a high enough level. This all ties back into the worst marketing investment you can make in a down economy. And that is anything outside your doors. You know, we see it with new patient group clients who's SEO, and back when I was talking about the online marketing clients and how if they're that's their only service, there's exceptions to this, but how it's just a disaster is that they all rank really well with SEO. Really well. First page, organic rankings, beautiful. Well, here's the problem. You can't force people to be searching for orthodontics, dentistry, plastic surgery, whatever it may be, if they don't have money to spend. You can't force people to go and enter in search terms. So therefore, then the next mistake happens, is then you start dumping a ton of money into pay-per-click. And then they start calling, and your receptionist isn't trained to convert it at a high enough level because they ask pay-per-click is going to drive objection behavior. It's going to drive how what do you charge for? Uh, well, another practice said they charge this. What do you charge? Your receptionist has to be trained. And as you suck your bank account dry, trying to force more phone calls in, the real problem that exists, you're not even focusing on. And as you get more and more frustrated, you dump more and more money and you can't figure out what's going on. You can't control if the economy sucks. What you can control is going, okay, we're averaging four new patient no-shows a month. What do we do to cut that in half? When we cut that in half, that's gonna give us 24 more new patients for the year without spending money. So we're gonna have 24 additional new patients for the year. Okay. Then let's look focus on improving our conversion 5%. All right. So if you have a 5% conversion on a hundred for every 100 new patients you have, you're gonna have five more starts. Okay? So now you add the five more starts to the additional 24 new patients you had come through the door that otherwise wouldn't, and start doing the math. This is all with what you already have, okay? Then you say, all right, the people that didn't buy from us, what is our follow-up process? How can we get more people to come back that otherwise wouldn't? Let's focus on improving that to a month. Okay. Well, now you have 24 more new patients a year to try to close because the no-shows are less. Now you've got a 5% growth in conversion, and hopefully it would be more than that, but be conservative. Just if you use small numbers in your alt world, you make a ton of money. You increase conversion 5%. You get two more people back a month that otherwise wouldn't have come back because of pending treatment. You look at your ops program and you say, okay, let's try to get two more people to come back every month that otherwise, you know, would have just not come back. We wouldn't have heard from them again. Let's try to convert more patients that called our office where Betty, the receptionist, did you know, blew it because she didn't know what to say. Let's make sure all of our new patient calls are being answered because all of you, they're not. I created an entire company write chat around the simple fact that you are missing one, two, three, four, five new patients a month if you're a small practice because of your phones not being answered. If you don't answer on Fridays, you don't answer at lunch, you don't answer early, early in the morning, you don't answer in the evening, that's 30% of your new patients down the drain because nobody's answering the phones. And they're not leaving a voicemail, and if an answering service picks up, they're gonna hang up. That is what happens in a commodity. They're gonna go right to the next Google person. And it's why Wright Chat exists. It's an insurance policy to just send you new patients that otherwise would have bought somewhere else that you never even would have known about. And if you just do, and there's plenty more, but if you just do those four, five, six things I just said, in a down economy, you are going to grow. And you may even have your best year ever. I mean, heck, look, Matt Josie, shout out to you. He and I just had an online meeting together. He was one, him, and shout out Jeffrey Hines. They were just at my house for our mastermind get together. We did some cooking, went to an Astros game, good time with all of you. And and you've got two guys having great years. You know, Matt Josie, I think he's up 25%. He's not advertising. This is the funny thing is that the practices that are being crushed this year in the down economy, they're they're spending gocus of dollars, buckoo of dollars in advertising. When all the problems and all the growth is staring you in the face, if you just will say, I can do this better. If somebody no shows, that's our fault. If somebody says, uh the other practice said it was 6,000, why are you choosing seven? That's because from the time they called to the time they showed up, we were unable to place value on why we're more expensive. We need to be better at sales, better at presentation, verbiage skills, etc. We need to ask questions in a different way. We need to learn how to present better. If you just open up your