Why Businesses Need to Build Communities

Welcome to Pelly biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelic physical therapy, and now I'm helping pelvic health professionals do the same. Each week I give you the knowledge you need to grow your practice. Let's get into today's episode.

This is Hannah, content producer for the Pelvis Podcast. The Pelvis Podcast is sponsored by Jane.

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That offers intuitive features like booking, charting and billing to help run your practice. And Jane use payments are an everyday part of running your practice. With that in mind, They've created a PCI compliant payment solution called JanePayments that offers flexible online and terminal payments for your practice. With Jane payments, you can collect a credit card through an intake form or your online booking payment policy, which can be charged later on. You can also send payment request emails or texts to collect outstanding balances. You can learn more at Jane App Payments or use the code pavibizonemo at jane app app/start to receive a one month grace period applied to your new Jane account. Now let's get into today's episode.

Today we're going to talk about how to build a community. This, I would say, is the number one business tip that I can give anyone and everyone when it comes to building a business. You have to build a community. You have to. It's a must. So I'm first going to start out with talking about how I build a community for orthopelvic. Just a little backstory here. I moved from Southern California to Northern Virginia. No one knew one single thing about me. I didn't know anyone. I've never lived here before. And I came in like a brand new person that no one had a freaking clue who I was. So now I'm trying to start a business and I don't even know the areas. You know, I'm still at the phase of like, you got to put the, the GPS on to go to the grocery store type things like. That's the phase I'm at. Okay? So I'm at that phase and I'm thinking, hmm, how am I going to get to know people? Well, I first lived in an apartment building and because of that apartment building there was a gym. And I'm like, well, active people have to hang out at the gym, so they probably want help. So why don't I develop business cards and put business cards in the gym? So that's what I did. Then someone decided to contact me through those cards. Being in the gym. And they're like, hey, you know, I love, like, I see you do Pilates. I would love if you could, like, teach fitness classes in this gym that we have here in our building. I'm like, you know what? Great idea. So then I. Property management denied me of that opportunity because I had to have, like some liability thing, you know, whatever the rules are. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do this and not tell them. I mean, what are they going to do? I'll say, you guys are my friends. So instead I put. We. I started a Facebook group for my building and I started putting messages in there. Hey, guys, anyone that wants to join, meet me at the gym at 7 o' clock tonight. So we would meet at the gym and I would just do free circuit training where I would go in, set up. We had kettlebells, we had ellipticals. I would just use whatever gym equipment we had, and I would just get people together and do workouts for free. But I just started getting to know my community. On top of that, I have a very cute golden doodle. Her name's Lulu. For those people that don't know. And Lulu has made me thousands and thousands of dollars. Okay, So I highly recommend maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. I highly recommend getting a cute dog if you don't have one. That's part of the marketing strategy that they will bring you lots of people right straight to you. You don't have to ask anyone to come up to you. So because of Lulu, we were meeting up with these doodle groups. So if you're. Whatever your interest is, ours was our dog, and we're still obsessed with our dog. So we would go and meet up with people that had doodles. And that's how we started to develop friends in many of the cities that we lived, because we'd go and hang out with dog people because they were our people. So we would do that and we started meeting people and people would be like, so, like, what do you do? And they would be like, what do you do? And you would tell them, like, hey, I'm just starting this company. This is what I do. You know, if you know, anyone heard anyone, like, please let them know. And I just started talking with people through these meetup groups. So, you know, if your thing is candle waxing or candle making or whatever it is, go find meetups that people make candles and go start talking to those people, because those are your people. You're gonna feel very comfortable around those people. And so, you know after that, I started to build that community of like, oh, this is what Kelly does, and she's Lulu's mom. So that's number one. I just got. I went out there and I just put myself out there with my dog's help and just started talking to people. That's the number one thing, is just getting out there and how you're gonna strike up a conversation. You have a cute dog, they come over to pet your k. Can I pet your cute dog? Yeah. Hey, cool. Do you live around here? Awesome. Me too. Great. What do you like doing? That's how you strike up a conversation. That's literally it. So for those introverts that are like, I hate talking to people, get yourself a cute dog. You don't have to try any harder than you would, than you would like. You're just. The dog attracts everyone. That's number one. Number two, what I have done. So then I started doing that. So then after that, I was like, okay, what else can I do to get. Get eyeballs, like, how do I keep building a community to give back to people, to feel that, you know, I can help solve their problem and that we could all collaborate? What I found, coming from Northern Virginia or coming to Northern Virginia from California, people here don't really talk for people that don't know Northern Virginia. And I'm just very generalizing, but Northern Virginia is work, work, work culture. There is very. There's not that good of balance here. It's all about work. Compared to in California, I found my personal experience, I found that it was more a work life balance. Okay, so people here work until 9.

O' clock at night.

