Dr. Kelly Alhooie (host of the Pelvibiz/Pelby Biz podcast) explains why clinicians and small healthcare businesses should focus on community building. She advocates running local community events (hosted at clinics, libraries, parks) to efficiently gather multiple referral partners at once, gives practical tactics to increase attendance (signup links, reminder emails, incentives), and shares concrete activities—an "I have / I want / I need" networking wall and conversation cards—to spark collaboration. She notes expected attendance heuristics (e.g., 50 signups → ~20–25 attendees; to get 50 attendees plan ~100 signups), stresses that community referrals scale beyond paid ads, and closes with a sponsor message from Jane (promo code: pelvibiz1mo).
Questions this episode answers
Jane.
pelvibiz1mo.
If 50 people sign up, expect about 20–25 to attend; to get 50 attendees plan for ~100 signups.
An "I have / I want / I need" wall where attendees post offerings, needs, and contact info.
Chapters
Welcome to Pelby biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I have grown and established brick and mortar practice in Northern Virginia called Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy and also founded Pelvibiz, which is an online business consulting company that helps healthcare providers make more money and be healthy while doing it, especially in the pelvic health realm. And let's get into today's episode. Today I'm going to talk about community building and why every single person, whether or not it's online or you have a brick and mortar or both, you should be the ultimate community builder. Okay, so let me give you an example. So traditionally, you know, people that have a brick and mortar practice, what do they do? They have a marketing person. It may be, it may be you. And you have to go around to all the different doctor's offices and basically try to talk to someone or all the fitness places and try to talk to someone. Or maybe you are trying to go to, I don't know, any providers or whatever, trying to get a hold of them. Well, here's the thing. How long does that take you? You maybe got to get dressed, you got to put on your makeup, you have to see if their office is open, what happens if it's not. You have to drive to that location. Like just to hit one person takes about, I don't know, anywhere between an hour to two hours. So I was thinking of ways of how to condense that and I came up with doing community events. Now here's the beautiful part about community events. Number one, you get people in your community that want to actually collaborate, which then they all can come at the same time to your facility or a location that you choose to pick from. So that means you are not driving around town waiting on them, seeing if they're there. You pick one hour out of your day and you say, hey guys, this date, this time, we are meeting at this location. It could be your office, it could be a library. If you don't have a library or if you don't have, if you're mobile, it could be a park, whatever you want it to be, okay? And you're going to pick that location, you're going to have everyone meet. Now the biggest thing about this is a, first off, just to get people to show up can be challenging. So number one, you've got to create some kind of link where someone can click on it and say, hey, I'm interested. I have attempts to want to come. So you got to create that link and you got to put it on your website, you got to put it on social media. You got to put it everywhere and anywhere. So once you do that and you're like, okay, Great, I have 50 people signed up. Let's just say you got 50 people sign up for an event, the likelihood of them showing up is probably going to be out of those 50, probably 20 to 25 people will show up at a live event. And that's a good success rate of people actually coming in person. Okay. But that's what you're kind of aiming for. So if you want 50 people to actually show up at your event, you need about 100 people that say they're interested in that event. So that's one thing. Now, once you get that list, then you have to keep sending multiple emails to that list to say, hey, just a reminder, we're going to be doing this event. Let me know if you're still interested. Can't wait to see you there. Now here's the other thing. You have to get people excited about the event. You have to get people to want to actually take time and come to the event. Well, how are you going to do that? You got to do that by enticing them with maybe a gift basket that has lots of fun goodies. Maybe you entice them by saying, hey, this presenter is going to be speaking. Maybe you entice them by saying, hey, you're going to connect with lots of local, locally owned businesses and other different providers that potentially can answer your questions that you don't know, that you didn't know even was a thing that could get, because that could get solved. Like, there's so many different things of how you can market this thing. It all depends on what the outcome is of the event. So let me give you an example. We just did a perimenopause and menopause event at my clinic and the goal was to get providers to come, get fitness people to come, get wellness people to come, sex psychologists, like, lots of different things, people to come so that people knew that there was actually help. That was my goal. And also so that people that came, whether or not they were patients, providers, that they could all network with each other and that they could help each other out. And so during that event, I did something, it's called I have, I want and I need. And so I did that because I wanted people to put on the wall what they have. So what I mean by that is, like, I have a practice that helps pelvic health patients be able to solve their pain with intercourse and leakage problems. That's what I have. I want more referrals for other disciplinaries so