mind to this entire world that exists out there, you will have forever growth. And in the years, for whatever reason, you don't grow, well, guess what? You still won't be dumping money into advertising and you'll still not have a bad year. You'll be down 5 or 10%. So this is a fail-proof model that even in the crappy years minimizes the down. And boy oh boy, when the economy's good, if you add what I'm talking about to it, you're gonna have growth like you cannot even believe, and most people don't even think is possible. When we start reading out our c our customers' growth numbers during good economies, I almost don't even want to do it in sales pitches because it sounds like it's made up. You know, proof of this is we have a lot of big names. You know, Jeff Pascal, Boyd Whitlock, Mark Olson, there's others, Regina Blevins. There's plenty of more. I just use a few quick examples. And you look at their practice when you go in and they're successful. Like on paper, they don't need us. But the reality of the situation is they know there's a whole nother world floating out there. And that's why they are searching for solutions like I'm talking about today. You know, in sports, when I was talking earlier, you know, it's really, really amazing how many sports analogies work with business. You know, if you take Michael Jordan, who's probably the best basketball player of all time, or you take any superstar athlete, and there's exceptions, but the vast majority of them that are multiple-time champions, if you look at their mindset, and you look at their work ethic, and you look at their dedication to be getting better every year, and you look at how coachable they are, which I think is as important, if not more, to make the point around is that these superstar athletes are the most coachable almost always of anybody on the team. Michael Jordan has tons of comments around him saying how much he pushed Phil Jackson, who was his coach the majority of his career, and Doug Collins, who was his coach before that, how much he challenged those coaches to challenge him. And you can't teach that mindset. I have learned throughout my career that you could sit behind the mic like I'm doing today and you could talk about this stuff. And people are still gonna go out and spend money on advertising, even though the recipe from the famous companies out there clearly states here's how you do it. And these are all things I'm telling Stephanie on the phone the other day. Literally, this was my conversation. I just go off on this rant, but the more I thought about it, I'm like, this rant is perfect for all the listeners out there. You know another thing that the superior athletes are better at? Implementation. Acting quick. They don't just listen to ideas, they go and do them. They go and do them. Like when I said at the front at the front, podcast 20, there's your 20% discount code on our boot camps. Go and sign up for one. Don't just listen and don't do it. Go to our site, go to the live page, scroll down to the middle section that says virtual boot camps, sign up for mine or Eric's upcoming one, act. That is another part of Inside the Doors that if you want to succeed in a down economy, you have to act and act fast. Because it's okay to mess things up. Nothing bad's gonna happen from that. We're not talking the clinical. I'm not saying, hey, implement some new clinical strategy right away. Go hurt somebody. No, this is this is the non-clinical parts of the business. And you've got these two separate crowds. You've got this crowd that I was talking about that is constantly looking outward and blaming the patient. You've got the crowd that's constantly looking inward, and the crowd that's looking inward, ironically, are the bigger names in the industry. They're already outproducing most people. And they're still looking inward. They would never allow an hourly employee to go, we're good, why are we doing this? No. The second you say those words, you're dead. That's the mindset that just absolutely. Destroys companies. Well, haven't we worked on this before? Yeah, we have, but uh, we're doing it again. You know, shout out Jeff Pascal. And and Dr. Pascal and I become very close. You know, they sent me a text the other day, or maybe it was I maybe you put it in the mastermind group. I I can't remember. But it's all their team out there in the waiting room watching our phone training course for I think like the third, fourth, fifth time. Do you know how hard it is to convince people to even watch it once together? You know, if you look at our on-demand memberships, we purposely control what we're dripping to you. And that gets a lot of people to leave. Why? Because this is what we get on the on-demand memberships. Okay, I signed up, we're all my courses. I want this, I want that, I want that, and you're sitting there, you're going, disaster. Like, how can you not see how that's never going to allow you to implement anything? Oh, well, I want the TC to watch the financial presentation course, I want the receptionists to watch the phone course, I want the TCs to watch the, you know, the exam course. No. Like, that's fine. They can watch those on their own and they can start taking notes