How To Develop A Signature Solution That Convinces Patients | Episode 26

So we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics is making money. And when I started working with doctors, I realized you all are not me. You know, my dad used to call me the mayor of Elmhurst Avenue because after dinner I would go around to all the different houses and I would knock on the door and ask for cookies. And I had like a kind of a rotation. That's just kind of one of my natural giftedness. And so I always think like, okay, how do I translate that to you all? So that you can then get— make the money that you richly deserve. And so what I learned over the years is I've learned how to develop scripts and I've learned a lot about the psychology of humans. And so here we are, we're on step 3. We talked about premium pricing yesterday, and now what we're going to do is we're going to talk about scripts and signature solution. For those of you that don't know what signature solution is, I'm going to remind you again. If it hasn't stuck, you will never sell à la carte again. You will never sell à la carte again. If you choose to sell à la carte, if you choose to have packages and à la carte, you are giving power to the patient, and they're not qualified to make medical decisions about their care. Think about that. Just because they come in with a list of recommendations off of WebMD— Dr. Google, as we like to call him— It doesn't mean it's right. Your job is to protect them from themselves, and you have to design protocols that are going to give them the absolute best possible outcome known to mankind. But this is where the problem comes in, is that because you're doctors, you love to use logic, right? How many doctors love logic?

Right?

That's how you live your life, isn't it? Right? You're like, You're trained not to be emotional. Because what happens if you get emotional in the ER and somebody's coding? You can't, can you? You can't lose your shit in the surgery room, can you? You got to be under control no matter how bad it gets. You have to be in total and complete control. That is not how the world works. Everything that you've ever bought has been based on either which one of these. Everything that you've ever bought has Has it been based on emotion or logic? How many people say logic? How many people say emotion? OK. Of course, everything that you've ever bought is based on emotion. Grant's 3rd Tesla. There is zero logic for him to go from 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds. I mean, 3.2 seems fast enough, doesn't it?

Okay.

But it's the power that he feels when he goes from 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds of the 5 times he's probably done it. Okay. Okay. 10. All right. Every purchase you make is based on emotion. I'm going to prove this to you. So, by the way, the shoes you bought were based on the clothes that you have on today, the shirt that you decided to put on today. The watch you wear, the way you wear your hair, the car you drive, the home you own, the furniture in your house, the spouse you've married, the spouse you've gotten rid of, everything is based on emotion. And here's how I know this. Marriage. Marriage is the most illogical thing that humans do. It makes zero freaking sense. And based on the chuckles and the guffaws that I'm witnessing, there are a lot of you that agree with me? Yes?

Okay.

It makes zero sense to get married. Okay? Why? What's the divorce rate in America? Divorce rate on first marriages. What is the divorce rate on first marriages?

65%.

Okay. What's the divorce rate on second marriages? I'm hearing 55%, 60%, 70%. You ready? 41% of marriages end in divorce on their first— the first marriage in 15 years. 52% of marriages end in divorce after 25 years. Those are the statistics. What happens when you get divorced? Who's been divorced? Who's gotten divorced in this room? Where are all my divorcees? Okay. That was a fun experience, wasn't it? It was awesome. It was great. Worth it though. It was worth every damn penny, wasn't it, Bob? Fucking, it was the greatest. Thank you. Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, free at last. Yes, that's what I did. I'm like, fine, take it. I'll go make more. Get out of my life. Okay, the standard joke is if you are the breadwinner, it's not 50/50. Well, it is. That person gets 50— they get the assets, you get the liabilities.

Right.

In my case, I had to move out. I didn't get any furniture. I got an air mattress. I got the chocolate lab. I got my bourbon collection. I got 2 lawn chairs, and I got my humidor. That was it. That's what I got. And my clothes. She said— and she said, take the damn dog. I'm like, ah, he's kind of nice. I'll take him. So I brought Mulligan along with me. Okay. And I had to write big checks, and I had to pay for an attorney. And I had to write more big checks, right? In Katie's case, she was the breadwinner. She had to do that, right? My Katie's my wife, in case you're wondering, right? And so it's a bad deal. Child support ends in June though, by the way. I got 2 payments left. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay. And yet when you meet people that have been through divorce, you're like, so why do people get married?

Right.

We'll talk about that in a second. What's the divorce rate for second marriages? Well, 63%. What did I do 20 months ago? I got married again. Why? Why did I get married again? Why is it Katie, my wife, had to pay alimony and child support to her ex? I had to pay child support and alimony to my ex. We both had to move out of the houses that we paid for, right? And we both got leftover residual crappy furniture. Funny story, we decide to move in together, we buy a house together, we— I have the moving truck go to my place, go to her place. At that point, we'd both gotten some of the furniture from the house, and we both move it into the house. And I look at it and I tell the moving guys, I go, get this shit out of here. And he's like, what? And I go, it doesn't match, it's too dated, it's got bad juju and karma on it. Get it out of here. And he's like, we can't. And I go, come on, seriously, here's like $200. Take it, sell it, take it to Goodwill. I don't care. He goes, okay. Took all the furniture. We had no furniture in the house. We had to go out and buy all brand new furniture. Okay. So why do people get married? Why do people get married? No, what is the thing? Why do people get married? What is it? Jake? Love. How many people got married because of love? Maybe.

Okay.

Can anybody tell me what the hell love is? I mean, Foreigner wrote a book, wrote a song about it, made a lot of money on it. That was about it. I want to know what love is. Be great if you could have had that ready to play. Should have queued you up. That'd have been great.

Okay.

Nobody knows what the hell love is. What do you tell your kids? What do you tell your kids? Mom, Dad, how do I know when I'm in love? And what do you tell them?

