#29 - The Patient Journey with Jeff Langmaid, Part 2

FAKTR, spelled F-A-K-T-R, stands for Functional and Kinetic Treatment with Rehabilitation. Over the past decade, this unique approach to treating pain and dysfunction has been utilized by healthcare providers on 6 continents. Serving as a framework that guides clinical decision-making in patient visits around the globe on a daily basis. With this podcast, our goal is simple: to bring the best and brightest in clinical education to the forefront and empower practitioners with cutting-edge, evidence-based content that improves patient outcomes and inspires healthcare providers to continually evolve their approach to treatment. In each episode, we will feature a training or interview with some of the top minds in healthcare in a short format that is easy to consume. to digest with actionable information that you can implement into practice right away. Let's get started. Hi guys, welcome to a new episode of The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome and thanks for listening. Today we wrap up our 2-part training, The Patient Journey: Attract, Engage, and Retain More of Your Ideal Patients. With Dr. Jeff Langmaid. Dr. Jeff Langmaid is an experienced speaker, founder, author, and creator. Driven by his passion for marketing and research, he's used his unique professional experience to help thousands of chiropractors around the world. As the founder of The Evidence-Based Chiropractor, The Smart Chiropractor, Chiro Office Coverage, and AOMSI Diagnostics, he is dedicated to helping chiropractors achieve more in practice. He's been featured on Yahoo Health, CBS News, MSN Health, and more. In today's episode, we discuss the step-by-step process for building a flywheel of attraction and retention and introduce the 6 touchstones of engagement, referrals, and reactivations. Guys, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have systems in place that continually drive traffic, fueling your marketing and bring new patients into your doors. As I mentioned in our last episode, I highly encourage you to take notes and really listen to the blueprint that Dr. Langmeier provides here, especially the key changes that you can implement right away. And now let's cue the intro music and get started.

And finally, as we get towards Phase 3, we talk about proactive patients, right? Proactive patients. We want to enroll and reactivate these individuals. We're going to talk about this in detail, but those are the 2 big words to remember from a proactive patient. This is your retention loop. We want to enroll and reactivate these individuals as time goes on. So phase 3 is proactive patients, enroll and reactivate. How can you do this? You can do it through subscribe and save e-commerce. You can do this through weekly email newsletters. You can do this through curating your health tribe and a lot to dive into right there. But if you are a doc, if you're a healthcare provider out there that does not have a backend to your practice, you are missing out. Now, I'm not talking about a dusty shelf of supplements that you bought years ago and have difficulty selling. What I'm talking about is a modern approach, dropshipped inventory that goes directly to your patients on subscribe and save through a branded store for your practice. We have our SmartCare stores as an example up there with our Basis Health supplements. That is how you enroll people after they are satisfied. We know, for example, I love—

Yeah.

Supplementation, because we think about this in terms of everyday, everybody stuff. Vitamin D, multivitamins, greens, 60% of individuals are taking those each and every day. Question is, do you even have an offering that could enable them to choose you for it? It's not about selling things, it's about using email. This is about using automated systems to offer things to individuals who already know, trust, and like you. These are proactive patients. They have already gone through active care. Do you have any sort of revenue-generating backend for your practice? This is not about selling out. This is not about feeling like you're selling. This is about extending the relationship. Now, if we wanna talk about reactivations, are you sending out a weekly email newsletter? 99% of practices aren't. And I'll ask this down in the comments. Are you sending out a weekly email newsletter to your patient list? That's a good question to ask. I find that almost no providers are unless they're a member of The Smart Chiropractor. And I can tell you, nothing boosts consistent reactivations, 2, 3, 5. We have some docs generating 5 to 10 weekly reactivations by getting out to their list. If you're emailing people once a quarter, once a month, that's just not enough. You don't need to go the other direction and email people each and every day, but man, a weekly email newsletter that goes out automatically to your patients, which is what we do, that enables you to keep your schedule full with reactivations. And then curating your health tribe. This is a loop, right? We're gonna see this all come together in just a moment on the screen. This is a loop. So getting out there and continuing to stay actively engaged on your Google My Business page, on your Facebook page, so that people who have gone through the journey, right, they were— they didn't know about you, they were a future patient, they came in, they had a great experience. Now you're trying to have them become a proactive patient and potentially reactivate. Are you giving them the opportunity to engage with your practice by putting out great content consistently? You can choose how you want to go about it. I recommend the answer is usually And not or, right? The best solution: have those weekly emails going out, continue to put out great content that works for the front end of your practice and the back end of your practice, and then have the opportunity to have an e-commerce store that enables patients to raise their hand and say yes on subscribe and save supplements that enable you to create additional revenue and continue to help those individuals achieve their health goals. So how do you build a flywheel of proactive patients? You do it by putting all of this together. As you can see on the screen, when you have this dialed in and you have You're teaching and inviting. People are then coming into your practice as active patients. You're educating them and retaining them. Now they're moving into that proactive patient loop where you're enrolling them and reactivating. Now you start to really have a flywheel effect in your practice that tends to generate more income, reduce your stress level, and really get growth that's sustainable over time. That's not based upon some hacky advertisement, that's not based upon something that you learned last week, but that's built on solid business principles that the biggest companies in the world are using that we need to use as conservative healthcare providers in our community. So that's what it's all about when we talk about the SMART Patient Journey. This is about going from one to the other. It's just a different way to look at it right here. When somebody's a future patient, your number one goal, teach and invite, teach and invite. How do I do that? I get out on social. I have a lead magnet on my website. I send those emails.

