E629 | How To Build Raving Fans For Free

In this episode, Doc Danny shares valuable insights on how to build raving fans without breaking the bank on marketing. He emphasizes the advantage that healthcare professionals have in being able to spend quality time getting to know their patients, which forms the foundation for building a strong rapport and relationship.

Danny introduces the first step to building raving fans – the simple act of sending a text message to patients the day after their first visit to check in on them. This small gesture goes above and beyond what is commonly done in the medical community and showcases a high level of care and concern.

Another key strategy discussed is the creation of well-thought-out and effective programs, accompanied by clear instructions through emails and video links. By providing patients with valuable resources and support, healthcare professionals can further solidify their position as trusted experts in their field.

Danny also highlights the importance of understanding the deep motivation behind why patients visit your office and actively listening to their needs. By empathizing with their concerns and addressing them directly, healthcare professionals can build trust and loyalty with their patients.

Lastly, attending surgical visits and follow-up appointments with patients is identified as an incredibly powerful way to build trust and rapport. This level of dedication and involvement not only reassures patients but also increases the likelihood of them referring others to your practice.  

Discover how the simple acts of thoughtful communication, creating effective programs, and attending appointments can make a world of difference in building trust and loyalty with your patients.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny:  Hey, real quick before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on.

And it's a really cool place to join about 6, 000 other clinicians that are. Honestly, trying to change the landscape of our profession through these cash and hybrid practices. One other thing that's really cool is we have a guide in there. That's a quick start guide. When you join, you can go and check this out.

There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get in the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures. So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT entrepreneurs, Facebook group.

You have to be a clinician. We're going to check you out. We don't just let anybody in. But if you are head there, go ahead, get signed up. We'd love to have a conversation with you in that group.

So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't want to see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans, create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question. And this podcast is the answer. My name is Danny Matei and welcome to the PT entrepreneur podcast.

What's going on, Dr. Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast. And today we are talking about how you can build raving fans. Completely for free. Now, this might require some of your time and effort but it's not going to require a massive marketing budget, which is something that many of you probably don't have.

And honestly, you probably don't need as you are on the path to really starting and growing your practice to, that six figure, seven figure range. And one of the unique advantages that we have In cash practices in particular is that we get a chance to spend a lot of time with people. We get a chance to spend a lot of one on one time, FaceTime and really get to know the people that we're working with.

It's a huge advantage for us in a lot of ways definitely to help them get the outcomes that they want and to really help get buy in for some of the things we're going to ask them to do that. In most cases are going to be habitual lifestyle changes. But the other thing that it allows us to do is really set ourselves apart in terms of the relationship that we develop with our clients and understand them and really leverage that in a way to help them get a better outcome, but also a better patient experience, client experience.

And that in its own right is going to really drive more virality of folks your way from a referral standpoint, and that's a really great way to grow a practice early on. I think people for whatever reason, like referral marketing is not a, it's not, it doesn't sound as cool as Facebook ads or Google ads or all these, slick funnels and things.

And listen, we've built plenty of these. And use different elements of marketing within the different businesses we have to this day. But I can tell you in every business that I've ever had, there is an element of referral marketing and I always want more of it. And if you're trying to really break into an area, a niche to establish yourself as somebody that has a great reputation as a clinician and really your business has a great reputation as.

As helping people and really being unique there's a few things you can do early on that I think are very much a unique advantage for you and your business that. A big hospital just cannot compete with you on, and that's where you have to find that area that you're going to really try to double down.

Like what's a unique area that you have an unfair advantage, but it's not going to be in like branding and marketing. It's not going to be in physician referrals in most cases either. I'm going to go through a few examples of how you can build raving fans. It's not going to cost you anything besides.

effort and time basically. So the first one is really simple. If you have a patient, a new patient that comes in, text them the next day and see how they're doing. Check in on them. I know this sounds something that you're like, I don't want my patients to have my number. And that might be the case.

Eventually, but for fricks, like you are trying to build a business, go the extra mile early on and follow up with people and text them. Now, maybe this isn't something that you're going to want to do at scale forever. Maybe it is, maybe that's a channel that, that really, for you, from a followup standpoint, makes a lot of sense.