Just know it.

You'll just know when you know. Oh, that's some great frickin' parent advice. Like, it's the stupidest damn thing in the world. We're supposed to guide these kids and we're like, eh, it's a crapshoot, kid. Good luck with that one. Just make sure he or she's not too crazy. Check the parents. Okay? We get married because of love. I can tell you how to— I can't tell you how to fall in love. I can't tell you how to stay in love. I got a better chance of explaining to you how to make love. That just made— see, again, this side of the room gets the sex jokes. This side over here is like, what's he talking about? Okay. And it's love. We get married because of love. It makes zero sense. Statistically, you're better off dying alone in a single-wide trailer. It makes zero sense To get married. Statistically, the odds are stacked against you. You want to know what the biggest divorce rate area is now? People over the age of 50. It's called the gray divorce because they look at the person, the kids leave the house, they look at the person, they go, I ain't spending the next 25 years with this person. They can't— I can't stand them. It's this unbelievable thing that's going on in our country right now. You can Google it and read about it, right? The statistics are off the charts.

Okay.

Because people are like, before they'd be like, I only got 10 more years, one of us is going to die. Now they're saying, well, shit, I got another 30. I don't want to travel with this person. Seriously, that's what the article said. That's what the research tells us. Okay. So the reason why you're not making the conversions that you want is you are trying to sell with logic and you have to sell with emotion. Because at the end of the day, this little diagram is your patient. They come to you and they are angry. They are pissed off. They are in pain. And what they want is they want to be happy again. It's fascinating. My daughter is 28 years old. She's now been married about 2 years. I think 2 years. We have this belief. It's very interesting now when you, you know, you're 56 and your kids age and you start to see them going through like a lot of the same life decisions that you went through, and you just really want to shake them and say, don't do that. I'm not suggesting my son-in-law is not a great guy. He's a wonderful guy. That's not— I don't want that to come across the wrong way. Not that he would ever see this, but I don't want it to come across the wrong way. He's a wonderful young man. He treats my daughter with amazing respect and love, and he's a great leader of them. But if you think about it from the context of your patient, it's just like, remember those days when you were alone and you weren't in love? And you wanted to be in love? You wanted to find that soulmate? That same feeling is the same feeling your prospect is having about their knee or back or elbow or hip or shoulder. They have forgotten what it's like to feel whole again. This is why people, after they get divorced, get married again. That as bad as the marriage was, They go, I just want to feel whole again. It's in our DNA that we find someone, that we find a soulmate. We want things to be— we don't want to be that angry person on the left. We want to see— we want to be that happy, smiling person on the right. In the context of marriage, this is the customer journey. The customer journey is all you're doing is you're moving them from a place of pain to a place in the future where there is no more pain. You remember that time? For some of you, it was 25 years ago. Maybe you still feel it. And you look at that person that you're married to. And by the way, if this isn't going on and you're in the room, just block out my eyes so you don't like make eye contact with them and screw it up. But, you know, remember that time like you wanted the— when you found somebody and you woke up in the morning or you're out on a dinner date or you're on a vacation and you just felt whole?

It just Felt right?

That is what your prospect is looking to find again. It is your job, it is your job to show them the way. You are their guide to being whole again. That is the job. That is what we do. In the parlance and the example of marriage, We want them to have that feeling. Do you remember that feeling?

I do.

I've been very blessed. I found an amazing woman in my life, right? She's got her idiosyncrasies and like a couple storage units of idiosyncrasies. I've got a fucking basement full of them.

Okay?

But at the end of the day, it's what people want. So that's the job you have.

Okay.

You are not selling a procedure. You are selling an outcome. You are selling their ability to play golf again, to sleep through the night without pain, to play tennis, to play pickleball, to play, to walk, to hike. It's the simplest things in the world. It's amazing to me the number of people I talk to, and I love the ones that are of the women that are like 60 plus, and they go, I just want to be able to make cookies for my grandkids and my back not hurt. It's those simple little joys in life that people want to have again. It's not about the machines. It's not about the spin rates. It's not about the platelet count in their mind. While it's important, it's not about any of that. It's about this emotion. And when you get your client out of logic and into emotion, you have full control. So how do we do that? Well, we do it first and foremost in the stairway system by targeting a very specific market with a very specific message and a very specific offer. That ability to get into emotion begins then. The reason why your leads haven't converted in the past when you use Facebook or Google or whatever is because there has been a complete bypass of creating that emotional connection. Our ads in the ED clinic were very simple: come into the clinic one time, meet with the doctor, get a test dose. If you don't see results in 12 minutes or less, we owe you nothing. You owe us nothing. That's our guarantee to you. That was the hook. That was the offer. What the emotion was, hey guys, are you tired of hearing this at night? That's okay, honey. We can try again this weekend. That was the number one phrase that we would hear from guys. We'd be like, what does your partner say? Well, she says she's very understanding. She says it's not important to her. She doesn't need that to feel close to me. We all were like, bullshit. She's protecting your little 4-year-old ego because you're a, you're a share— you're a scared little boy. And I have— I had this ad and it was true. We had a guy that came in, he was 70 years old, and he said— why? I'm like, why are you here? And he said, well, you know, I'm married to a 48-year-old woman. We have a great You know, I met her like 4 years ago. We got married almost instantaneously. Our sex life has been fantastic. And over the last like 6 to 7 months, nothing works. And he goes, you know, I've been taking Viagra and Cialis for quite some time. And we had a great time. We'd been out with some friends. We went back home. We were getting ready to make love and it didn't work. And she said what she always says. She goes, that's okay, honey. We can try again later on this week. And he said, she rolled over and I'm lying there and I'm hearing her crying herself softly to sleep at night. True story. And he said, I was up all night saying to myself, Dean, you've got to get this fixed and you got to get this under control. That is what your prospect is going through. And the sooner you understand that, the sooner you'll make more conversions. You'll make more converts.