Out.

I put out some videos. Now you're teaching and inviting. People are gonna flow into becoming active patients in your practice. Wonderful. And these are ideal patients that now you're educating and retaining. How are you doing that? You're having great content on your screens. You're handing out and having the opportunity for them to take patient education handouts that look great, that are tied into your content topics. You're having onboarding emails that support their decision and guide their journey. Now they're moving into becoming proactive patients. You have that e-commerce store on the back end. You're sending your weekly emails. You're continuing to put out great content, and now you're really dialing in. I hope you can see this, and I'm interested in your feedback, and I can't wait to get to the questions. This is how you create a smart patient journey. And when you have this really, really fine-tuned for your practice, you're gonna see exponential growth. There's absolutely no question about it. So if this sounds good, you might think, well, why doesn't everybody do this? Well, there's some people it's not gonna work for. If you're a practice that has traditionally relied on bait and switch tactics, This is not that, right? This is about relationships. If you're a practice looking for short-term, not long-term growth, they don't have to be a direct trade-off. They're not mutually exclusive. But if you're only focused on short-term growth, it takes a little while. You got to— you got to get out there. You got to work the process a little bit. And if you're only looking for short-term growth, it won't be right for you. And practices don't want to be leaders in their community. Teaching and inviting is getting out there, and you don't have to do it yourself. That's why there's systems and processes like the Smart Chiropractor. That automate that entire thing for you, delegate that to our professional team. But if you don't wanna be a leader in your community, this isn't right for you. And there's some practices out there that are kind of invisible. They can be successful too. I've met some of those practices, which is ironic and weird enough, but that's who this isn't for. So what are the results? You might be thinking like, okay, is this a lot of work? Is this not? Does it even work? I pulled these stats today and you can see they were pulled today because you can see 6/23 in the bottom right-hand corner hasn't really registered yet from yesterday. So this is who we service with the Smart Chiro. I just want to show you this inside baseball. I pulled this 4 hours ago. So this is relative to Facebook. And this is— you might think to yourself, nobody's on Facebook anymore. I put out some posts and they didn't have any reach. Well, I can tell you right now, page impressions— Smart Chiropractors reached 4.5 million people on Facebook over the last 30 days. Their total page likes is 7 million people. So we reached 50%. Of the individuals who are liking the pages of our smart chiropractors. Page likes, quarter of a million. Page reach, 3.6 million. We reached 15%, 10% of the United States population over the last 30 days. That is super impactful to me. That's how we can do what we do because we generate this sort of data. Nobody does it at this scale, I can tell you that right now. So, so it can— does this work? Yes, you can reach people, but you need to teach and invite And the last word there, you need to be consistent. We put out at least 2 posts every day for all of our members and docs across Facebook, Instagram, because we know it's so important to gaining that reach. Now you might say that's an anomaly. What happens about Google My Business? Well, I pulled Google My Business for you. I pulled this this morning as well. So in Google My Business over the last 30 days, we post auto posts to it for our docs. What does that lead to? That leads to about 20,000 leads, 6,000 phone calls, 8,000 website clicks, and 5,000 requests for directions. Over the last 30 days. 30 days, 20,000 people of smart chiropractors reaching out to engage with care. This is the power of taking somebody from a future patient to an active patient by using the formula of teach and invite. It works. You just need to get out there. So what are some real results? Does this actually work?