That is like an expectation. Not in my clinic, but that is kind of an expectation here. That being said, I'm like, how can I get these busy, busy people to take a breath and let's all hang out together? So I'm like, where are people connecting at? So then I started researching Facebook groups that had female entrepreneurs in them to connect with and see what are people doing in this area, what businesses are in this area. So I start literally going to these networking events. I. I knew no one, and everyone was a lot older than me, by the way. And I would just show up with my orthopelvic shirt on. Everyone's kind of more dressed up, and I was dressed down, and I just had my logo. And I'm like, hey, I'm new to the area. Like, you know, tell me a little bit more about your company. And I just started connecting with other business owners and other Business owners actually want to provide you with a lot of value and help you out. So they're like, hey, you should talk to this person. You should talk to this person. And I would literally go and talk to that person. So again, it was a lot of in person connection. And but online also helped me out because through Facebook is where I was able to see where these meetups were actually happening. Okay. And then I use those Facebook groups. This is number three. I use those Facebook groups to then start giving straight up value to these people. So every single day during the pandemic, I went on to this like 35,000 group member, all female group in my area. And I would teach Pilates for free for 30 minutes to an hour on there. And I would go live in that group and just give free Pilates classes to anyone and everyone that wanted to watch and it would be saved on there. So they go back and watch it. I never promoted my company. I just said, hey guys, I'm Kelly. I love teaching Pilates and I know most of you guys because Pandemic can't go to the gym right now. So I'm going to come on every day and teach you guys Pilates. And I would get my workout in, so it was a win for me. And I would meet people through there because they would be DMing me. Hey, you know, I saw that you did this. This is so cool. It's so amazing that you're doing this for our community. And I got tons of messages and tons of contacts through that. So that's another way of how you're building your community and getting out there many different ways. Then I decided to do a Be well Women Summit. I saw that there was a need that no one in the community was really talking, especially at these networking events. It was just like, hey, here's my card. It's all about me. Call me if you need if you have this problem. But I didn't really feel that like the hairstylist that was in town was connecting with the tattoo artist. And why were we not working together to help support each other's businesses? I just didn't understand that. So this is why I created a Be well Women Summit where I got 40 locally women owned businesses together. And they were from all walks of life, like a plastic surgeon and a divorce attorney, a makeup artist, a hairstylist, a Botox person, like all the businesses that you could think of and we compiled them together and we did a two day online summit and had over a thousand people from the community come on to Hear these speakers come on about their businesses, these female owned businesses come on and talk about themselves and give value to people that were on to then be able to promote their services and get people to know about them. And it was fantastic. So while I was setting up that event, I was able then to connect consistently with these business owners because we had to keep going back and forth, like, can I have your picture? Can I have your logo? What are you going to talk about? Like, this is the time you're talking all the details, right? So for like four months, I was in their ear of like, oh, orthopelvic again. Oh, orthopelvic again. And they would be consistently remembering me. So just that indirectly they started to refer to me because they're like, oh, this person is doing this. She's on my mind. Because I was on their mind, they would send to me. I also have shops in my area and we can walk to them again. Another reason to have a dog. I would just walk around to the shops. I love shopping. And I would just talk to the people at the register. Hey, how you doing today? Nice to see you again. You know, why is that okay if I bring you dog treats? Because my dog loves coming in here every single day. And I know it's annoying that I'm stealing your dog treats. So can I bring you. Can I just keep restocking your dog treats? Yeah, sure, Kelly. Great. Because of that, because of my dog again, I decided to go around to all the shops and give them a cookie jar of dog bones so that my dog Lulu can go around to every single shop every single day and get a treat from them. And healthy ones, okay? I'm not trying to make my dog obese over here, but healthy ones so that I can go in there and talk to these people every single day. And you're probably like, kelly, what the heck do you talk about? I don't talk about my business. They know about my business. Cause somehow I'm sure that got brought up at some point. But I just say, how are you doing today? Like, carry on a normal conversation, which I know now is like very rare for most people to actually talk to people in person. But if you can build those connections in person, it's gonna be way more valuable than someone online. It's just the reality. It's way more impactful when you can meet someone in person. So that's how I started to. Everyone knows me now in this shopping center because we go there pretty much every other day and I just talk to them how's your. How's your daughter doing? Oh, she had a baby. Okay, great. Like normal small talk that you would be having, like, that's what we do. I would also do just events. Like I would host events in my neighborhood. So if you guys live in a neighborhood, host free events, host like workshops there, or host, teach classes. If you're really great at cooking, teach them how to cook something that's like, you know, in budget or if you're really good. Like, for me, I taught Pilates. So during the pandemic, while I was also streaming it live, I also told my neighborhood to come out in person. What is it, 7ft apart or 5ft apart? Whatever it was 4ft, 4ft apart. And we would do Pilates as I was live streaming. So I was like double dipping to where I was gaining in person. But I was also getting online. So that really helped me as well build my community and get to know people. Also, I was like on the board of my community. It was brand new community. And I started a Facebook group and I just got people in that group and