Okay?

And you have to— getting them into emotion begins at the beginning. And in the educate and excite mode, when you're answering the questions, when Atiba comes up later this afternoon and he talks to you about creating video and he does his session and he's going to show you and talk to you about how you enter the conversation that is going on in your prospect's head. It is your job to meet them where they are. Why is it that we made this offer? We have toured across the country. We've been like a rock and roll band, packing up shit and moving it to the next town every single weekend, sometimes in the middle of the week. I've been on the road constantly. I've made 8 cross-country legs back and forth over a 40-day period from January to February, spreading the gospel of doing— of the business of orthobiologics, sharing the stage with Dr. Demers, Speaking at orthopedic surgeon events in San Francisco. I've been in Miami, I've been in San Francisco, I've been in Phoenix, I've been in Vegas a couple of times. Why is it of all the people that I talk to, of the thousands and thousands of people that I've talked to online, in our emails, with our social media, why is it that there's only this many people in the room? Because they haven't gotten to that place of pain yet. I've talked to just about every single one of you. And the reason why you're in this room is you've had enough. You have reached a point that you can't do it any longer. Your emotion has taken over. And before that, it was all logic. This is your patients. This is the journey that they are on. Okay? So we create the videos, they call, they come to see us. Then what do we say? There has to be scripts. And scripts have to be at every phase of the operation. You cannot leave anything to chance. Do you know how many times we have gone over the agenda for this event? We are here at 6:30 in the morning in the team room going over the agenda for this event, making sure that we're hitting the right points. In our clinics, every single person, they don't get to be on the phone until they are certified in how they handle a call. Can you do surgery unless you have been certified? If you have been given a blessing by somebody, you're highly trained, right? You don't just walk in one day and say, let's cut this open and see what the hell happens. You don't just stick a needle in somebody. You went through training. And yet, what do we do? We have a new front desk person that's working. We're gonna call her Donna. And Donna's gonna work with Julie. Julie's been working with you for 5 years, and you think Julie's got your back. She's got it all figured out. In reality, Judy thinks you're an asshole. Because you didn't remember her birthday, or you were cross with her one day when she forgot to like get the right setup in a room or something like that. Because, you know, doctors, you're all so— you're so understanding and calm and you never lose your shit, right? Like it's part of your freaking training, right? There's like an entire class of like how to be a complete and total a-hole, right? Okay. Somebody told me one time, Dr. Schachter told me one time of— they had a class in med school about how to not be a compassionate doctor. Like it was basically summarizing, but it's basically you don't want to have any connection with your patients. You don't want to have any. It's bad news. It's bad business to have a connection with your patients. Okay? And so then you go, okay, Donna, meet Julie because you think Julie's got your back. And Julie's like, yeah, there's a script around here somewhere. I don't follow that because the doctor doesn't know anything. He's never he or she's never to answer the phone. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And guess what happens? You pay for all these leads and your front desk person's number one job— what's the number one job? What's the front desk person's number one job in their mind? To get off the phone as quickly as possible. To get off the phone as quickly as possible. To make sure that they're not creating any extra work for themselves so that they can go home at 5 o'clock. That is the reality. I know because I've hired and trained God knows how many front desk people. Okay. So you have to have a script. You want to hear something else? Every person in our organization, including the doctors, have to get certified in the front desk. I'll never forget this. Dr. Gibbons, urologist, comes to work for me and I go, great, here's how this works. You got to work the front desk. And he's like, yeah, I'm the doctor. I go, you got to work the front desk. It's part of the culture. And you can't move on to treating patients until you get certified in the front desk. And he goes, well, how long does that take? And I said, depends on whether or not you pass the test and get certified. He goes, there's a test? I go, absolutely, there's a test. And he worked one day and he came into my office and he closed the door and he goes, please don't make me do that again. He goes, I will never, ever, ever be mad or angry at the front desk ever again. I will do whatever they ask me to do. And I shall be nice to them. And I said, well, if Latoya gives— you still got to pass the test, but if Latoya gives the thumbs up— she was the front desk person, she was from Brooklyn, so she was a tough woman. Get it? Everybody gets certified in the script. There has to be a script on the phone call. There has to be a script for confirmation calls. There has to be a script for how you check people in. There has to be a script of what the med tech covers, or a checklist of what the med tech covers, and You have to have a script. Now you have a script already, don't you? Don't you have a script already? You have a list of questions that you ask the patient every single time, correct? Yes? John, you have a list of questions you ask them every single time, not from a sales call, but asking about medical history, don't you? Yeah, for that part.

Yeah.

So why don't we have it when it comes to then asking, moving them along the line to making a sale? How many people in this room can follow a checklist and a script? What is surgery? It's a checklist. As Donnie likes to say, that count better be right or you're not closing up the patient, right? Is that what it is?

Yes.

Okay, right. You're already doing this, just nobody's ever taught you how to do this in this side of it. So you have to have a script. So what goes on in that conversation? So for the last— since 2004, I have been teaching people how to make money in some way, shape, or form. I originally got started in what we call the get-rich-in-real-estate space. My first big entrepreneurial venture was buying and selling pre-foreclosure houses and making money. Yes, just like those people you see on TV in the commercials. That was me. I made $90,000 in 90 days. And my mentor, a guy by the name of Jeff Kaller, the first guy that taught me how to do this, we had to make phone calls to people whose homes were in foreclosure. And go knock on their doors. Or if they responded to our marketing, they would call in and guess what we had?