and they can start trying to implement stuff. But that's not how you implement. You implement by, again, having a nice weekly meeting blocked on your calendar, an hour at least, having the discipline to understand why that's more important than seeing a patient during that hour or two hours. You sit in the waiting room, you watch it together, slowly but surely. You take notes, you practice, you role play, you set the vision of Nancy and Betty, my receptionists, or Judy, my TC. I expect you to implement this at a high level. Next week, when we meet again, when we meet again, we're going to role play and practice this over and over and over again. And I want to see you do it just as good as the video we just watched. That's how you do it. But for every Jet Pascal, who's also a private client, so we help give guidance. But even a lot of the private clients wouldn't see value in that. Trying to get that mindset installed into the majority is impossible. That's why I hope that these little drips of content that we put out slowly but surely change your mindset to the point where you wake up one day and you go, This is easier than I'm making it. Yes, I do have to act like a business owner. I have to be engaged, which is the other part that we see with just our online marketing clients. It's unbelievable how disengaged they are. Ah, well, Betty will get on the marketing meeting. I don't need to. What do you mean you don't need to? It's your business. You're a small business owner, you've got to be a part of everything. It doesn't mean you have to be a control freak, but you better darn well have your hands and eyes on every single thing that's going on, or you will not have success. Now, you may still have success, air quotes, but you're still gonna lose millions of dollars that you otherwise would have made throughout the course of your career. But again, you're not gonna feel that pain. You're not gonna know that you are because it's not being taken out of your bank account because it was never there to begin with. Same way when a new patient calls your office, you don't answer. They call and buy from the guy down the street or lady around the corner, you don't even know what happens because it was never yanked out of your bank account, so you're not out there searching for it for a solution. But boy, oh boy, you're spending money on pay-per-click ads and billboards and TV commercials and all of this stuff that doesn't even build a brand, by the way. Your brand is built from inside your doors as a small business. That's a podcast coming in the future at some point. Your brand is not created by advertising. I love hearing, well, you know, we really need to create a better brand on, you know, so we need to do this kind of advertising, blah, blah. No, you create a better brand by improving yourself inside your doors. Now it's different like with Invisalign is an example. You know, their brand is created by marketing to the consumer, but they have two brands, right? It's marketing to the consumer, but their brand is not created through advertising from an inside the healthcare deductor and employee standpoint. That brand is, you know, the superior quality of their product, you know, the amount of events they put on to help you grow. You know, looking at it as a business partnership, if you will, as opposed to just a clear liner partnership, because it goes so far beyond that. Their brand is created in two separate ways. Your all brand as a small business is created 100% inside your doors. That is your brand. Now, all online stuff does is it showcases your brand on a larger stage. But once they come through your doors, you've got to back it up. There are hundreds of things that go on inside a small business that's a practice every single day that causes more growth from happening. The problem with all of them is either that you don't know there's a better, more advanced way, so you think where you're at is good enough, and the other problem, even bigger, I believe, is that the blame is placed on the wrong people. You know, we talked about in last podcast episode the biggest reason price shoppers exist is they view all of you as the same. You know, scarcity is a big thing in sales where you know people will buy at a higher level things that are that are scarce. There's not as many of them, uh, or they just can't have it. It makes them want it more. Well, when you're a commodity and you do Invisalign, you do braces, you do whatever, whatever your treatment tool is, they can get those things anywhere. You're not scarce even at the slightest bit. So part of this whole problem is you're not scarce, but you need to be. And what I mean by that is, is that is another way to teach your people how to speak inside your doors to create the scarcity effect. How can you, what can you get here that you can't get anywhere else? Why the things we do here are unique to everybody else. This whole image you're painting, which means you've got to teach your people how to sell, how to present, how to have verbiage and communication skills, unlike any other practice that's selling the same thing you are. And I say this all the time: if you're a commodity and you're charging five, six, seven