Ajay: Okay, White Plains, I definitely know where it is. And even just for our audience, so that they have context, can you tell us something about you and about your business?

Brian: Sure. So, I have a chiropractic practice. I recently moved from Long Island up to Westchester. And so, I'm basically starting my practice from scratch.

Ajay: Okay.

Brian: So, I sold my practice in Long Island, I’m starting a new practice here, and it's been a great opportunity to re-strategize what I want that practice and what I want my practice to look like.

Ajay: Okay.

Brian: So, the practice is called Collaborative Chiropractic. So, myself being a chiropractor, and I specialize in sports injury management, my approach is really bringing active lifestyle to my clients. So, with the mindset, that movement is the foundation for a healthy lifestyle. But to help support that, we have things like nutrition and functional medicine, Reiki massage, all things that can help to support that chiropractic healthcare.

Ajay: Okay. Yes.

Brian: And the active lifestyle of the patients that we're treating.

Ajay: Mm-hmm. So, when you have Reiki massage, obviously you have other people, the experts there. Right?

Brian: Yes.

Ajay: But are they doing it in your office itself?

Brian: Yes, so that's where the Collaborative Chiropractic comes from. So, I have a massage therapist and a Reiki practitioner that are both in the office, that do, obviously, hands on work within the office. The Reiki practitioner helps to do virtual components as well, so she can work virtually. And I work hand in hand with a functional medicine specialist that works virtually through our office as well. So, we have that in person and virtual component to the practice.

Ajay: Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. So, that's interesting, and I think you're the first chiropractor I'm talking to who is collaborating with a functional medicine expert because somehow it seems like there is almost a distrust between chiropractic and the traditional, I would say, the medicine, in terms of medication and everything.

Brian: Yes, I agree. And I think, well, part of it is the practitioner that I work with, is actually a chiropractor. So, she has a very chiropractic-oriented mindset, but brings the functional medicine component to it, so she focuses really on the functional medicine. So that's why we work very well together.

Ajay: Okay, okay, okay.

Brian: But even traditional medical doctors that are focusing on functional medicine, I believe that they have a little bit more open mindset when it comes to chiropractic. So, they tend to work a little bit more collaboratively with chiropractic because there's more of that conservative mindset and different approach to healthcare.

Ajay: Yeah, I mean –

Brian: So, I actually like working with functional medicine specialists.

Ajay: Mm-hmm. Actually, it makes sense because we work with many many healthcare providers, and what I've noticed is that the younger doctors, they are way more open to this holistic medicine approach then the older doctors who are like, slam, bam, thank you ma'am approach of, okay, you have a headache? Here's the medicine. You have this thing? Here's the medicine. And so, it makes sense what you're saying. I see a new belief on that coming up in the medical community, and they have a newfound respect for, like I said, overall wellness aspect, rather than just treating the symptoms.

Brian: Yes. And I think part of that is that symptom-based care that we're typically used to. I think we're starting to recognize that it's really not working when it comes to overall health and wellness and longevity in patients.

Ajay: Correct. Mm-hmm.

Brian: So, I think that's why medical doctors are starting to open up, and starting to look to things like nutrition and exercise, to making those lifestyle changes that are gonna be beneficial to their patients, instead of trying to compensate with medications and procedures that we’re typically used to.

Ajay: Right. Actually, I had a firsthand experience of having – my wife, she had a slipped disk, and of course, the medical doctors they are like, do this, this medication, that medication, whatever they did. And I have a very close friend, who is also my chiropractor, and he treats – I'm sure that you have that laser treatment thing. So, went there and he told my wife that, “Okay, it will not be instant.” And I know he hates medication anyway, so he is like, “It's not going to be instant, but you give me six weeks, and you come here three times a week. I will do that without medication.”