that we can help people really, truly solve their problem and get the outcomes that they're looking for. That's what I put as I want. And then you put your contact information so people can contact you. And at the end of the event, people take a picture of the wall and then basically they could connect with each other so that they could get the help that they want. Okay. And so that was like, one cool event we did. We also do conversation cards, which, you know, if you walk into an empty room, everyone's nervous. Everyone's like, I don't know what to expect. So we did conversation cards where you pick up a conversation and basically a card that has a question on it and. And you walk up to someone and you ask them that question. So then that way it doesn't feel awkward, you get the conversation started and they start collaborating. So these are different ways that you can help build a community. And so I love having these events because A, it saves so much time that you're not going around from doctor's office to doctor's office. So that's amazing. B, you become the go to in the community because everyone's like, oh, my God, like all these doctors at this event, like, she must be the go to in the area for this community. So I'm going to keep either sending to her. I'm going to be on her radar. I'm going to be in her world. So it puts you at a level above or step up to be like, yeah, I am the go to in the area and let's keep collaborating. Also, people understand that you're giving back to the community. Like, at our event, I'm like, hey, Julie, connect with Sally over here. Sally, connect with Sarah. Sarah, connect with whatever. I'm like, she has what you want and you have. And I was just a connector. That's all. I was a connector. And when you're a connector, you can really build a community because people like, oh, my God, like, she really is, like, helping me out. I'm helping every single person out there try to build their businesses indirectly. They don't know that, but, like, indirectly, that's why I'm doing the thing. So that's really cool. And get the patients to be able to have outcomes that they want because I know the people that could really help them. Because I was a person that is a patient that no one's been able to help solve my problem. Right. So I sympathize. With those patients. So that's huge. What else? Community events. Let me think about what I want. What else I want to say with this. You have to have a community. Google Ads and Facebook ads will only take you so far where you can max out. You could pay them, like, literally, I don't know, $10,000 a month. But you will max out and you'll be paying, like, $300 to $600 a lead because there's only so much that's going to bring you in. So if you just think, oh, just increase my Google Ad spend or my. It doesn't work like that. It really doesn't. So you got to have a community that knows you and that's going to refer to you. So that's huge. What else? You want a community so that, you know, if like, literally shit hits the fan, you can call in your community, be like, hey, Dr. Sally, I haven't gotten any patients from you, which is seeing what's going on, making sure everything's good, how are you? Blah, blah. She'd be like, oh, yeah, Kelly, sorry, I've been busy. But yeah, I'll keep sending one over because I have someone in mind. Oh, okay. Thank you so much. That right there could save your butt, like, literally from the company tanking. So you really, really want to create a community and be at events, like, literally be at events. And yes, it could take up a weekend, but who else then can do that for you if you get tired and you're like, I can't be at all the events on Saturday. Okay, well, who else in your office or someone else you hire can take that over? So I think that's important. What else about community building? Yeah, you just always want to be top of mind in your community. When they think of pelvic health, they need to be thinking of you. And how can you do that? And you do that through community because people will refer. You can also do, like, a referral program, and that helps build a community because so and so came in, they left your service, they referred so and so. And that's huge. So that could be something as well. So anyways, guys, I just want to come on and do a podcast on community building, because I'm telling you, it is the number one thing that I could say that has built orthopelvic is just knowing the community, getting involved in the community, and really being curious about what other people do and how they can actually help my patients so that I can get the best outcome, they can have the best outcome, and It's a win win for everyone. So if you're genuinely curious and really want to help the patients, then I suggest you building a very, very strong community. And overall that's going to be super beneficial for everyone involved. So hopefully you guys enjoy this today and go get after building that community. Bye guys. Thank you guys so much for listening to the podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Jane. They are the people that are going to have amazing scheduling system for your patients. They're going to provide you with a super bill, they're going to make templates for you, they're going to provide you with the best customer service. And because of that they allowed us to have a code for one free month for those that are wanting to try Jane for their scheduling, checking out super bills, telehealth, all the different options. That code is pelvibiz1mo. We'll put in the show notes but pelvibiz1mo, that is the code for Jane. And thank you so much Jane for sponsoring this podcast. If you guys want more information and want to learn how that you can keep bettering yourselves, go ahead, click the link down down below and make sure that you book a call. And we love to provide any clarity questions on any follow ups. Bye guys.