plus thousand dollars a pop for whatever service you have, the consumer should be shopping. And you should be happy with that because you should be so ridiculously unbelievable inside your doors that you want them to go, okay, okay, uh, Mrs. Jones and Joey, go try out the other two practices, see how that works for you. Now, you're not gonna say that, obviously, but in your mind you're like, Yep, can't wait for them to go try those practices out. Um, because they're gonna come running back here going, all right, where do I sign? And a lot of them, the beauty of why our same day starts and our practices go through the roof is because all they need to do is see you once to realize this is unbelievable. This is better than any place I've ever been into in my entire life, and I can't wait to start here. Or you may be their second opinion, and the second opinion usually has the hands up. When you have the hands up the way we teach it, it's over for the first practice. They don't have a chance. And yes, are there times where patients are shopping purely on price and there's nothing you can do to change their mind? Of course. And that's okay. Because if you have $5,000 to spend on an orthodontic case, as an example, you can love the place that's $7,000 or $8,000 way more. But if you just don't have the money, then yeah, and you want it bad enough, you're gonna drop the five grand. But you all have to understand the price shoppers is created by your industry. They view all of you as the exact same. You all went to school, you all have an X-ray machine, you all take photos, you do Invisalign, or you do Spark, or you do braces, or you do light for whatever it may be. You have the same tools and you're the same. So the real differentiator is how you're doing things inside your doors and constantly saying, what do we do now to be better than yesterday? What do we do this year to be better than last year? And you focus everything inside your doors to constantly be plugging leaky holes that all of us as business owners have. You know, there's this thing where a lot of business owners take this stuff as like an insult. The reality is, guys, it's okay. We all have our deficiencies and we all have things that we're better at other people at. We all have things that we're experts at, we all have things that we don't know squat about. The key is just admitting when you know something and when you don't. The key is also admitting when, yeah, there is a better way. And the more money you're spending outside your doors during a down economy, the more you're gonna lose. Because even if you do generate more phone calls, I hate to tell you, in a down economy, people are gonna shop. So your conversion's gonna suffer. Most of you out there this year, your conversion is suffering. So not only are your new patients down, and that's an idea for the new patient group clients, by the way, or something I want to I want to edify those clients for, is that most of the new patient group clients, new patients are down for the year. Because again, you can't force people to search for something that they have no interest in because they can't afford it. You can't force that action. What you can do is close the ones that are coming in at a higher rate than you ever have and plugging other leaky holes. And when you do that, you don't need as many new patients. You work less, you stress less, and the patients that do come through the door, you can treat them at a far higher level because it's not as chaotic. That's the proof. When the MPG clients across the board are up the 16% I said, while all their new patients are down and somewhat significantly down, guess what? It proves that it works because there's a lot of other practices dumping tons of money into advertising. And if your phone is ringing more, guess what? Your conversion is still down and your numbers are still down, even though maybe you're getting more phone calls. And then you have to ask, okay, I'm dumping $5,000 a month into pay-per-click, which is just blows my mind that doctor business owners think that that's where the money should be allocated. If you allocated, you know, a portion of that to things that we do and coach on, you would never have to spend money another nickel on pay-per-click the rest of your life. And if you chose to still do it, your return would be twice as much, which allows you to spend less because your conversion's higher. But all of that goes back into opening the eyes and ears and saying, here are the real problems. This is what I have to do differently. And it's me, it's the team, it's the processes, it's the systems. They may not all be broken, but they can be tweaked. They can be lubricated more. Maybe it needs some more oil. You get the point. Stop spending money on advertising outside your doors and focus on creating a better customer experience, a better employee experience, and a better experience for you as a business owner. It all in turn, all in turn creates higher conversion, lower advertising costs, a less chaotic environment, happier around the board, and who the hell wouldn't want to grow 10, 15, 20, 30 plus percent a year while seeing less? Why would any of you out there go, you know