Stop Marketing Your Practice Like a Hospital

My wiring is to be very bold.

Yeah.

Right? Like, totally fuck it. Let's try it. But what happens is that society gives you a little nick and a little nick and a little nick. Totally. And then like all the wiring of your growing up, like what my mom would say, and, you know, usually entrepreneurs have conservative parents and so they get that voice going. And what happens is that we think it's wrong for us to have multiple different things going on.

Mm.

It's fine as long as you have an orchestrator or an implementer. You didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Cologli, and on Out of the System, hosted by Dr. Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding healthcare entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels, and builders who are creating bold, profitable, patient-centered practices and doing it their way.

Yes, man.

How the hell are you, bro?

Dude, I'm amazing. Welcome back.

And oh, you're in OC. Look at me talking like I'm a fricking born and raised in California, son of California. You, uh, you left Idaho.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a great joke about Idaho, but I, if I say it'll, you know, anyway, so I'm with Sammy Casa of the Casa Collective. Casa or Casa?

Casa.

Casa.

Casa Collective. Yeah.

Casa Collective.

Yep.

I met Sammy 4 years ago. 4 years ago when you were working at Idaho. What was the name of it?

Uh, it's now called Functional Medicine Institute. FMI.

FMI. Functional Medicine Institute. Yeah. It's in Boise, Idaho.

Yep.

A lot of providers. Yes. Part was part insurance, part cash at the time. Yep.

Um, and that's where our worlds collided.

That's where our worlds collided. You were in charge of the marketing of a behemoth. Yeah. Right. 14 doctors or something like that?

Uh, 20 plus.

20 plus doctors.

23 plus.

Yeah. So for those of you that are listening, you know, we're not gonna talk about how weird it is to live in Southern California. We are gonna talk about marketing. We're gonna talk about practices. We're gonna talk about functional medicine. We're gonna talk about your book, The Unforgettable Brand, wherever it is. Thank you. Thank you. There you go. We'll talk about that. So it's even autographed. Look at your autograph is like cooler than mine.

Practice.

So practice. Is that what you did as a kid growing up? You sit in your room signing your name?

I knew one day it'd come in handy.

You know what I did as a kid? 'Cause I used to be really into art and photography. I'm still very, my work is my art. And I did a lot of photographs and I used to practice signing my name, how it looked cool.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

I didn't know you were a photographer too.

I won a bunch of national awards as a kid growing up.

Crazy.

In high school. Yeah. I got a—

What kind of photography?

Black and white. I did a lot of, I would do like, I would be fascinated with people's hands or people's feet or people's ears or something like that. I would just go off on these tangents. But yeah, I got accepted to like Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons, New York. I got accepted to some school out here that was amazing that's no longer around or something like that. Wound up at RIT in Rochester, New York for a year. And then I was like, I don't want to do this.

Wow, that's awesome.

I like to be outside. I don't like to be inside inhaling chemicals.

Same. Yeah, same here.

So Sammy.

Yes. What the hell?

What are you doing these days, man?

Well, it's so crazy.

'Cause you're no longer it. In the Functional Medicine Institute.

No. Yeah, a lot has happened. So I'm so glad we're reconnecting. Yeah, because you met me at the start of my functional medicine journey. So 4 years ago. Really?

So you had just started doing your deal. Brand new.

Yeah. So backtracking a little bit from there, I used to be a worldwide wedding photographer.

Did you really?

Yep. So used to travel the world taking the most beautiful photographs of amazing people. Landed in People Magazine. So here in Southern California.

Wow.

I was in a lot of magazines, blogs, all that stuff. So I learned a lot of my marketing from just running my own businesses, starting in the photography world. The first book I wrote was in 2014 and it was all about photography and just what we learned, the lessons that my wife and I learned.

So like marketing photography of a practice, like a practice, a business, or like how to take photos? What was it?