welcomed them. And I would throw just night parties, you know, at our houses, and we would do like crawls, garage crawls that I came up with. Um, and we would go from house to house to house and just have a cocktail with a, with a, you know, different food. And I would just get really involved. I love people. So if you are someone that loves people, you should be able to easily build a community. Now if you're on this podcast and you're like, look, Kelly, I hate people. This is my husband. I hate people. I'm an introvert. Okay, cool. Well then get yourself a dog. And your dog is really going to help you be able to talk to people, because your dog's basically going to talk for you. But make sure it's a cute dog so people come up to you. So I mean, but for real, if. If you're like, I'm such an introvert, well, then do online. All the introverts, like, online anyway, so you can talk online to people, but instead of saying like, thanks, congrats, like, put a longer sentence in there. Wow, your. Your new space in the wall color looks amazing, Sally. This is so awesome. Congratulations. That's going to be way more impactful than. Or congrats in the comment section. So if you really want to get to know people in your community, search, like go online, search who's around you, what companies are around you, and start commenting on those people, start liking all their posts and start really getting to know them, give them a DM and put your face in a video and be like, hey, I'm Kelly. I'm new to town. I saw that you have this amazing juice company. I would love to hear more about it. With love. You know, if you could message me back and give me more details about your company. Thanks. That's it. I'm not mentioning my company. And then let them talk and then you can respond back to them. So there's many different ways to build, you know, build a community, but that's truly what I did for Orthopelvic. I just went out there and talked to anyone and everyone. You have to be willing to do that. And the more that you're willing to do that, even though that's so uncomfortable, I know for many people, the faster your business is going to grow and the more impact you're going to have because you're able to spread your message to the masses instead of just like from your house and it's smaller. Like, it just when you can really get out there and talk to people, it's a massive, massive impact. And then I have to say, for Pelvibiz, how I build a community around, that is I have gotten, you know, all of us, we have 20 female entrepreneurs that are in my Mastermind class. And I couldn't be more proud of every single one of those women that are in that group. Every single one of them, they are just phenomenal, phenomenal human beings. Just everyone gets along. We all vibe together because we're all going through the same thing. And it's just. It's a freaking amazing when you can just have such a supportive group that can just. If you're having a bad day, they're going to be there for you. If you're having major wins, we're all going to be cheering you on like that. To me, community is what I build and it's what I love building. Because when you have support like that, I really like the support aspect of it. Like, anything can happen to you and you're gonna be like, it's gonna be a good day. Cause I got my people. Like, they got my back. And you'll figure it out because you got your people. And so that's why for Pelvibiz, I have events for Pelvi Biz, especially in person, because I believe that that's where the most impact has had. So if you've never been to a Pelvibiz event, number one, you should come. So many people, so many pelvic health therapists are going to be coming together and they're going to be talking about their businesses and they're going to be collaborating. And if Sally in California know knows Josie in Northern Virginia, well, guess what? When Josie has a contact come in from online that says, hey, do you know anyone in California? Well, why, yes, I do. I know Sally in California. Let me refer to you. Or can you guys collaborate online to where, if you like, this just happened. In my mastermind, we had two people, one's from Alabama, one's from Texas. They collaborated together to talk about peds physical therapy online so that both of their audience could see it. And now they're cross collaborating with each other. And some of you guys on here may think, well, that's competitive. You're like, they're competitors, aren't they? No, they're actually getting the knowledge out there to the masses and it's only going to benefit actually all of us. So we can all not think of each other as competitors and think of each other as, hey, you spread the word. You spread the word. You spread the word. This is a part of the community, right? You spread the word. Then we can all get out there to. To have all of our businesses grow and all of our businesses thrive because people now know what pelvic health is. So that is the importance, the importance of community. Because there's so much collaboration that could be had in the community and not look at it as my competitor or someone that's going to take business from me, which most of us in health care think that's going to happen, and that's not the reality, then we are all going to win. We're all going to win. So in 2023, you have to think about who are you going to collaborate with and how if you have a collaboration like what extra value is that going to add to your current clients, it's going to add massive value because maybe whoever you collaborate with, if you collaborate with the right person, doesn't have the skill set that you have and vice versa. So you guys can both serve each other's audience, but you're serving more people, which means more eyeballs on your things, which means overall, your message is going to get out more, and that means you create more impact. And for me, I don't know, that's what I love. I love impact and community. You know, there's just so many things I say about community. Community is key. Community and collaboration. I'll say that again. Community and collaboration is key. Going into 2023, you have to have it and if you don't know how to build it, please reach out. But hopefully this podcast gave you some tips and tricks on how you're going to start getting out there and creating a community so that you can be known in your community for the go to for pelvic health or your female business that you have, whatever that may be that you are the go to for that. I consider myself a business and life coach. Are you ready to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur? If so, let's chat. See the episode notes below and go ahead and book a call. See you all next week.