what, I want to grow. I want to work twice as hard. No, and that's why this whole pouring water into your glass constantly out more water, more water, more new patients. These are the companies out there that just make an asinine amount of money off of all of you. It's crazy. When you don't need it. But that goes back to all of these companies out there selling what you want. We have what you need. We're the offensive and defensive linemen of your team. Right? For those football fans out there, you know I don't care how good a wide receivers you have, don't care how good your quarterback is, don't care if you have the best coach, doesn't matter. If your offensive and defensive line are not good, you are not gonna be good as a team. Or you may still be pretty decent as a team, but you're never gonna maximize your success, and your quarterback's gonna be hurt all year. It's the same thing here. Looking at us as the offensive and defensive linemen of your organization. Switch the mindset, everybody. Stop doing what everybody else is doing and looking the same as everybody else. Stop your advertising dollars and refocus those. Bring it internally inside your doors. The recipe is simple, but the famous companies all do it that way. You've got to switch and shift your mindset. And it's gonna help you so much when the economy's bad, and it's also gonna help you so much when the economy is good. Accept coaching, accept that there's a better way. And I'm gonna end on this, and it's a quick story, and I'm not gonna tell the person's name, obviously. But it's one of our Right Chat customers, and and RightChat has gone unbelievably well since we tweaked the business model, and it is what it is now. We have this customer that uses us, and we're his primary, so we answer his new patient calls. And he called us the other day trying to breach his contract because he was mad. This is the perfect way to finish today, I think, and the perfect kind of summarization of what most people's mindset out there is, and it is beyond aggravating. Because all of you are some of the smartest people in the world. Yet how you could think the way I'm about to describe is beyond comprehension. Beyond comprehension. He calls us blaming us, so his new patients have gone up and they go up. Look, anytime Wright Chat is the backup for a practice, so we're answering ones that they missed and scheduling them for them. Um, everybody's new patients go up. Why? Well, when you get two, three, four, five more a month that you otherwise would have had, it's obvious. You just add that to whatever you do have, and there you go. But when we're there primary, the numbers really go up. Why? Because we're also answering the calls they would have received. And those calls, we're setting them up for success because people are psychologically prepared to buy by the time they come through the door. We also are answering calls they would have missed because we're also their backup when we're their primary, because we have more phone coverage, more time, more people that we're answering the phones for. And then we also, when we talk to the people, they would have, we're able to overcome objections and get people to book and show up that otherwise would have said, let me think about it, and hung up and the doctor never even knows Betty, the receptionist blew that opportunity. So you add those three scenarios when we're the primary, people are getting a significant amount of more of new patients a month than they otherwise would have had. All a positive because they're being sold on the value. Now, this guy complains to us the other day, and has done it multiple times, honestly, about it being our fault that patients are coming through the door and they're bad patients, price shoppers, not buying. This is exactly what I'm talking about to summarize all of today. Never crosses his mind that it's them, their processes, their training, their culture, sales, hospital, all the things that we talk so much about on here. Never crosses his mind once that it's them. So therefore, he's not searching for any kind of solution once the person comes through the door. And it shows that this whole journey is so important. The receptionist could be absolutely amazing. Best call anybody could ever have. That's going to increase your chances people show up, so it's going to reduce your no-shows, which is another piece across the board with our RightChat clients that they see less of. Why? Because the receptionists have sold them on the value of why they should show up. They've got them excited. It's not a data collection call, it's a it's a no-like trust, rapport building, sales call, value proposition call. So not only do those three scenarios happen, the fourth one is your no-shows drop. But if they show up and they sit in your waiting room and they fill out a clipboard, or you send them out a printable paperwork after the phone call, or we do with WriteChat, we because we handle that process, we send them that, your story breaks. Now you're just like everybody else. I sat in the waiting room. Guess what? I've done that in every business I've ever walked into in my entire life. You know, the TC can't overcome objections, doesn't present