It was more so our journey to being top-rated photographers in California. How we got that, how we got to that place in our career. And it was inspired from emails, phone calls we got from fellow photographers, photographers asking us to meet up for coffee, just asking like, how did you do it? How did you go from it being a hobby to it becoming your full-time career? You're traveling the world. And so we're like, man, there's so much we can share about the lessons we learned because it didn't just happen overnight.

Yeah.

You know, many people see success and they think like that just happened or you're lucky. So I'm like, you know, let's— It's all luck. Yeah, it's all luck. So I'm like—

Don't mind the 16-hour days.

Yeah, exactly.

Selling blood plasma to make payroll.

Yeah, I'm like, let's write a book and just give away all of our secrets. And so that was book number 1. It was called Storytelling. And it was a journey of the failures, the successes, the things we had learned to build a successful photography business. And so that was my background before going into Functional Medicine Institute. So in 2020, Actually, before COVID we moved to Idaho, uh, just to, um, essentially start fresh growing kids.

Well, you were born and raised in Southern—

Born and raised in Orange County my whole life.

Orange County.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I think your wife, uh, yeah, pretty much since she was 1.

Okay.

Yeah. Both her parents are from Orange County.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

It, it's a, I mean, it's a lot. I could like, we—

Southern California.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Christine— But it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. I mean, Christine and I talked if we were to have a child, Um, which, you know, yeah, everybody else out there, you can do the math. Um, but if we were to, we'd be like, how do you effectively raise a child in Southern California?

'Cause there's a lot of shit. And so those were the conversations we had in 2019.

Well, and your faith is very central to what you do as well. So there's kind of that.

Yeah. So we're like, okay, where's a, where's a great place to raise a family? This was 2019. In 2020, January, we made the decision to move to Boise, Idaho after just lots of research. And then the pandemic happened, I think, 4 weeks later. So it's perfect timing.

Great. Yeah, perfect time to move to a town that you know nobody in.

Yes, because you couldn't do anything anyway.

Well, if you're gonna do the pandemic, you might as well do it in Idaho.

Well, it was— yes, it was a different experience from what I've heard because we'd have family go to Idaho during the pandemic and feel so free.

Well, yeah, I was in North— I was in Charlotte, and Charlotte's right on the border of North Carolina, South Carolina. Charlotte, North Carolina, very draconian shutdown. South Carolina, 3 miles away, come on down, everybody, restaurants are open.

It's just so wild to think of that season though. It's just like, just such a different time.

We just were making that shit up. It was totally being made. Nobody knew what the hell they were doing. It was all made up. Everybody was like, and then you like remember how people get in arguments over, you can't come over to my house. Yeah. You're not vaccinated.

Make sure you call people and call the cops or whatever.

Yeah.

It was a wild time. So we didn't experience that to that extent. Um, but that's why one of the reasons we moved was like, okay, let's, our kids are getting a little bit older. Let's have a, create a, I know pretty much a childhood like we had in the '90s. My wife and I were like, how can we kind of recreate that? And so— No helmets, no helmets wearing, eating out of the water fountain, drinking out of the garden hose. But also just like going to kids' house, like riding your bike without being concerned and having kids over and just kind of a very free childhood. So in 2020, I was also part of affiliate marketing company at the time that I stepped away from because of kind of COVID things that were happening and integrity things that I was a little weary of.

Really, affiliate marketing is a little bit of a—

Yeah. So decided to step away. And so during that time, I asked some of my mentors at the time, like, hey, I'm kind of starting over, starting fresh. I'm in a new state. What do you think I should do with my life? Like career-wise.

I need to make money.

Yeah, I need to make money. I got to provide for my family. And they all said, marketing. And I was like, okay, marketing. So I started my own agency, Cosa Collective. And my first contract was FMI. So FMI was my first contract. I almost didn't even take it because the pay was so low because the initial—

I had a feeling the pay was really low.

Yeah. The initial, well, the initial position was a part-time blogger. So that's why I almost didn't take it.