A script.

And if I followed the script, we got the house and every deal was worth $20 grand. If I didn't follow the script, we didn't get the house. I did the math real quick in my head. $20 grand is better than none. Follow the damn script. We have a saying in our company, follow the damn script. Follow the damn script. Okay, this big money script that I'm going to share with you, I've used in probably 30 different industries. Okay, and here's the questions that you ask. What brought you in today? Matt, I've already seen them. They've been coming to see me for 10 years. Follow the damn script. What brought you in today? Geez, Doc, I was here Wednesday, you know, same knee pain. What's that pain currently like for you? Man, I don't want to ask them that question. I don't know what their pain's currently like for them. I've got 7 minutes. Follow the damn script. You want to make 10 grand or not? You want to transform a life? What are you unable to do today that you want to do again in the future? What are we selling? The future. What do politicians talk about all the time?

The future.

I see 1,000 points of light.

Bill Clinton.

I feel your pain. Funny story, actually, in the ED business in North Carolina, we're a swing state, so we get hammered with a lot of commercials. And in 2016, our call volume was down because we did— we ran a lot of radio and TV. And so I decided to run an ad doing my Bill Clinton voice. Hi, this is Bill. Has all this political information given you ED? Go see the medical team at the Carolina Men's Clinic. Tell them Bill sent you, because I believe in a place called hope. We actually had a lady call up complaining, I can't believe you hired the president. He shouldn't be doing ads like that. It's disgusting. I'm like, ma'am, would you like to talk to the president? Hi, how are you? It was pretty crude. I bet I could find it. I think I still have the recording. It was more for the staff's enjoyment than it was for actually getting it to run. But yeah, it was pretty— something about cigars and blue dresses and stuff like that. So yeah, it was pretty bad. But keep in mind, what are you unable to do today that you want to do again in the future? Ask them the question. Have you ever asked them the question? John, I'm gonna keep picking on you. Have you ever asked them the question? Right?

I did. Yeah.

What do they tell you?

Right.

They're telling you what they want to do. They're telling you your avatar. They're telling you your core customer. Okay? And what are you missing out on by not fixing this problem? So important. It's so stinking important. If you are not clear on asking this question about what are they missing out on by not fixing this problem, you are in serious, serious pain. You're in serious, serious trouble. Okay? And we've already said this. You're to have a script for everything. Front desk, med tech, exam, doctor, offer. The whole thing. When you go along and you finish the script, I don't have all the questions up here just for whatever reason, but I'll just kind of finish it for you. When we go back to this, okay, and we go back to this component of this script, there's an old adage in sales of he who mentions the money or whoever asks for the money first loses. Okay, right, Richard? All those years of selling, right? Okay. And the big mistake that people make is they rush through the close. Sales parlance. Because they have shame about asking for money. If you have shame about asking for money, you're going to rush through the close. If you think that you shouldn't ask for money, you're going to rush through the close. And And it's going to look something like this. So you go through, you're getting a lot of they're going, yeah, I want to do this. I want to be able to surf again in the future and blah blah blah. And I want to be able to walk up the steps and I want to be able to hang with my grandkids and you know chase my younger wife around the house and blah blah blah blah or chase my husband around the house, whatever it is. And then you go, okay, great. So it's blah blah blah blah blah blah. And they go, what? And what we train our doctors to do is ask a very simple question at the beginning. At the beginning, you set it up, and it goes like this. Sam, what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do. I'm going to talk to you about your situation, your condition. I'm going to ask you a number of questions. Some of these I've probably already asked you in the past, but what we'd like to do is we like to keep thorough records. Okay, so I'm going to ask you some of these questions, and we have some new ways that we can help fix and treat your condition. And so at the end of asking these questions If you would like me to share those options with you, I'm more than happy to discuss those with you and discuss the cost involved. You want me to move forward? I know what you all are thinking. Matt, they're going to ask, is it covered by insurance? And the answer to that is when they say, well, is it covered by insurance? Well, I have to see if you qualify first. How many people want to be part of something? They want to make sure that they qualify, right? Everybody wants to be a part of something. They want to be part of an organization. They want to be part of a team. Okay, and then you go through these questions, and at the end you can ask a simple question like, what would you need to know to move forward? Well, what's it cost? Well, would you like me to discuss cost with you?

Yes.

Do I have your permission to do so?

Yes.

They've just asked you to tell you how much it is, and that's where you lay out the signature solution.

Okay.

All this is gonna create predictable results, just like in medicine, and you stop competing on price. Okay, you never ever will compete on price again. I, you know, yesterday we were having these conversations about, well, what about the competition and the people down the street? I don't give a rat's ass about any competition. I never have. I've never once given a crap about what the competitor is doing because I'm better and I'm gonna stay in front of them. You tell me that there's not going to be copycat events like this that are going to be happening a year and a half to 2 years from now? Absolutely. I know it. I welcome it. I applaud it. I want it to happen. The 100,000 doctors we're going to free in the next 9 and a half years aren't going to come from Mavericks. It's going to be part of a movement that we do. I can't serve 100,000 yet. We're getting there. That's why you have Catherine. Okay, but I don't care about the competition. I welcome it. It's gonna make us better. When there's competition in the marketplace, you become better. If you believe that you're trying to find the latest— if you don't, if you think that competition is bad, then what you do is you wind up chasing the latest, greatest, bright, shiny penny, bright, shiny object-itis, thinking that's gonna give you the advantage. Those are very short-lived and they're very fleeting. They don't exist. Be better than anybody else. Focus on the process. Be excellent. Be elite. Don't be good or average. Being good sucks. Be excellent, elite. You're already excellent, elite. You're doctors, right? So stop competing on price. And how you do that is you create a signature solution. So what is a signature solution? It is creating an offer that is so irresistible That they'd be idiots not to move forward with it. Okay. We've proven, at least I believe I've proven, that price is a made-up number. It's a construct in our own brain. And what I've shown you based on marriage is that people only make buying decisions based on emotion. And if they start talking to you about price, they've gone to logic and you've lost them. You want people to be like, absolutely. Or as Roddy's— Dr. Roddy McGee's patients say, oh, is that all? I thought it would have been a lot more expensive. And then Roddy says, damn it, I didn't charge enough. Right, Jake?