My wife is one of those who does not believe in medicine also, so she ended up using him, and my doctor who it turns out, he's also my friend. He's like, “You are crazy. What are you doing? These things cannot be treated by this kind of thing.” And sure enough, it took eight weeks, maybe, but all of a sudden, she is 100% and never needed any kind of medication and all that. So, I know that there's a need for a better understanding about this, the whole holistic medication. But it's wonderful, what you're doing. So, Brian, and I don't want to take any more of your time. I know you had a bunch of questions, so let's just get started with your questions, specific questions.

Brian: Okay.

Ajay: See how I can help you.

Brian: Yes. So, I think it was kind of around building the practice and marketing the practice, and some ideas. My practice, like I said, is really in its infancy in this new location, in White Plains. So, building a practice 20 years ago, there was a lot of networking that was involved, but those were the days when you could just literally put an ad in the yellow pages, and –

Ajay: Correct.

Brian: – before, I’m gonna start to look there for phone calls. So now, it's trying to look at some of the more digital components, some of the newer ideas around marketing a practice, and looking to Google advertising, digital advertising, social media.

Ajay: Correct.

Brian: So, from a marketing standpoint, do you have ideas as far as percentages and budgets, and things like that, as far as what may be some of the focuses should be in getting away from those typical print ads? And are print ads really something that you would wanna incorporate into that marketing plan for the practice?

Ajay: So, what I will tell you that the print ad is something, especially for a new business, new practice, I no longer recommend it. And I'm a guy by the way, where I'm 100 years old, so when I started my marketing business there was, of course, nothing called internet. And so, the core marketing that I learned was TV, radio, and print, and to some extent, direct marketing.

So, I come from that dinosaur era. I did adjust to digital in the very beginning, but I’m print used to have a good value. Because see, the challenge with print is, is that it’s hard for you to give something where people will keep it. Right? So that if I need it, I will go. So, the print ad challenges, that whoever you – suppose you're doing a direct mail, or you are inserting your local newspaper, or whatever, it is either going to be, if I have a need, then I’ll use it, otherwise I’ll throw it away. There's no concept of storing it, which in the past they would, because there was no other quick way to find a chiropractor. Right?

So, these days, when they're looking for a chiropractor, the first thing they are going to do is pull Google. Open Google and say, “Chiropractor near me.” And also, that has completely changed the dynamic of how you market, so I would say, especially since you are building – at some stage we have, of course, is the referrals, and all those work, and that is much better, obviously. But since you are starting, I would say, save money on the print ad and focus on digital.

Brian: Okay, that's great. Thank you, I appreciate that. And so, now with starting a practice from scratch, obviously, you start to work with a limited budget. And obviously, as the business grows, you can start to utilize more money too from a marketing standpoint.

Ajay: Correct.

Brian: So, what are some of the strategies that you can use with that limited budget from a digital standpoint?

Ajay: Yeah.

Brian: And at what point, and what budget, do you really take that step into, let's say, Google advertising or Facebook advertising? Which is gonna require a certain amount of budget to 1.) be effective, and then 2.) to also be sustainable where you know that you're getting a certain return on investment, and you can continue to build on that.

Ajay: Correct. Mm-hmm. So, you know, there is no magic budget, Brian. So, the thing is, I always like to suggest people that you start with the minimum budget possible. Like Facebook, you can start with like $200.00, $300.00 and get a feel for what it’s doing for you. Similarly, Google is a little bit more expensive because it's on a per click basis, but then you know that at least someone is coming to your website when they click on it, so you can see whether it's converting or not.

Initially, brand new, you need to allocate – suppose you are allocating a couple of thousand dollars, and $500.00 for Facebook and $1500.00 for Google. And be very specific in terms of the keyword that should be most pertinent to you, the geography, beyond that, where you know that people won't have any problem coming. In other words, you want to reduce all the friction for someone to –

Brian: Right.

Ajay: So, when they click, you know that they are looking for the service that exactly you are offering. And then, for example, I wouldn’t do Reiki in your ad. It was more like sports medicine should be the thing. And of course, when they come to your site, they would know your approach to holistic medicine, and everything.