A part-time blogger. Part-time blogger.

Yeah. And it's crazy only to think this was about 5 years ago. But the way I wrote blogs 5 years ago is I came up with a dozen books that I had to read, take the content, make sure it's related to whatever I'm finding online as well. Make sure it's like, well, just it makes sense. Like everything I'm saying is correct.

Mm-hmm.

And then blog about it. So I'd take pretty much 20 hours a week writing one blog, 1 to 2 blogs. So that was my position that lasted a month. And then after a month, the owner, the CEO came to me and said, hey, there's some insurance things happening. We're in an audit right now. Um, I'm looking at your resume. I see that you have a lot of background on entrepreneurship, marketing. Um, do you think you can step up to helping build a cash pay practice? So that's where you stepped in. Yeah. So I was trying to remember, what was your boss's name again?

Sam. It was Sam. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm trying to remember where I met Sam.

Yeah.

I think it was like LinkedIn or something.

I think Pennick. Dr. Pennick. Do you remember Dr. Pennick?

Yeah, I remember Dr. Pennick. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He was recommended.

Yeah. Oh, so that's how, okay. I'm always curious. I always, you know, it's, You have so many clients come through, you know how it is. It's hard to remember. Yeah, 100%.

So, I come into the practice as a part-time blogger. Within 1 month, I become the director of marketing, business development, and eventually sales as well. But you met me when we were building the cash pay practice.

Yeah, because it was—

Because it was the first time that they had gone through this massive insurance audit that they didn't know if they would survive at the time.

Yeah, I remember having, and I won't divulge this, but I remember having conversations with Sam and his wife. It's like, I'm like, you can survive this. But you have to be really, you gotta be really honest with yourself.

Yeah.

And I remember that audit and there was one other audit that a client of mine was going through at the time. Santucci was going through one. And in his case it was different. He said, well, I'm gonna do this reimbursement thing for like nerve stimulation or some shit like that. And the reimbursement rate was huge. I go, what are you doing? You know they're gonna change it and you know they're gonna claw it back. You know they're gonna screw you. And sure enough, 15 months later, they clawed back like $1.5 million, right?

Yeah.

And one day, gone. And he calls me in a panic. And then I remember talking with your owners one-on-one, and I just, it would, it's your talking to them hit me. It hit me. There's no way you can ever scale your way out of insurance.

Right.

Meaning people think I can, every provider that I add, If I add a PA, they should generate whatever the number is. Let's say start at $25,000 a month and $50,000 a month and maybe get to $70,000, $75,000 a month. We'll have to pay them whatever, $200,000. No, 'cause the margins are so, so thin. There's no way. And the people, every time you add one of those, you have to add 2 billing people or whatever it is, right? Plus an MA.

Yeah.

You add like an entire office, right?

Right.

And, um, I was helping, uh, Petropali get out of insurance. I was helping a bunch of others get out of insurance at that same time. And I just remember looking, at the numbers, not, well, I was looking at the actual physical numbers, but I remember just like looking at the numbers, like on my paper that I was writing down going, doesn't make sense.

There's no way. Doesn't pencil. Yeah.

There's no way that you could ever make an insurance practice work.

Right.

And did they get out? Are they out?

So, okay. So that was, that was my introduction. So I literally am brand new in functional medicine. Right. And the reason I even applied—

You don't even know what functional medicine is.

Yeah, no, I, I, because of COVID and I think because of our mindset, even before COVID we were already going in that natural medicine route, having 3 kids at the time, now 4. And so when I saw FMI, you know, come on Indeed, I'm like, you know what? I want to learn more about this space. So what better way than do marketing for it or write blogs, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so that was my introduction to it. And I think the same month I got hired is when this audit, they were in the middle of it. So I didn't know that as a newbie, right? And not in the space. So just a few months later, hearing about what's happening on the insurance side. So that was my only introduction to insurance is that it sucks. Like that's all I knew. It sucks bad. And we need to build a cash pay practice. But that's where you came in the picture. And so I think what made my story unique with, with FMI, and it has grown and it's, it's been amazing ever since, like the practices has grown definitely. Um, but I think what made the transition smoother was I didn't come in with a functional medicine marketing mindset.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

That was the thing that when I would audit their websites and seeing what they had on social media, beautiful.