Okay.

You want to create such a compelling offer that they have no choice but to move forward. So how do we do that? You are going to create the absolute best treatment plan to get the absolute best result. Now there's a reason why we have the vendors that we have here today. There's a reason why we have a laser company and we have Shockwave and we have BHRT, because all of those must be included in some way, shape, or form in your packages. Okay, so how do we create the packages? Well, we create the packages very, very simply in this way. We're going to create what's called a good, better, and best option. And the one that we're going to start with in the pricing when we show it to the patient, which one are we going to start with? The low-priced one or the high-priced one?

The best.

The best. Why are we going to start with the best? They're gonna, they're gonna show, they're gonna think that everything else is inexpensive in comparison. Okay, how many people here have bought a car recently at a dealership? Anybody? Go. Okay, what'd you buy, Jake? Tesla.

Tesla.

Which one did you buy? We went with the Model 3. Went with the Model 3. Okay. Did you look at the Y? Did you look at the S? Stared at it and said, next year, baby. How many people have bought a house recently? Okay. What do they show you first? They show you the more expensive house first.

Why?

Psychologically, you're either emotionally going to go, I can afford that because I really want that cool kitchen. Or you're going to say, well, that looks cheaper comparison, but I'll still go above my budget. And by the way, why do you think foundations, when they're raising money, when you get those mailers from like St. Jude's and they put the price, the high price first for the donation, you want to know why they do that? It increases the level of donations. You want to know how I know that? I've created direct mail pieces for those types of organizations and we test it and we know that that's how it works. We also know that if you have 3 offers, you're going to perform better than if you have 4. We've tested it. When we do direct mail— this is back 20 years ago— when we do these direct mail pieces and I would write sales copy for these organizations and we would design mailers and things like that, and I got paid a commission based on how well the thing performed, you better believe we paid real close attention to the science. And we know for a fact presenting the highest price first works. And offering 3 options, not 2, not 1, not 4, not 5, 3 outperforms it exponentially. So how this works is really, really simple. You basically— can you flip over to the iPad? Is that possible? Now look, if you want to name these and you want to name them Platinum, Gold, Silver, it's fine. In this context of this, I'm just going to call them Good, Better, and Best.

Okay.

And a best program would probably be something like BMAC or Adipose. Okay, maybe some PRP, something in the case of like 6 shockwave. Okay, or maybe that's 8 shockwave, or maybe you're gonna do something like you're gonna give them physical therapy online or something like that. And you might include hormone replacement therapy, and you might create— include oral peptides.

Okay.

All right.

And you have all these things. And let's say that this package is $15,000. Now, one of the big mistakes that people make is they go, well, you know, the PMAC is $5,000, and the PRP is $1,500, and the Shockwave is $1,800, and the PT is $1,000, and the HRT is $5,000, right? And then I'm giving you a discount over here of so much and it's $15,000. That is not a package. That is a choice for them to eliminate something. When you have open heart surgery, you don't get to choose, right? They just do the open heart surgery. And if they get in there and realize they need to do something else, guess what they do? You're open, they're gonna do something else. Okay? I once went in for a hernia and the guy said, congratulations, you had 2. I go, do I get a discount? And he laughed and walked out the door. Okay, and you go through, and then maybe in this it's just, uh, maybe it's just BMAC, right? And you only do 6 shockwave, or maybe you're doing laser here, right? And there's no HRT and there's no PT, and let's just say that's $9,500. And then the good program is just PRP, and it's like 4 shock Right? And so on down the line. And this program is, say, $5,000. And what you say is, Sam, Frank, whatever, Judy, based on your current condition, the good news is, is that you do not need— I'll use Atiba. It'd be like, so Atiba, good news is based on your current condition, you are not a candidate for Platinum. However, you— the one— you can do one of the 2 programs. You can do this, the better program, or you can do the good program. The better program is $9,500 and the good program is $5,000. What do you think the patient's gonna choose? They're gonna choose the best. I always have to step and say at this point, at no time are we ever putting somebody into a treatment protocol that they don't need. So if they aren't, if, if good's gonna get them that, be honest with them and tell them that, but let them make the choice because guess what? At my age, I don't want shit to fall apart. I want it fixed right the first time, and I'll overpay to do that. My choice, it's my money, I earned it, I have the right to spend it as I see fit. It is your job to lay out the options to them. This is not like some of the larger organizations where they've got a closer coming in and forcing people into A protocol that they don't need, right, Donnie? We talk about it all the time. They shall not be named. If somebody else mentions them, I won't say anything, but I will not name them because this is being recorded. Okay. There are organizations out there that are massive organizations that have 250 franchises and a famous football player as their spokesperson, and they put everybody no matter what into a $10,000 program and they keep hammering them until they buy. That is not what I'm talking about. We're going to do this with integrity. We're gonna do this ethically right, and we're gonna do right by the patient, and we're gonna get amazing effing results. Okay? That's what we're gonna do. And we're gonna make sure that our industry is saved and not hijacked by a bunch of venture capitalists. Okay? 'Cause Lord knows, of course venture capitalists know everything about medicine and how to treat patients, 'cause they went to Harvard. Yes? So the wording for that, you know, based on your condition, You said you don't qualify for the Platinum.