But the bottom line is when you get out there and you have a system and a process that guides your patient journey, Hi Doc, this is Jeff Langmaid, and as a chiropractor who's owned my own practice as well as being on the leadership team at one of the largest orthopedic groups in the world, I've been able to see under the hood of exactly how successful healthcare marketing works. And I'm Dr. Jason Deitch, and I've been helping chiropractors now for over a decade use social networks like Facebook To get your message out to your community and collectively to the masses. I think together we've probably influenced over 100 million positive impressions over the years by working together like this. What Jason and I have learned is that most chiropractors don't have the content or the consistency you need to be successful marketing your practice. So we became obsessed with creating automatic marketing solutions that can drive more new patients into your practice. Now, you probably didn't become a chiropractor so you can learn how to become an expert digital marketer or entrepreneur. You probably became a chiropractor because, like me, you want to help people. You want to help people understand their potential to heal themselves naturally and help people avoid the need for dangerous drugs and surgery. This is a crazy time and there's a lot of uncertainty, but in my opinion, this is the perfect time to amplify your message, build your health tribe, and fill your schedule. We're here to help. We all know that growing a chiropractic practice can be really challenging and difficult, especially during these times. You don't need to spend countless hours learning about everything to do with social media. You can work with partners like us to support your success. If you're a new doc or a veteran, we'd love to have you. The Smart Chiropractor is a completely automatic marketing system for your practice. We provide the content, the automation, the training, and the community To set your practice up for success. Our success team is waiting to help you get started. Thanks, Doc. We'll see you soon.

When you can become the leader by teaching and inviting, by educate and retaining, by enrolling and reactivating, and you automate that process, Now you've taken everything to the next level in your practice. And you can see here, Matt Gray, every email campaign, 2 to 4 patient reactivations, super pumped, best ROI in 20 years of practice. It's not magic. It's not discounting your services either, which I think is a very important aspect of this. We're not putting out discount ads. This is about doing the right thing. This is about using, as we talked about at the very beginning, half hour ago or more ago, this is about using the tenets of how the biggest, most successful businesses and practices, healthcare and not, in the world. Build incredible tribes of people that are their ideal patients, clients that keep coming in and keep coming back. So that's where we really want to go with this. So Smart Chiropractor is everything you need with one low price. If you want to schedule a demo, just hop on. Let's have a conversation. You can head over to smartchiropractor.com/demo. Hop over. Let's have a conversation and see if this is right for you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with opening up the conversation. It just might be the step you need to take. We always say in Smart Chiropractor, results follow actions. Question is, what action step are you taking with the knowledge that you've currently learned? Are you taking an action step to put it into action? Or are you saying that's just nice to know? I think the results speak for themselves. And anybody that kind of comes on, we'll eliminate any setup fee, we'll give you a free SEO audit, we'll shoot you over a sweet swag box of physical goods. So there is no reason not to hop on. The bonuses are there, the results are there. smartcarpetwriter.com/demo, we can drop that link over as well. But pick up that phone, use that QR code, hop on with our team. Let's just have a conversation, see what's going on with your patient journey currently. We'll identify what are those areas where we think we can help you improve. We'll give you just real advice as far as the best way to go about it. If we can help you, awesome. If we can't, I can guarantee you we will guide and direct you to the people that can. I've been a chiropractor for a long time at this point. You might have seen me around. So we're not going anywhere. We are here to stay and we're here to do what's best for everybody out there. I'm going to open it up to questions in a moment. Again, I want to thank Jessica and the entire team for having me on. This is an area I'm passionate about. Full disclosure, this is the inaugural event of this topic. We've been talking a lot about the patient journey internally within The Smart Chiropractor for the last year or 2. And this is the first time we really put it together to have a conversation around it. So I'm going to encourage you to drop those questions down below.

Wonderful. So we have gotten some great questions. We'll just kind of start off here at the top. You mentioned a number of different emails. So a weekly email, an onboarding and welcoming email. How many emails is too many? That's the first part of the question. And the second part is, if I'm a practitioner who hasn't been doing regular emails, how do I not scare people away when all of a sudden they start getting emails from me?