So that would be my thing is, be very hyper target, micro targeting, I almost say. Because what you want to do is get, like you already said, you want to get it to a point where you know that, okay, I spent $1,000.00. My cost of acquisition through Google is, say $50.00. I'm just throwing a number. So, once you hit that number, where you say, huh, I'm comfortable with this, then you start to scale. Because now, after that it's all ROI. Right?

So, if you can spend $1,000.00, and even you get say, $5,000.00, again, just a number, then you would do it all day long. Right? And even on the weekend, and you won't have any problem doing it. So, that's the point you want to get. And initially there's no shortcut other than trial and error. That's what I always say about marketing. Luckily, now the cost of trial is much cheaper, because you can hyper target your segment, and you can literally see where your dollar is going and what kind of return you're getting.

In my olden days in advertising, and don't ask me who said that, but some advertising guru, long time said that, “I know that 50% of my ad budget is getting wasted, but the problem is I don't know which 50% is not working. I don't know why it is not working.” Now in your case, you will be able to know exactly, pinpoint it, and say, hey, this keyword doesn't work, and maybe this ad copy needs to be changed.

So, you want to tweak, tweak, tweak, until you get to a sweet spot where you say, okay, now I have reached where I can just turn on the tap and I will start to get more leads. You don't need to start with a massive budget, which means also, Brian, that it will be a bit slow in the beginning.

So, when you do that, of course, if you are spending less money, it's not like you will get a lot of people, but you're testing. For on digital, yes, initially you were testing. The good news is that it doesn't take very long for you to understand what is going on and what do I need to do maximize and start getting constant flow of new patients.

Brian: Understandable. That’s great. So, with that being the advertising component, what are your feelings on, and maybe some strategies around, utilizing different social media platforms in addition to that, and supporting the advertising components to it? Is that something that maybe should be a focus and maybe putting portion of the budget there, or is it really more focusing on that advertising portion?

Ajay: So, you want to build some network. Right? So, the Clubhouse, and candidly, I am also very new to the Clubhouse in the sense that I'm wondering – I don't do anything. Luckily, I have a great team, but I can see that now we are working with Clubhouse and I can see that people are able to build a community. Right?

So, you need to figure out how to build a community, maybe Clubhouse is the way. Facebook has a group; I would suggest LinkedIn for you. It's more B2B. Or Instagram. Isn’t Facebook/Instagram the same? I think that just the target audience is slightly different.

But I would say, you want to focus on building a network, and one of the ways to do that is, obviously you want to – I'm hoping that you have access to some of the patients that you were seeing from your previous practice. If they are, then you can ask for a recommendation or introduction in this area. That is just one idea, but you have to gain the momentum. Right? So, obviously, when in the beginning, it takes a lot more energy to get something started, and once it started rolling then you don't need that much energy.

So, your goal is to figure out how do you get the momentum. Knowing people, I'm assuming that you already have really stellar reviews. If not, you want to have a process because these days literally almost everyone, 90% of people, they start their selection process while checking reviews, and they’re very significant percent. The last time I saw the research, 40% of them don't go to a healthcare provider with no reviews or poor reviews.

So, you want to make sure that you have – those are almost like you’re doing all the check marks. So, of course, website. Of course, you know you need reviews. Of course, you want to start to get found in your area, which should not be that difficult, although chiropractors are a little bit more challenging. And then you are doing direct advertising, digital, that you are saying.

So, I think that you are totally on the right track, but you want to start to build a list of the prospect on the website. You want to have some kind of, I would say bait. I mean, it's a very crude way to say that, but you want to offer something useful for them so that they will at least give you their name and email address. And now you can have a regular communication about your practices, and there you can talk about the Reiki, and all the massage, and what are the advantages of all. You know, you can start to share.

And again, building a list takes time, but as you start to do it gradually, like I said, once you have all the checkmarks done and with some activity, you will see the momentum going. And then of course, once you have happy patients, then you will start getting reviewed. You have already been there, done that, so, you know what, I mean, references. So, you already know how it works once you have the patients and they’re happy with your service. Right?

