Matt explains how doctors build patient trust by understanding two types: those intimidated by authority who need to see you as human, and skeptical patients who distrust the medical system. He recommends sharing your own failures like bankruptcy to humanize yourself, and offering alternative treatments like hormone replacement to show independence from insurance pressures.
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 no liking and trusting, that's actually fearing, and that's not a good thing. When it comes to building rapport, you have to realize that your patient falls into 2 very distinct categories. One is they don't trust you. Those are the people that walk in with the printouts from Dr. Google or WebMD, and they're telling you how they want you to treat them. They don't want your opinion. They want to come in and tell you how their care should be taken care of. The second group of people are the people that are a little bit in awe of you. Now, the first group, let's be frank, they're more and more prevalent today. Each and every single day, it seems like more and more people have all the answers and they don't really need you. But the second group of people, they're actually in a little bit of awe. They're probably slightly intimidated by you. 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 your 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? I've— to this day, I've always said that if Bill came out, he 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. Now let's talk about that first group, that first group that is skeptical of you. Now this is a much more delicate practice. What you have to do is it's going to take some time to turn them. And what you do is you share insights about medicine that are different than the normal prescription. Remember, the person that's coming to you and they don't trust you, that they're going to Dr. Googling and getting an answer or going to WebMD or getting an answer or posting their lesion on Facebook and asking their friends, what is this? What do I do about it? And then they come to you and they tell you what they wanna do. They actually are coming to you because their only reason why they're there is they're begrudgingly there. And they start with the premise that doctors don't know anything. Really, that's exactly what they think. They think— they start with the premise that doctors really don't know anything. And the reason why they don't know anything is because they've spent their entire life in med school, which makes absolutely no sense why they would come to that conclusion. But that's another topic for another day. Okay? So you have to understand, they're coming from a place of they don't trust you and they don't trust the establishment. So they are people— I always joke like they're the people that think that maybe we didn't really actually land on the moon, or that 9/11 was truly an inside job, or blah blah blah blah blah. Pick the conspiracy theory that you want to pick, right? Because they have a great distrust of leadership, and that's really a byproduct of social media today in the whole world that we live in. So your goal is to show them that you are not part of the system, that you are actually looking for the best way to treat the patient, not simply being a shill or a mouthpiece for the insurance company and the hospital group. Okay, so this is why offering things like hormone replacement therapy, orthobiologics, fixing menopause with not just giving them Wellbutrin and Lexapro, right? Like doing all of these things and showing them and educating them that you believe that there is a different way. Because Mavericks and Mavericks like to run together. Okay, Iconoclasts and Iconoclasts like to run together. So you have to show them that you're not like the typical doctor, that you're not part of the system and part of the team. Want to learn more? Get this book right here. It's The Anatomy of a Seven-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.
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