Those are fantastic questions. So how many is too many is an interesting question. And here's the truth. It all depends on the value of what you're delivering. So now give a specific answer, but I want to shift the mindset a little bit here. We all get emails every day that we're like, oh my gosh, another discount advertising from this clothing store that I went to one time. Like when it's 25% off every single day and that's all you're getting, that gets pretty tiresome. We all probably also get daily emails from somebody where we're like, this is cool. This is like my motivation in the morning. This is what I like to follow. Like, So how many is too many is really dependent upon value. Now, in terms of specifically the healthcare space and chiropractic, let's kind of put in and get really actionable here. 2 a week is probably about where you want to be. Now, also, this comes down to segmenting, so everybody's not getting everything. In other words, like, this is where understanding your new patients are in their onboarding sequence— and this is what we build into the Smart Chiropractor email system, Chiro Emails— They're only going to get onboarding until they finish. Then they automatically drop into the weekly sequence. So this is the importance of segmentation. I personally love a cadence of one time a week, no matter what. So they're getting their weekly email no matter what, but maybe they're getting one extra depending upon what specifically is going on in that season of my practice. I'm going to be out at a race. I'm promoting a special offer, whatever it might be. I might add in a second for a little while.

Yeah.

But I'm gonna consistently deliver one, sometimes go to 2, but specifically with the onboardings, those onboardings are a little bit heavier. Those are about 6 emails in 14 days. Those first 2 weeks are so critically important. So they're about every other day, but they're addressing very specific things. If you just send one email and it's like the next great American novel, you're missing out. You wanna break that up to email one is like, welcome to our practice and leave it. Email number 2, we're so happy to have you here. If you need to reschedule, here's the contact information to do that. Leave it. Email number 3, here are some frequently asked questions, and leave it. We built it out in a way that we've tested it throughout hundreds of thousands of times at this point in time, and it's not too much. So about 6 emails in the first 2 weeks. You could pare that down to 4 if you really wanted to, and then go into that weekly email sequence. Segment your people so that they're not getting doubled up all the time. And if you're just starting out with email, how do you make sure you don't like kind of blast them out? It's a good question, and again, a delicate question. The way that we go about it is a 2-email success So when a new member comes on with us, let's say they haven't been emailing at all. Yeah, we don't— you just don't want to like blindly all of a sudden. So we send out a 2-email success blast sequence. What that is, is the first 2 emails describe what's going to happen. Hey, insert patient name. I'm very much paraphrasing what the emails say right now, but you're setting the stage for success. Hi, patient name. And now you're going into what you are going to be delivering. I'm not going to get into the email copy because I don't want to say it incorrectly. But the bottom line is you're setting up the stage and telling them, hey, we're going to start sending you a weekly email. We want to start engaging with you more. And now you start building that trust throughout time. So you're right. You don't blindly, as if you've been emailing them forever, just start emailing 7 a week. That would be way too much. And you get a ton of unsubscribes. But what you do is you set up a couple emails to let them know what's going to happen. And then you let the automations take over.

Absolutely. And I would definitely mirror what you were saying there and that less is more when it comes to emails. If they're having to scroll a lot of times, they're going to get lost somewhere in translation for sure. One of the things that we've kind of come to understand in the marketing world that is super important is getting to know your audience, like getting to know where those ideal patients are, what they like, what type of things they respond to. What suggestions do you have for someone that maybe is brand new in practice? They don't have a quote unquote established patient base yet. How do they figure out where their ideal audience is?