But what if your physician, what if your doc, what if they text you the next day after a visit and they have to text you, not some automated thing. And they said, Hey, How's the visit? You sore at all? Totally normal if you are. Let me know if you have any questions. What would you think about that? Is that a plus one or a minus one from a standpoint of your customer experience?

For most people, they love it. They love it. It's not something that they ever see in a medical community. And it means more than just an email as well. So super simple text your patients the following day. See how they're doing. Just check in on them after that very first visit. Number two. One thing we can uniquely do probably better than any other professional out there is to create very well thought out, effective programs and delivering that effective program to your patients is an incredibly good way of building rapport with and building their customer experience.

This can be As stripped down as an email that breaks everything down with video links of exactly what they should do and, a video of what everything looks like because it's confusing whenever you're trying to layer on these exercises that they need to do or modifications they need to make to whatever they're doing from their training plan standpoint or from a modification of maybe like work positions.

But being able to lay that out in a very effective manner, very organized manner is really important. You can use, like I said, as simple as email, make sure that there's your video links that are describing what they're supposed to do. Don't let them just don't assume they're going to remember what you said and don't give it to them in paper either because they're just going to lose it.

I want to take it a step further. You can put it into a program within your EMR that is more organized and or something like maybe a true coach or a platform train heroic platform where you can actually build that out. This design for training athletes, that's going to be a little bit more.

Customized, but also a way for them to communicate back and forth to you within that application as well. So go the extra mile, give them something really organized and well thought out. And that's going to blow them away because normally they're going to get a paper handout from whoever it is that they're working with.

Be very clear with them about their deep why. And this is something, again, when it comes back to the amount of time we get with people, this is a massive advantage that we have. If you're, if you treat them all like we do, we have an hour with people every time they come in. That's a long time. That's way more than any physician or other health care provider.

They're probably going to see on a regular basis You get to really understand why they're in your office and it's not the superficial stuff I'm not talking about. Yeah, you like to run 5ks or whatever, you like to play pickleball I'm talking about why is that important to you? Like why are we here?

Why are you working on this? Why are you willing to invest in yourself? And not just so you can get back to running, but like, why is running important to you? How did that become an important activity for you? Why is it important for you to continue to do it? And if you can get really clear on the deep motivators why, and everybody has their own reasons.

Maybe it's because, this, let's say in a scenario, a guy comes in and they have a knee problem and he wants his, obviously his knee not to hurt so he can continue to run. And for you, it's okay, cool. Running is important to him. But then you find out. That he has a 16 year old son that he runs with and it's the most meaningful time that they have together.

It's the hobby that they can do together. Who do you think is going to be more motivated if you can really tap into that? The person that is just, Oh yeah, running is important to me. Or it's like running as a vehicle for me to connect with my son. On a deeper level to have a hobby that we share together to have a reason to maybe travel to go to races together.

That is a completely different motivator. And that person is going to put in a lot more effort. And they and if you can understand that you can help them realize like the internal driver of why they need to do some of these things, they're going to get a better outcome. You're going to get a hell of a better outcome and they're going to have a lot more trust in you to help them along the way, which leads to a heck of a lot better patient experience as well.

So don't just make it superficial. Take the time. Get uncomfortable understand what the deep reason is there because we got to know as people that are trying to help them make A change why they're in our office and it's not just because their knee hurts and we all know that Listen to them.

This is the other big thing Listen to them one of the challenges especially for me early on with patients was I had all this time I felt I needed to fill it with just teaching them stuff. And as I realized one of the most important things we can do is listen to our patients, especially early on, my caseload exploded.

And it went from me feeling like I had to shove a bunch of value into every single visit to me realizing people need to unpack stuff. The first couple of visits, they got to really get some stuff off their chest and they've been burned by the healthcare profession on many other occasions where they've waited too long, they've been seen for too short a period of time and they feel like all a medical provider did was just talk down to them and tell them what was wrong with them and then what they needed to do next.

And no one ever listened to them. Now, if you can listen to your patients and this goes hand in hand with the other one with getting to their deep why all of a sudden you're going to have a very strong connection with that person you're building a rapport and a bond with that person. That's going to be trust and you're allowing them to really work through some things and talk through all this stuff that's going on and they're going to feel much better about spending time with you when they know they've been able to thoroughly explain the frustrations that they have that nobody else has listened to.

