E221 | How Many "Friends" Do You Have?
Sep 05, 2019
Do you want to have a bulletproof cash-based practice? Then you must be willing to develop strong, local relationships with other business owners. As you get busier as a cash-based practice owner, we tend to see a drop off with continuing to maintain these relationships, and I think this is a mistake.
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Episode Transcription:
Hey, what's going on, guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast and I hope that you are having a good Thursday and that this finds you in a place where you're ready to take action on some, some things because what am I talking about not automated. It's not digital. It's not. Scale. Yes. But it is very, and it's a part of a local service business, like a cash-based practice that you just can't get away from, in my opinion and have a Bulletproof business. And that is developing strong local relationships. And I was having a conversation with my business partner the other day about this to the point where he does a great job of this better than I do in particular. I definitely, I currently support our local relationships.
You know, maintain those. I follow up with people and, and, make time to, you know, reconnect and make sure that you know, we're on the same page, but out of sight, out of mind kind of is what happens and, and what happens to a lot of the people that we end up working with, in, in our mastermind group where we get, you know, all this data and information and we see these trends. It's, it's refreshing to start to see, overlap there is that once people will get to a point where they're.
Pretty busy, we'll call it, I don't know, 50 to maybe 70 visits a month, hour-long did. It's for a month. What happens is we tend to see a drop off in the development and curation of these local relationships drove the growth of this, these people's practices from the beginning. And that it's, it's slowly snowballed into an, a lot of, inherent kind of referrals and in particular, word of mouth referrals coming their way, which is a huge, necessary part of a local.
Business. Now, as I start to get busier, what happens is the priority is, you know, I'm working. I'm fulfilling these things, these patient visits, and I don't have time to go in, you know, catch up with so-and-so. And, and that is a mistake, and it's a mistake that I've made. It's a mistake that I see a lot of other people make because those local relationships are what got you to this place, to begin with.
And the more that you can. Develop a cadence and a tempo of continuing to foster those relationships and maintain those relationships, the better your business is going to be because your role early on is just to get as busy as you possibly can. That means that you're going to, yeah, have to fulfill, but also bring business in.
You're the administrator, and you're the social media director. Your. The clinic director, you were everything. You were some hats, but eventually, the goal is to get yourself so busy that you have a waitlist, and then you're able to hire on another staff member and that other staff member, you can help build their schedule via people that are on a waitlist to see you.
Then get slid over to this provider as you train them up, and that frees up time on your schedule as you offload people on theirs to then really double down on. You are building the business. Now, this can be the complexity of getting the things of the digital, you know, side, lots of different areas from the standpoint of using technology to leverage that.
But it does not replace the fact that you have a local business, and people that want to see you do well are one of the most reliable indicators of the health of your business. Because, ask yourself this if, if Instagram went away tomorrow, if Facebook went away tomorrow if Google shut everything down. How much activity would you be able to get through the door?
What kind of reputation does your practice have? How many business relationships, friends, and colleagues do you have in the area? They want nothing more than to see, you know, you'd be successful and know that you hit a home run with a specific type of person that if they send them your way, they're going to look like an absolute superstar because that is inherent.
A safe, you know, you don't have to worry about Google or Facebook making these changes in there, you know, algorithm, whatever the hell, that means, and, and don't get me wrong, we leverage these technologies for sure, but it's a part of our equation. And if you rely too heavily on these, when they make changes are where we see businesses get hurts versus be able to have these strong local relationships long, these extreme.
Local marketing channels and people know who you are and see who you do well within the community. That's very difficult to screw up. Like you would have to have quite a few people get mad at you at the same time for all of that to stop. And I would say about probably 70. Percent of the visits that we, new appointments that we see each month come from a word of mouth referrals that are, that we have developed over years and years.
And if this one either by the way, it's not just, Oh, I rely on this one person or this one physician or this one, trainer, that's a dangerous place to be. If most of your referrals are coming from one person, what happens if that one person decides. That they'd instead send people somewhere else, or they move, or their business closes.
You're in trouble. You know, you can't rely on just one source. You want to have hundreds of these people out there that you've worked with, had an excellent, you know, result. I've got an excellent result with them. And you know, what we consider the sort of like influencers in the area that have people that trust them, that
You know, understand what your business can do for them, and to cultivate that relationship and maintain that relationship, whether it be making sure that you're sending the right people their way, making sure that you're reaching out to them to touch base about, you know, getting together and see how things are doing.
Some of the best, you know, referral sources in the city for me are just honestly friends of mine. Now. We used to, and we had things in common early on. We've sort of, you know, evolved together over the last five years, whether they own a gym or. They're a trainer, or they're another practitioner. And, you know, I just want to see them be successful too.
And I have a strong relationship with them. It doesn't even have to be a service provider like us, either. It could be a realtor, you know, like, one of the better referral sources we have is it's a few realtors, and these are the people that I've used to, sell. My previous house buys the house that I'm in now.
Everybody in our, in our organization, is on our team for an athlete's potential, has used the same real estate group to buy their houses. You know, I've recommended them to plenty of friends and family members. Like I've sent a ton of business their way. And the reason I do that is that I like them personally, and I think they do an excellent job.
They're very responsive. I mean, they do everything right from a real estate standpoint. And I'm, you know, I want to see them be successful. I want to be able to support them. I know them, I know their family. And. Same thing with our business. You see, they send people our way. And they're not a, they're not a doctor, right.
Or there or, a nutritionist or a massage therapist or chiropractor. They don't fit the traditional mold of, Hey, I have to have a referral relationship with this group. It's people that have trust in the community that can dictate whether you have steady lead flow or not, you know, within, within your business.
So. Digital stuff is fantastic. I think it's, it's great. It has to be a part of your marketing strategy. Use leveraging technology from a retention standpoint, and sales have its place for sure. Still, I see too many clinician to go down the rabbit hole of like, Oh, let me crack the code on the algorithm of whatever that nobody understands and waste too much time trying to figure out the tech side of things, the digital side of things, and not enough time face to face with other human beings that can really.
Bulletproof their business, and it is a big mistake, and it's also time-consuming. I get it. It's not leverageable the same way that a paid ad is to get in front of people. Still, it is beneficial, and it's very, very helpful for a service business like ours to have what I would just consider friends in the area that want to see your business do well.
You know, whether things are times are good, times are bad, that doesn't go away. You know, and the people that we work with. No, they, they fit a particular demographic and they, people know who we hit a home run with and how they can look like an absolute superhero if, if they send them our way and them, they love that.
Whenever we, whenever we get their friend feeling better and back to and pick a basketball them or whatever it is, and they, they look great as well. So make sure you're developing those local relationships. If you haven't done this yet, just make a list of maybe ten people that you would like to connect with.
And just start reaching out, seeing if there are some warm connections that you have, you know, with, you know, people that know these people, or somebody, some of you haven't touched base within a while. Reach back out, reestablish that relationship. Every time I do this, I always wonder why I don't do it enough.
And, and it's easy to fall into the trap of just fulfilling and working and not spending enough time. I'm developing relationships that drive your business because that's Heron. The role of a business owner that you're moving towards with less and less than the F, the familiar fulfillment side, and more and more of the.
Business development side. So if you haven't gotten out in the community and you haven't been reconnecting with the people that you have relationships with, make it a point to do it this week. Put it on your calendar list people that you want to get back in touch with and go ahead and start reaching out to them to reestablish those relationships and make sure you're solidifying your business for a long time going forward.
So guys, as always, thanks so much for listening. We'll catch you next time.
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