That's a really good question. And some of it, you can actually just think back to the basics, right? Meaning, here's one way, here's a, here's a way to think about it. Who has my patients in their practice, right? So if you think, if you had to think about it and you said, who out there in my community has my patients in, in their practice? That's one way to start to get those gears turning. You could probably eliminate some. Again, in all of us out there, we like taking care of different things, right? So if I love taking care of expecting moms and pregnancy-related care, I'm probably not thinking Who has my patients in their practice? A geriatric care facility, right? That's probably it. So I can start thinking, well, who does? OB-GYNs probably do. Midwives probably do. Doulas probably do. Okay, now I'm starting to get things together. Well, where do those people hang out? Well, there's probably Birth Network in my community. Okay, that would be an interesting place. There's probably some local events and support groups that would make a lot of sense for me to be present and accounted for. So one of the ways I like to think about it is who has my patients in their practice? The second part about that Is to think about what's going on. I'm going to go on the other end of the spectrum. Now, let's say you were like, man, I think I like sports care. Like, I want to get into that. Well, then you think about where do active people hang out? Well, active people might hang out at the gym. They might hang out at a CrossFit facility. They might hang out at a personal trainer. So building those relationships, those people might have your patients in their practice, even if it's not a healthcare or medical practice. Those are important places to think about. As you start to develop that, now you can even go one step farther. And you might say to yourself, well, where do my people hang out? What restaurants do they go to? Where do they shop? And now you can start to, as I love to do, go out and highlight a healthy, maybe a healthy lunch meal that you're having, tag that business. That business is then going to share it with their following. That gets you exposure to your ideal people because people like you, as Seth Godin would say, people like us do things like this. So if it's people like you and your ideal patients eat at places like that, then highlighting those businesses is a great idea. So I don't know, I'm happy to get more specific and technical, but that's my initial answer.

No, that's absolutely great advice. What are some challenges that you foresee or have experienced with your clients when they're trying to make this patient journey happen in a small town? How would you kind of change your strategy a bit if you have a bit of a smaller pool to fish from, so to speak?

Yeah. So if you have, it's hard to, I mean, if you live in a town of 200 people, it's hard to say. My ideal patient is between 21 and 22. They're a college athlete. You might get down to 1 or 2 people, right? Not enough to build a practice on. So I can empathize with somebody that's in a smaller community. You're probably— the first step is probably to go a little bit wider with your ideal patient. You might not be able to be as specific as you'd like to be. I've talked to some people before that are super into like sports care, but they're like, man, I kind of live in a smaller area that's more rural and blue collar. There's not really like a ton of college athletes around here. So that's not really— while that's what they wanted their ideal patient to be based upon the demographics of where they live, they needed to go a little bit wider. And when they could get those patients coming in that were more athletic in this instance, they were super jazzed about it, but they had to go a little bit wider than maybe they would have ideally loved to do. The second part about that is that if you're in a smaller community, I'm gonna say one of the advantages of that is that you can really leverage relationships quickly. So when you're in a smaller community, there's usually, I'm going to say, a little bit less competition, right? There's just a sheer volume of everything is a little bit less. Now, the detriment of that is there might not be as many of your ideal clients, but it's probably going to be a lot easier to build relationships with other healthcare providers. It's probably going to be a lot easier to build relationships with other small business owners because smaller communities tend to be more tight-knit. And again, the competition tends to be a little bit lower. So I would say I wouldn't change my system that much. What I would say is you need to get a little bit wider, but we've worked with people in super rural communities. We've worked with people in Hong Kong, San Francisco, Manhattan, you name it, some of the most dense populations out there. And the business tenets hold true. You just might need to adjust the scope of your ideal patient.

Absolutely. When it comes to content, it seems like every sports chiropractor out there is posting Instagram videos of exercises and stretches. How do you produce content if you're in the sports chiropractic space that kind of stands out amongst the competition? Like if everybody in your town is kind of doing the same thing, how do you still reach your intended audience but then rise above all of that noise?

That's a great question. And I think it comes down to really having a playbook. And this is like, this is both sides of that coin, right? Number one is that most people that are doing that right now, They're using somebody else's channel as their playbook, right? It's like, well, this, I see all these other people doing it, so I'm gonna do it. The positive of that is that there's a proven strategy that that works to a certain degree. The detriment of that is if you're doing it, it's probably too late.

Yeah, exactly.