And that's rare. That's rare because who else is that person going to talk to you? Their spouse doesn't want to hear about their knee pain anymore. I think they're coworkers or their brother or whoever wants to hear about their knee pain. No, they don't care and they don't know what to do about it. So it's frustrating for them.

But we do and we all we got to do is just listen to them and let them explain what's going on. And that's a huge value the last thing and this is a big one, especially if you're doing anything that is going to be post surgical and we have a few providers that we work with that do a lot of ACL. Rehab, post surgical ACL work and one of the smarter things that I've seen with people that are doing a lot of work like this is actually going to the surgical visits post op pre op, post op visits with somebody that is getting a surgery with that surgeon, right?

So you're going with your patient to their visit. And you're sitting there with them so they can better understand what's going on so you can better understand what type of surgery they're looking at, what the physician, what that surgeon is trying to do, what they really think is important, within the next couple of weeks as they're fresh out of the, out of a surgical visit and post op as well, you can keep them up to date on how everything is looking and it is such a win.

I know this is a bit time intensive, but man, if you can do This makes a hell of a difference. And we used to do this when I was in the military, we would do these sports clinics, which basically were anybody that had surgery or was about to have surgery. There was a patient of ours. We'd all come together on the same day.

We'd have this huge clinic with, 50 to a hundred patients that would roll through with all the orthopedic surgeons that were from the local, the hospital that, that we were attached to. And then we'd all get on the same page and our patients loved it. Now, if you can go to a visit with your patient, I don't know what the reciprocity is on that, but it's massive.

Like the trust factor of that the. Ability to help somebody feel comfortable about a process of something that's very scary. Any surgery, if no one's ever had a surgery, it's scary. Even if you had to have surgery, it's still scary. And for them to feel comfortable with the person that's really going to be face to face with them for the vast majority of their rehab time over the next, six, 12 months, that's a great way to build trust and rapport.

And it's a massive plus for your patient experience as well. And you've got to think about for each. Plus one you have it increased the likelihood that person is going to recommend you to a friend or family member and That is where these viral referrals come from as you start to stack more and more of these additional points in your favor You're gonna become far more Recommended by all these people to anybody that they come in contact with Anybody that ever has an ACL surgery or that knows somebody that's gonna have an ACL surgery that person that you went into their Post op their pre op visits with them and you took them through that you listen to them you spent time with them You got you know to understand the things that they're interested in their deep why you do all That person is not going to be able to shut up about how awesome you are Anytime the subject of acl anything comes up And that means you're going to be the go to person in your area for that and the people that do that within our mastermind By the way They crush it with those types of patients.

They get a lot of referrals and it even allows them to get face time with physicians that end up sending them people because they realize how damn unique it is and how rare it is to have somebody that cares that much about the outcomes of someone else's, recovery just as much that surgeon wants them to get a result as well to look good.

So keep that in mind. It really helps the business tremendously. So in summary, Text your folks the next day, right? Take the time, text them. Create a custom, thorough plan for them. Make sure it's delivered in a way where they understand. If they have questions, how they can reach out to you and get that answered.

Make sure that you're getting very clear on their deep why. Why they're actually there. What's important to them. Listen to them. Understand the things that they're interested in. The reasons that they're doing the things that they're doing. Spend the time letting them just spill what's going on and really you don't vent a little bit because in a lot of cases they're not able to do that to a medical professional and the last thing in this scenario, go to follow up visits, go to important visits with your patients.

If they have something that's like a big surgery coming up, if they're not getting better make sure you're communicating with their general practitioners and you're not like playing the telephone game through them. Make sure you're being direct about it and that's going to make. Your patient experience so much better.

That's going to make the likelihood that somebody is going to want to trust the opinion or their opinion of recommending you and putting that on the line, which is what's happening every time somebody has a referral. They're, you're going to make them look good. They're going to be more likely to send folks your way and that's going to snowball because you're going to get people that are super easy to work with.

People that are bought into what you're doing from day one, because they've already been pre sold by these folks. And the more of those people you can get, the better it's going to be for your business.

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