money effectively. Doctor exam may not go, you know, very well. TC exam, whatever it may be, your story breaks because the touch points don't flow together. And then you've got a guy that's like, oh, somehow it's WrightChat's fault. This is the mindset you all must break. You must stop blaming the patient and outside companies' outside reasons for your failures. I see it speaking for OrthoFy, the people that go, ah, they stink. It has nothing to do with OrthoFy. It's the practice, didn't use their tools right, didn't make the meetings, didn't learn more, didn't know how to sell using these tools. So the only thing they know how to do is go, ah, it's OrthoFi's fault. No, it's your fault. And it's so hard to hear. DM, dental monitoring company I speak for, big believer in. Same way. There's people that get it and then they complain about it. Well, they complain about it because they're not using it right. And it never crosses their mind to learn more to get better at it. They just blame dental monitoring. Same way with our online marketing clients. That's why as a company we no longer do online marketing unless you're a private client coach. Won't do it. Why? Because I refuse to let our brand be destroyed by people out there badmouthing us when in reality they're the problem. Not going to do it. I've worked my butt off for 10 years of this company to create a reputation that's impeccable in an industry that's very hard to have that reputation because of the reasons I'm talking about. And you can tell all these things I'm extremely passionate about. And like I said at the top, did not expect to be doing a podcast like that today or like this today until I talked to Stephanie and just realized I have to do this. Because this is the reason all of you can have growth numbers. All of you can grow this year. All of you. There's no reason why you can't. None. Bad economy, good economy, those are all outside influences. And when it's bad, yeah, does it make it harder? Of course it does. But the reality is if you have these foundational principles embedded in your business, you're able to withstand anything. It's why so many of the new patient group clients had their best year ever during the COVID shutdown. You're like, best year ever? Practices were closed. Well, yeah, because their foundation is they've got the virtual console implemented. So now it's like they're the only practice open. And somehow all of them were closing. Our new patient group practices, we teach them, I want you to be the highest, most expensive in town for a reason. But then you've got to back it up with a non-clinical experience that blows them away. Not just being nice. Nice is one piece of that puzzle, but it's just one piece. Because other practices, most likely, the team is nice. Now they may not be nice to each other, but they're probably nice to the patient. So it's not necessarily a way to grow. Separate yourself. And I hope all of you get the point. And I want you to take action, sign up for our live session boot camps. We've got our August one-hour workshop coming up this Friday with Coach Eric is going to deliver some cool psychological strategies, increase conversion. Take action, everybody. Focus inside your doors. It is not the patient's fault. It is the industry you now live in. It's competitive, it's commoditized, which means people should shop, and you have to get better at understanding how to close them if you still want to charge high dollar. If you just want to say, hey, we'll match any of your opinions, you come back and we'll be cheaper. If you want to be that practice, power to you, but you're going to work a lot harder in life. If you want to be a prestige practice that charges high dollar, this is how you do it. Advertising will never allow you to do it. And during a down economy, all you're going to do is just blow your money trying to get your phones to ring more. Switch it. Go inside your doors. Hope everybody loved today. I'm glad we had this today because it's frustration I have, but it's also big time passion because I know how much we help and how much this message needs to be adopted on a wider scale in the healthcare industry from how you run your business standpoint. You have holes everywhere. And it's not a shot at anybody. It's the reality of what we face as small business owners in a chaotic environment that's always chaotic. And you have to learn to enjoy that chaos, by the way. But you also have to realize that that chaos causes lost opportunities and leaky holes everywhere. Both ones you can put your finger on in the data sheet, but the ones that hurt you even more are the ones that don't show up on your data sheet. And you've got to be able to combine that knowledge into one and focus inside your doors. You will thank me that you did. Hope everybody enjoyed it. Until next time, make sure to act. Go to our site, become an on demand member, join a live session, reach out and let us talk to you about your business and how we can help. Take action from this podcast. Enjoy the rest of your week, everybody. Have a kick butt August. We'll be back with a new episode of the New Patient Group Write Chat podcast at the beginning of September. See ya everybody.