Yep.

And I don't know if you mentioned you might not need the Platinum. The wording there can be subtle but maybe important. Could you go into that a little bit more?

Sure, you bet.

I think it's a great question. So let me just erase this.

Okay.

You know, thinking that if you tell someone they don't need something, then why would you do it? Well, in integrity then, I would like— I'll use Atiba as an example. Granted, I'm not— if I was, if I was on a— if I was on Ariana's team and she had me closing, I would not let Atiba do BMAC or Adipose.

Correct.

It's overkill.

Correct.

And I would tell him, I can't do that in good conscience. It's not the best thing for you. It's going to be like killing a mosquito with a bazooka. However, So the good news is, is Atiba, this is not an option for you. We will not provide that to you 'cause you don't need it. However, either one of these programs will work. You have the better program, you have the good program. It's just really a question of which one you wanna do. And you can say, I recommend that you do this program, or you can say, I recommend that you do this program. We do circle it. But at the end of the day, the patient wants to have, they wanna be involved in their decision They don't want to be told what to do, and they want to have this conversation with their provider. This is why I believe that all the providers should be having these conversations. You should not have a salesperson. You should not be taking them out of the room, and you should not be walking them down the hallway to do this at the front desk. You're killing yourself. It doesn't work. You can argue with me all you want. I will prove it to you. You're building that relationship with them. They trust you. Does that help, John?

It does.

Okay, who's next? Behind you, did you have a question? No? Okay, go ahead.

So when we're presenting the solution and options for solutions, we need to manage expectations, patient expectations. The management of patient expectation is based upon our predictability index of the result. Some of these joints are a bit complicated. For example, Ativa yesterday, there was Well, I really need an MRI to see what the marrow— if there's marrow swelling, if I want to be using bone marrow, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Mm-hmm.

And so if I'm presenting this and I say, well, the best is out, the better and good are both good solutions. I'm recommending one over the other, but both are good solutions for you. Would you recommend that I say— that we interject, you know, this is a level of my predictability.

No, don't go there. Okay, here's why. How many people believe that you can reduce somebody's joint pain by 70% using orthobiologics? Do you think that a 70% improvement in joint pain is a significant improvement for your patient? Would that make them happy? Leave it at that. We know we're not going to get them 100%. Look, I know my back is always still going to be a little Funny. I mean, Ash and Ariana are fantastic, but at the end of the day, I am 56 years old, okay? And while I do everything I possibly can, I had a couple of cocktails last night and I smoked a cigar. I know all of that is not good for the recovery of my back, but screw it, I enjoy it, okay? Right? I mean, you know, but if I'm at 70%, that's a huge massive win. My elbow still has little twinges in it. I don't care. I'm playing golf. Don't go into this probability discussion with them.

Okay?

Does that help? Because you're going into logic. You just went into logic because that's how you think. It's emotion. They don't really give a shit. It's a massive improvement. Okay, next. Yes, sir. Sam. Good morning.

Good morning. Your best, better, good. One of the reasons so many restaurants have a $1,000 bottle of wine It's to sell the next one for $500.

Absolutely. I didn't buy the $1,000 bottle of wine the other night on you, Jackie.

For those of us getting started, the scripting— I had a friend of mine who made it up to be CEO of the largest pharmaceutical chain in Canada, and he went to medical school and did an MBA. And his first job after the MBA in an internship was scripting. He spent 2 years doing scripting.

Yep.

So I, you know, getting started with the scripting for the 4 types of services, and we don't necessarily have all these devices on day 1 or day 60.

Yep.

But I still like the idea of 3 price points. Perhaps this is more a question for Dr. Buford or Dr. DeMars of As you're just getting started, what can you offer as the 3 different services?

Just make it really simple. Just go PRP. And are you doing adipose or BMAC?

No. Okay.

Don, what you do a lot of— you want to answer this? Because I think your insight would be very helpful on this.

Yeah. And all of us are in that situation. Very few people start off with everything offered, right? So one of the things you can do is you can offer PRP with PRP again in 6 months. If someone has an advanced stage of knee OA, for example, you can offer a treatment protocol that's based in science where you do weekly PRP at the beginning and maybe revisit that a year later. But there's different ways. If you only have one service line, there's different ways to package that. You can package that, you can partner with a physical therapist. Yep. You know, that's in your office or down the street, that's a buddy, or with a chiropractor. So there's ways to do it.

Yeah, you can. There's online, it's Go something or other. There's an online app for physical therapy. What's the name of it? Do you remember, Colin? Ryan? Anyway, I have some doctors that have just started using that and there's kind of like pre-done. They're not great, but they're a start. Package some stuff together. Are you doing IVs?

I'd like to learn more about IVs.

I provide a lot of— You stick it in the vein and you put shit in the IV and it goes into their body.

I do IV services, but I'm not familiar with all the peptides and combinations of things. I have an IV service. Okay.

So you could do PRP. You— if you don't have a laser, if you don't have shockwave, you don't know how to do IV, you could do something. You can make a deal with an IV— local IV bar and send it to them.

And—

I have shockwave and IV right now.