Brian: Right. So, is there any specific tools that maybe you recommend in collecting some of those reviews that can kind of consolidate that, and maybe distribute to different channels, like Google, or a website, or different areas that we can display those?

Ajay: Yeah. So, there are several platforms that offers it. I can tell you the big guys are BirdEye, and then another one Reputation.com, which has a very automated process. And another one that I will suggest to you, but I just want to make it very upfront, and tell you that that is the platform that I own, that we created. It’s called RepuGen. So, any of these sites will do.

So, what it does, is you set up your account, and then all you have to do is, when you see the patient, you upload there, and the account setup already gives you – you’ll put all the links the review site, Yelp, or Google, everything, Facebook, RedMD, you know, whatever. So, you can put all those on your profile link in there as part of the setup.

And all you have to do is whoever you have seen, and whoever your – by the way your other – now that's where you can start to leverage each other's patients. So, whoever the other people have also done, so you can literally have something where, whether they have come for Reiki, they have come for this – and of course, if they have come for Reiki, they will be giving reviews to the Reiki person. Right? Someone who has come from massage will be doing for massage. For chiropractic, they will be writing you the review. But it will make a lot of sense to start building it because it is a collaborative effort, so they want to see that everyone part of it is has a stellar review, and that also will reflect on each other.

So yeah, I would say that is one of the easiest thing because once you have set it up, all you have to do is just add, or I have your friend or someone just add it, the new patient, or whoever else comes for any service in there.

So, you get the feedback, you get the reviews, and the best part is that now you're building a database where you can even ask them for references or for a recommendation. If you have someone that you know that you added, and because you have their information, email and everything, all of a sudden, now, if they give you a 10 out of 10, then then you can say, thank you. Would you please recommend? And these are the platforms, which also what it will do, where it will really help you stay in touch without doing a lot. Almost like sending a happy birthday, or even the specials that you can send, or sending a happy Fourth of July kind of thing.

So, the patient feels like you're doing effort. Actually, you are doing effort. Your effort is to add the name and email address. But you can have a regular communication channel open from them. So yeah, I would suggest any, you know, Reputation.com, BirdEye, I think, of course, it is my child. Everyone thinks that their kid is the most beautiful kid. But RepuGen is my platform. I think that it works better than anyone.

But again, I'm not pushing it, just to let you know. All I’ll say is you can even check, and I'm sure there are other platforms. So, I would say go and take a look at it. Make sure that it is relevant and it will help you because reviews are going to be a very critical piece for any healthcare provider. And especially since you are new there, it will be even more important because people don't know you.

Brian: Thank you for that. Yeah, and I guess, it's establishing yourself as an authority, and those reviews, I guess, are really giving people a perspective of who you are, and what your capabilities are, and how you treat the patient.

Ajay: Yeah. And also, what happens is, whether they check reviews or not, nowadays there are a platforms – at least I know that we do it at RepuGen, I have no idea what the others do. There are the videos that you can add on your website so that the latest reviews are always showing up on the site itself.

You see, people now they have become much more distrustful to what they see, so in the olden days, you had a testimonial, and you had whatever, the testimony written by your patient, and generally speaking, everyone believed it. Now, no one does, so the best thing is to ask your patient to please write a review on one of these review sites, and display that through a video, so that it’s always displaying the reviews on your on your site because that's what people will trust more. If someone is doing a Google, they know that okay, Google is trying to figure out that this is not fake. Testimonials now, no one trusts.

So again, yeah. So, do that. I think that you really need to have a stellar reputation. We call it like the first pillar of any thriving healthcare practice because, like I said, the research after research says, over 90% of the people use review in their selection process, and about 40% would not go to someone with under four star average. And they also want the reviews to be more current and everything, so reviews are becoming a big piece of your marketing effort.

