In this talk, Matthew Gillogly explains that patients are often intimidated by doctors, which prevents the essential know‑like‑trust dynamic that drives patient acquisition and retention. He argues that physicians must appear human rather than perfect, sharing relatable imperfections and personal setbacks to foster connection. Gillogly illustrates this by recounting his own experiences of personal bankruptcy, a divorce after 25 years, and multiple business failures, emphasizing that vulnerability signals authenticity. He likens this to public figures whose admissions of flaws increase their popularity. The core prescription is to deliberately reveal modest personal struggles to make patients see the doctor as a fellow human, thereby converting fear into trust. He concludes with a call‑to‑action for his book, “The Anatomy of a 7‑Figure Medical Practice,” directing listeners to Chapter 5 for a deeper dive.
Chapters
If you wanna make sure that you're, again, one of our key things that we talk about in Mavericks all the time is people are gonna buy from and work with people that they know, like, and trust. Okay, so how do you do that? How do you, because the reality is most patients are a little bit scared and a little bit intimidated by doctors. Now that doesn't happen as much now because of Dr. Google. They now, they come in with a, printout of telling you exactly how they want to be treated. But for the most part, still the overwhelming majority of Americans, they are a little slightly intimidated by physicians. So, but that's not know, liking, and trusting. That's actually fearing, and that's not a good thing. So let's talk about how you're going to handle both of them. So let's start with the latter first. Let's talk about the people that are a little bit slightly intimidated by you. That fear that they have of you is not know, like, and trust. And so what you have to do is you have to be viewed as human by them. And how you get people to think of you as human, as a normal human being, is you show that you are just like them. So what does that mean? I'm certainly not going to tell you to share about your latest vacation or, you know, a detailed story about how you and your spouse had a fight that week, right? Or whatever. But I'll give you an example of how I do this. I was standing in front of a room of doctors and I was talking about how to grow your practice. And one of the guys goes, But Matt, you really have your act together. You, you seem like everything you do touches turns to gold. And I reminded him that I went through personal bankruptcy in 2010, that my marriage of 25 years collapsed, that I've had numerous business failures, that, you know, I mean, the list goes on and on, right? So the thing is, is that you have to show them people like people who are like them. So you have to show them that you are not perfect. I know this is really hard. You're trained to be perfect. I get it. Everything that you've been doing since you decided you're going to be a doctor at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, whatever age it was, has been about perfection. I get that. But to show that you're slightly human, okay, that's how people are going to know you. They're going to like you a little bit more, and then they're going to trust you. They don't trust people who are perfect. They trust people that are imperfect. My God, just look at our politicians. Right? I always use the analogy, you know, Bill Clinton's popularity actually went up during the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal over time because you know what people are like? Yeah, okay, that makes sense, right? To this day, I've always said that if Bill came out and goes, damn right I had sex with the intern, everybody would have gone, all right, okay, makes sense, okay. But so you get the point, right? Be human. Want to learn more? Get this book right here. It's The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice and go to chapter 5. That's on page 60, and I dive deep into this topic in chapter 5. Get the book, click the link below, get your free book, free copy sent to you. It'll be mailed directly to your home. Get it today.