The ship might have already sailed, so you might be able to get a little bit of traction, but you don't have first mover advantage. So the best way to do that, the same strategy is gonna hold true. Well, what's the best way to create content that's not like everybody else is to have a playbook. Like we always say, the hardest thing is sitting down at the end of each morning, looking at a blank sheet of paper and saying, What am I going to talk about? That's hard. You'll last like one day because it's super hard to think about. But if you think in terms of content campaigns, which is what we build out with the Smart Chiropractor— monthly campaigns, weekly topics, and daily posts— now you can put your spin on the most popular topics patients are already searching for. I mentioned opioids. We have a month on low back, a month on neck, a month on staying active when you're older, a month on kids, a month on accidents, right? So you don't have to be a pediatric chiropractor to engage with the content during the month that revolves around kids and chiropractic. You might take the spin on it of the adolescents and the sports. So having a playbook to understand, okay, where, what am I going to talk about this week or this month? Okay, great. And now how do I put my unique spin on that? I think that's the most important aspect of it. There are some topics out there that are just the most popular topics. The reasons people have come into chiropractors haven't changed that much in the last 100 years. But the question is, what's your unique spin on that? And when I say spin on that, I mean, what's your unique voice? It doesn't— I don't mean spin negatively or like you got an angle. I mean, in terms of how do you think about it? How do you take care of it? How do you treat that? I won't go off on a massive tangent right now, but within The Smart Chiropractor, we think about this daily. Motivational Monday, Testimonial Tuesday, Wake Up Wednesday, Tactical Thursday, and Friday Favorites. That's how we align our monthly campaign, weekly topics that tie into the month, and then daily posts that support that. And when you have a playbook that lays that out, now you have the opportunity to get creative without having to stare at a blank sheet of paper. And when you have a topic and you kind of know where you're gonna go, now you can put your unique creative spin on it without saying, okay, am I gonna do birds and cats and stuff like this on the exercise gym floor just like everybody else? Ironically, you might still choose to do that, but now you have a different take, a different slant, because you're tying it in to that day of the week, that weekly topic, and that monthly campaign.

You spoke a little bit about kind of the retention strategy and different ways to leverage your existing patients to attract new ones, such as like Google My Business reviews or things of that nature. Is Google My Business still one of the best ways to be found online locally? And What do you recommend in terms of asking for that review? Is that a first visit thing? Is that a fifth visit thing?

So a couple of different things with that. Yes, I think with 19,000 people calling or asking for appointments in the last 30 days with our membership, I would say yes, it's still a super important channel and you absolutely have to be there. In terms of how do you get that going at the base level, we break it down to 3 things. You need to ensure that your information is accurate and verified. So if you haven't checked out your Google My Business information, what they call the NAP— your name, your address, and your phone number— now if that's not correct, if they're calling the wrong phone number, you're not gonna get the call, right? So make sure that your NAP is, is correct— your name, your address, your phone number, your website for that matter. When we say address, we mean physical and digital address. So make sure that your information is verified. Number 2, make sure you get some good pictures up there. Like sometimes, like it's not every time, like the default is the Google picture. And sometimes your office can look awesome and like the Google camera when it drove by 3 years ago, like took the picture of the ground and it looks like crap. That's not inspiring. So what you can do is add a couple pictures inside your practice, right? Couple people on tables in the gym, whatever it might be. If somebody can see like faces smiling and like what goes on in the 4 walls, you're reducing friction, you're reducing fear, and you're more likely to get them engaged. So add a couple cool pictures. Step number 2. Step number 3 is ensure that you are posting to your page at least weekly. One thing that I didn't point out when I brought up that stat sheet on Google My Business, if you were paying attention, you saw this graph that kind of did this. And that was the lead count every day of the week. This is when we post. This is the next 3 days when we haven't posted for our doc on there. It's directly correlative. Google is going to give you increased visibility. But I can tell you right now, if I'm just 100% straight up, if you are a healthcare professional, specifically if you're a chiropractor, you are not going to stay consistent. It's nearly impossible and you need help. But that help will pay itself back in spades because we see a direct bump. In phone calls and direction requests and website visits every time a post goes out. That's not coincidental. We've seen this over the course of 6 months now. So get your NAP correctly. Make sure you verify your information— name, address, phone number. Make sure you have pictures of the inside of your practice, ideally with smiling faces, so that when somebody visits your business listing, it looks nice and they want to go there. And number 3, if you're actually serious about it, you have to make sure that you're getting posts up on your Google My Business listing, which almost nobody does. That's why it's an arbitrage. You have an opportunity right now. We do that for everybody. In terms of asking for referrals, the biggest thing that I have seen doctors— and we— I work with a couple private clients outside of chiropractic and they are the same way— they want to wait until the patient's better before they ask. That's too late. What you want to do is ask when the patient is on their way to being better. What I mean by that is your reviews and testimonials should be based upon Patient experience more than patient outcome. Now, and I didn't say instead of, I said more than. You can control patient experience. You cannot control patient outcome. Now, thankfully, us as chiropractors, we have ridiculously great patient outcomes, so we don't need to shy away from it at all. But I would encourage you to ask sooner than you think you should. So would I ask on first visit? Probably not. But would I ask at the end of the first or second week? Absolutely. And I definitely would make it a point to ask anytime I get a positive cue. Hey, I wasn't sure if I wanted to come in, but man, I'm glad I did. No, I feel significantly better, man. I'll tell you what, Kathy at your front desk is great. Anytime I'm getting a verbal cue, that is when anybody on my team needs to be asking for a review or a testimonial. If I don't hear that, then I want to probably wait until the end of that first or second week because I know the odds are in my favor that I've built some trust and rapport. I built some credibility. They've had a good experience throughout that first 2 weeks and got to know us. So again, now I've stacked the deck in my favor that they're going to be super happy.