Brian: Thank you for that. That makes sense. And, you know, maybe even reaching out to some of my patients, like you said, for video testimonials so that they can be displayed.

Ajay: Yep.

Brian: Yeah. That's a great suggestion. I appreciate that.

Ajay: Mm-hmm.

Brian: I mean, any other, as far as from a marketing standpoint, any maybe secrets that are out there, or things that you see that might be up and coming, that maybe people haven't really taken advantage of yet that could be some useful tool coming up?

Ajay: So again, the Clubhouse is the latest tool that I've seen. Although, I will tell you that I have not seen any big success yet for any of my clients, but we have started trying it. Okay? And so, that is a new thing, but in your case, I would say – so, the Reiki and the massage partners, are they established? In other words, they are new, or do they already have a base, a customer base?

Brian: So, the Reiki practitioner has a base of clientele, so once we started collaborating, she had a practice of her own that now is starting to merge with mine and mine with hers.

Ajay: Okay.

Brian: The massage therapist opened up with me in my location, so she, like myself, is really starting to build and develop her clientele. She has some clients that she sees on an individual basis outside the office who have slowly started to trend into the office itself. But she, like myself, is really building a practice from scratch as well.

Ajay: Perfect.

Brian: So, we kind of have a blend and a combination of both.

Ajay: So, the best thing to do is, of course, the one secret you have, which most of the people won't have is the ability to cross market. So, if Reiki already has a client base, so that's fantastic, and just have them getting added on the website, and then all the reviews and everything starts showing up on the profile. And because she already has credibility, then cross marketing probably would make a lot of sense for you, so that that's your big advantage out there. And not just like, okay, you go there for the heck of it. But just knowing and announcing to all her customer base patients and say, you know, I’ve joined hands with Dr. Brian, and he's just wonderful. This is his specialization. Something like that already, hopefully will get the ball rolling for you.

Brian: Great. Great. That’s a great idea.

Ajay: So, I would say – yeah. Mm-hmm. Go ahead.

Brian: And then also, I think, working the other way is establishing the larger value for the clients that I'd be marketing to or the ones that are even in my practice. I can kind of see working in that direction as well. But I think that's a great idea is that cross marketing and adding value, a larger service, instead of just standard chiropractic care. Having that added value and added service to each treatment. The potential for that, I think that’s great.

Ajay: Yeah. I think that's your unique value proposition, and you really want to amplify it. And all three of you should be amplifying in a big way because that that is one area where you stand out from others.

Brian: Right.

Ajay: Or many others. I mean they –

Brian: Yeah. That value proposition is a great idea.

Ajay: Yep, yep. Okay. Brian, any other question you have? I don't want to take any more of your time.

Brian: Oh no, I appreciate it. I think we really hit all the questions that I had, and I appreciate the responses. It really gives me some great ideas and strategies to think about, and how to tweak some of what I'm doing and some of the things to implement, and add to the strategies that I already have. So, I appreciate that input, and I appreciate the ideas and your time as well.

Ajay: Yeah, thank you. And, you know, I'm always very curious. So, let's stay in touch. If you need to set up another time to talk about something, this is one area where I'm really enjoying just helping people. I mean, I never had anyone give me ideas in terms of where I could be doing right or wrong, so I really enjoy this.

Brian: The office is about eight or nine-months old right, so the office is Collaborative Chiropractic. We're located at 1230 Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains, New York. The number is (914) 600-3222.

And anybody that listened to the podcast, we're offering a discount on our initial services. So, our initial consultation, we're offering that for a free consultation, to help to discuss any issues that anybody might wanna have, whether that's chiropractic, nutrition, or Reiki. Offering that to people to have that initial conversation to find out if it's the right fit for them. And you can also find us at our website, which is collaborativechiropractic.com or my personal website, which is drbrianyodice.com.

Speaker: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founder’s Corner podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud. If you are interested in being a guest, be sure to visit our main page at www.gmrwebteam.com/thefounderscorner.