Okay, perfect. Then do shockwave, IV, and PRP. Look, there is— I'm not here to tell you what the golden protocol is. That's your job based on what you believe is the best thing. There's brilliant minds in this room. I highly recommend that you all be part of Data Biologics and get on their registry. and you put your data in there. We have all— there's all kinds of great information. I make it $0 to tell you that, okay? Attend stuff like Orthosono and IOF and do this stuff online, and AOM, that they have all this evidence-based stuff. You were at IOF. Like, there's a lot of great information that's coming out right now. And so use that to your advantage from the standpoint of understanding what are the things you can plug in. I'll give you an example of this, and Roddy, I'm going to use you as an example. Roddy, is an orthopedic surgeon in Las Vegas. You'll hear from him in a little bit. But Roddy just started doing PRP, right? You didn't— you don't have a machine yet. You're just getting ready to buy your first shockwave, right? Yeah. So he's just starting there, but he understands the progression of where he's going. If you don't have anything else, then just start with PRP. But for the love of God, charge at least $2,700 on it and make sure that you're getting a great spin rate and a great cell count. If you're not, please go see Plymouth. If you're If you're doubting whether or not you are getting the right cell count, please go see Joanne and her team at Plymouth. There's a reason why they're here. There's some— their cell counters, great. They have a phenomenal system for getting the best cell count, right? Go talk to them. And if you're charging enough, you're going to be able to pay for this stuff without having to finance it up to your eyeballs. Okay, does that help, Sam? Great. Any other questions on this? Okay. Yes.

Yep.

Can we pass it over, please? Nice. That wasn't too scary, was it? No.

Kinda.

Kinda.

Is this a handout that you're actually a piece of paper you're giving them, or are you just speaking through something?

All right. There are a lot of different ways you can do it. Okay. I will tell you how we did it and we do it in our clinics. We write it out like that.

Okay.

Okay.

I like that.

We, we tested, I'm not kidding you, we test everything, right? We tested having it hand, you know, printed out, making it look all nice and everything. And we tested writing it out on a yellow legal pad. And then we tested writing it out on the white paper of the exam table. Guess which one performed better? Writing it out on the white paper of the exam table. Okay? We've tested this like in probably 4 different modalities, right? Not just in the ED space. I have other clients like Tracy Gappin who's in the functional medicine space. He charges $25,000 for his program for high-end precision health. His package is like $10,000 to $25,000 and he's getting ready to open up location 2 and 3 this year. And he has beautifully done things and he's got them all, but— and that works for him, for his environment. But here's the big thing: if you have it pre-printed, do not under any circumstances put the price on the paper. Handwrite it in. And the reason why is what's going to happen as soon as you hand them the piece of the paper? Where are their eyes going to go? And you're going to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Womp womp womp womp womp womp womp womp womp. Okay. All right. So that's one of the ways you can do it. The other question I get all the time is. Well, should we mention the price over the phone? It depends. In the functional medicine space, we do more of that, of the prequalification, than we do in the orthobiologic space, okay? Because in the joint pain space, they have real pain and it's causing a lot of issues for them. In the functional medicine space, they don't understand how much pain they're in, okay? We do not put any pricing on any websites ever, ever, ever. We've tested. Don't do it. There's no context. There's no content. They don't understand the value. It's your job to create the value. Value is derived by emotion in the future that you're selling them into. Okay, don't believe me? Test it. Take your prices off your website. I promise you. You will do better, provided you follow these kind of steps and scripts.

Okay?

Again, we test— this is what I do. I test this stuff. The data always wins. We have a saying in marketing, the math always wins. It's just data. It's not a personal thing. You have a personal argument all you want in marketing, right? But the data is the data. See, our data is a lot more clear, by the way, than your data, because our data is based on our pocketbook. The data in medicine primarily is based on somebody's agenda. There's very few places where the data, like what we do in data biologics, or the research that IOF or Don's doing or Arian is doing, that's pure data in my space because there's not an agenda. We're answering a question. We're not trying to prove a point. In marketing, you can't fake proving a point because you don't have any money left. Okay, so that's how we operate in our world. Uh, can we hand that over to Doug? And then I'm gonna bring you guys up here in just a minute. Thank you. The question I had was, in your experience, do you prefer that the doctor be responsible for the converting, or can that be delegated to someone else and the doctor just kind of stays in their lane and then hands that conversion discussion packages over to another person on the staff? Well, I prefer— it's kind of like this. I think my wife would have been really upset that after me spending all that time dating her and getting to know her, at the altar there was so somebody else.

Okay.

Mm-hmm. I believe the doctor, the PA, the NP should be having these conversations because when you change the person midstream, right, you know this in sales, it's they're buying because of the relationship with the salesperson, right? In your industry, in my industry. And so that you want them to develop that relationship and if you hand them off, so what I like to have happen is what I believe should happen. I don't have 100% data on this. So this is, I don't, I can't, I can't empirically tell you that this is the case. However, my— what I have— what I see as a tendency is if they— the doctor then says, okay, great, they're going to move forward, and they take them out to the front desk, you usually lose that sale 50% of the time. Because what happens? There's a real thing in life called buyer's remorse. We've all felt it, right? Sometimes you felt it right after you got married, but that's another topic. Okay, if you're still with that person, they're sitting next to you, Lock on me. Okay. All right. But yeah, I, that's my experience is I think that if you're— that transaction should happen in the room. There's a whole psychology thing that I would have to do like an entire hour on of what's going on, but you're in that room and that's kind of becomes like this intimate space, if you will, without getting really creepy. But that's what's going on in there. And you've created this environment and they say yes, get the credit card. You can take the credit card and walk outta the room and go run the charge. But then bring everything back into them, and you can bring somebody else back in in your team of saying, okay, now here's Devin who's going to then schedule your stuff. I'm looking forward to treating you. She'll get you on the calendar.

Blah blah blah blah.

Okay. All right. Any questions on that?

Yep.