You mentioned and emphasized the need for patient education.

How—

but then a lot of docs are still very hesitant to create educational, like, online courses or webinars or things of that nature because they're afraid of quote unquote teaching their patients not to need them or how to fix their back themselves, so to speak. How do you combat that with your clients and how do you explain that You're educating in a way that not— is not necessarily negating the need for your services but driving people into your practice.

Yep.

Use a format of teach and invite. Make sure you're making an invitation. And, you know, sometimes docs— and I was this way for years with evidence-based chiropractic— I just taught. There was never a schedule a demo, as you can see on your screen right now. There was never that invitation to take the next step. So every time that you teach, you've earned the opportunity to invite. So take every opportunity when you teach to invite somebody to take a next step.

Number one.

Number 2 is, I'll say this positively, never underestimate the knowledge that you have compared to the individual. For example, I know this, I'll give you 2 real examples. One real example is what we went through today. I laid out a very specific playbook and I know 99% of providers just don't have the time, effort, energy, or desire to actually do it. That's why I'm not afraid to teach anything. I'm not afraid to show our stats. I'm not afraid to do anything because I know that an educated consumer is our best customer. I used to be at a clothing store. They used to say that, and I believe that to be true. I would say the same with your patients, meaning you can show— wait, wait, this way— how many people are compliant with your exercises at home? Probably not 100%. So if you're teaching somebody on the front end, hey, here's like 7 days to get rid of low back pain, I'll show you how to do this. The 10 to 20% that maybe take you up on it and actually are earnest, number one, they are going to be so loyal and jazzed to you when the next thing comes up, they're going to reach out. The other 80% who do it for one day and then are like, yeah, maybe it's just easier to go in there, they're going to take you up on it. Now again, this goes back to ensure that you have an invitation. Don't just teach, teach, teach, teach, teach, teach, teach, but teach and invite. Consistently. And when you do that, you are going to win more than you lose. Your knowledge is more than them. You're going to have the advantage. They, while you might get on the floor and do all those exercises, 9 out of 10 people aren't. While I love creating content and automating emails, I know most docs don't love doing it. So don't, don't be overly fearful of that, but ensure that you can maintain your invitations.

Absolutely. Again, thank you so much, Dr. Langmead. This has been great information and has really done a great job of setting a playbook before us of what that patient journey should look like.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been awesome.

Okay, guys, that's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for episode 30, where we kick off a brand new training titled Anthropometrics Influence on Biomechanics with Greg Hawthorne. So if you're not familiar, Anthropometrics is defined as the science of measuring the size and proportions of the human body. In epidemiological studies, anthropometry is often used to evaluate disease risk as well as assess body composition changes. Anthropometric measurements can provide valuable information about health and development status, either as standalone or as combined measurements. In this 2-part training, Certified Athletic Trainer Greg Hawthorne We'll discuss the influence that skeletal structure and position can have on the function of muscles and connective tissues. You won't want to miss it! Episode 30 drops in 2 weeks, or 1 week for our Patreon subscribers. In the near future, we are also planning a few special Q&A episodes with our past instructors, so please be sure to click on the Q&A link in our show notes and ask any burning questions you may have. You can subscribe to The Factor Podcast on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Or the podcast app that works best for you. Please give us a 5-star rating to help us grow the show. Every little bit helps. And last but certainly not least, be sure to visit the show notes for a link to download the PDF of today's full presentation, as well as learn about any special offers that we featured in today's episode. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R hyphen store dot com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread the word to your. friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.