All right. Let's go over here to the left-hand side. Let's toss that baby.

Vinay Belamkar. I'm in Indianapolis Interventional Pain. One of the common pushbacks I get, and I don't know how to address it, is. They want like, oh, I talked to the surgeon, I'm gonna need surgery, what are the chances I can avoid surgery? And the other thing is, do I have to do it again, or what are the chances this will work and I spend all this money and I still have surgery? And they have the surgeons in their inner ear saying you need surgery. So that's one of the things that I don't want to tell them, yeah, this 100% is gonna work every time, which is not true. At the same time, I think this is a great option. I tell them, if it were me or my family member, this is the option I would go before surgery. And we'll have to wait and see how things evolve, but that's kind of the script. What have you seen that seems to—

I'm gonna let the doctors handle this. I'm gonna let Ariana go first. You want to handle this? And then I know Donnie wants to say something.

Thanks for not throwing that at me. I appreciate that. Yeah, so I think when you are a surgeon, it may be a little bit easier to say, Good news, you don't need surgery. You need this injection that's not covered by insurance. They're like, oh great, great news, I just got told I don't need surgery. When you are in the position that the surgeon who only has a hammer because everything looks like a nail and they offer surgery or surgery or surgery, then it is a little bit more difficult But you hit it on the head. You just told them if it was your family, if it was your mom, dad, brother, sister, something relatable. And I would do this all day long. I tell the story that I needed surgery on my finger. That's a true story. I tore my ligament and I went to the surgeon and he told me that I needed surgery. It was a complete tear. And that I would be out of work 6 weeks and maybe I would get back to operating. I did not have surgery. I had PRP. I did it myself because I'm a moron.

In a hand, no less.

In my own hand. Was it worth it?

Yes.

I tell them that story, say, you know what, I too have been told I had I needed surgery and I didn't have the guts. I didn't think it was worth it. I couldn't take time off and I chose this PRP. I had no idea if it was gonna work, but that was better than getting surgery.

Yeah.

And you can borrow that. I mean, I'm sure— did you want surgery on your, your tennis elbow?

No. Hell no.

No. Did it— would a surgeon have told you with a grade 2 tear that you needed surgery?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Why didn't you go to him?

Exactly. So, they've gone to the surgeon, they've gotten the surgical opinion. Great. You never want to throw other doctors under the bus and be like, oh, that moron, that idiot doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Right? Be like, that's amazing. That's their perspective. I wonder if we could talk about how we may be able to avoid or delay surgery.

It's a great way to say it.

How do you avoid or delay Because I didn't say, oh, this one treatment's going to cure you and you're never going to need surgery. No, I didn't say that. Can we try to avoid— let me help you see if we can delay or avoid surgery altogether. That's what the name of the game is. This is disease-modifying medications. This is disease-modifying treatments. Can we modify it where you'll never need surgery?

No.

No, maybe, I don't know. Yeah, it depends on the patient. So yeah, I, I, it's hard, it's a little bit more tricky, but that's all they have. Let's think of a different perspective. Maybe we can talk about a less invasive way to help you return to your active lifestyle.

Remember, Vinnie, all they're trying to do is they want to get back to doing the thing that they love. Don, you have any comments on this?

I know you, uh, I'm not throwing Thank you.

I'm not catching it.

You know, I help you.

I would even tie it back to the, to the script at the beginning, because one of the questions— and you may tweak the verbiage a little bit— but one of the questions we ask up front is, what would a successful outcome look like for you? And that's even before we get into the packages. We're not even at that stage. This is at the beginning. And that way you've already kind of addressed that, because when it comes down to discussing the packages and maybe they've had another opinion, It's like, well, at the beginning you said a successful outcome would be still having a little bit of pain but being back on the pickleball court, you know, and not having to ice down. Well, I think I can deliver that in a non-surgical fashion, and here's the 3 ways that we could do it. And so at least in my practice, that doesn't even— I realize I'm a surgeon, but that doesn't come up very much because we've addressed that concern up front by what is your successful outcome. And the better surgeons do that too with surgical procedures too.

Yeah.

Yep. And you would create video to that effect, right? When you learn how to do that, you would say, hey, something like— I know people will come up with something better, but basically be like, hey, what do you do if your surgeon is saying PRP doesn't work? Well, let's talk about PRP. Let's talk about the data behind it. Let's talk about the science behind it. If you're— are you familiar with Data Biologics? Are you on the registry?

Not yet.

Okay, you want to join and then you can put in your data. And then you'll have access to all that data. But the data is abundantly clear. You know, you can't host a regenerative orthobiologics event without mentioning Chris Centeno. But Chris did a great infomercial— or infomercial— info infomercial. Could you imagine Centeno doing an infomercial?

I actually—

That, that would make— that would make the world explode, right, Don? Sorry, Chris, I didn't mean to insult you if you're listening. So, but if he made an infographic about all the results, and it's still out there, yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, so get access to that.

And here's the other thing, when the patient describes what they're looking for, if you can't deliver that with these options, don't lie to them. Say, you know, I don't think I can deliver that. You've got 2 choices, either it really is a surgical problem, or you have to modify their expectations to be in line with what you can deliver.

Yeah.

And that still has to be okay for them.

Yep. Yeah, look, if you can't help the patient, then be honest with them. Don't just give them, you know, don't put them into a $15,000 program because you gotta make payroll. That, yeah, that would be the other national chain that shall not be named. It's like Voldemort around here. Oh, one last— anyone? We'll take one last question and then we have some other things that we have to do. Any final questions on this? Was this helpful for you all? Did this help bridge a lot of the gaps? Yes?

Awesome.

Thank you.