What were some of the mistakes you saw? Or you see in general?

Okay. Uh, needles.

Yeah. Uh, never thought about that.

White coats.

What the hell are you fucking showing a needle for?

White coats. Wow. Um, things that bring people anxiety. Mm-hmm. You know, like, especially in functional medicine, usually that's someone's last resort. Hopefully now it's becoming more of people's first resort. Yeah.

But they've gotta go through a lot of failure cycles before they get there. Nobody rarely do you hear somebody go, Yeah, it's like— I've got a stomach, I've got a gut issue. I was just hanging out in Austin with a bunch of people. This guy's like, Kevin, I've got a gut issue. I'm like, well, aren't you a recovering heroin addict? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, yeah, you gotta— he's like, yeah, I can't eat and I get the shits. And I'm like, have you seen a functional medicine doctor? He's like, no, my doctor's been giving me antibiotics.

I'm like, that's making it worse. Oh my God. Yes. It's making it worse.

He said, I've been taking probiotics off the counter, you know, off the shelf at Whole Foods. I'm like, oh my God, you're feeding it.

Yeah. It's making it worse.

Go see Anoop Kanodia. They're in Columbus. I'm like, go see Dr. Kanodia. Tell him I sent you. He trained under Mike Hyman. Just diamond, go.

Yeah.

It's gonna cost you 20 grand or whatever it's gonna cost you. Where is it? He'll get you fixed in—

what's gonna save you years of frustration and money. Exactly. Right.

And he and his wife were like, what? Yeah. Everything you're doing is wrong.

So that was one of the first things I did when I, when I landed in that, in that practice was like, hey, let's, uh, let's, let's go from a different angle. And once again, I'm coming from a wedding photography background. My first book was called Storytelling.

How, what kind of resistance did you get?

Not, none at all. Really? Yeah. I think—

so the doctors weren't like, you need to show me in a way.

No, I think they believe, as I explained kind of what I'll do right now, I was like, explain the mindset behind it. Like, the mindset is you're telling a story. And instead of seeing needles and lab coats, which doesn't tell me a pleasant story, I want to see transformation. I want to see healing. I want to see life. I want to see someone flourishing, right? I want to see someone that speaks to me as an avatar, right? And so, I was explaining that like, hey, on a wedding day, I was trying to kind of correlate to what I did. I'm seeing things from different perspectives that no one else gets to see. But when you see the full picture, like the wedding album or the wedding gallery, you see all the perspectives that tell the story.

And that does work. The album is supposed to tell the story.

Tells the story.

Never thought about it that way.

That no one else gets to see. I've never heard it twice. And so that was why I love, like, I love being behind the scenes, 'cause I get to see things that no one else gets to see. You see the finished product, but you don't see the whole picture, right? That I get to see. So I'm like, hey, let's go on this angle where we're showing families flourishing. Can we put that on the website? Let's show grandparents thriving.

Yeah, but let's make sure the family thriving isn't like 30 years old. Let's make—

Yeah, relevant. Like, they're actually, they're older, they're mature, but they're, They're aging well. There's longevity. And so, no, they, especially the owner, which I'm so grateful for, like, was like—

He was really nice.

Very.

Yeah. Yeah. Very open. But you could tell he was on a lot. He was in crisis.

A lot of stress. Well, most owners are like most owners.

He was in a super amount of crisis.

Yeah. And the insurance side. Yep. So that was my introduction to insurance. It sucks. It doesn't pay well. We gotta build a cash pay practice. So at the time we flew out, me and Dr. H, remember Dr. H?

Yeah. Dr. H is great.

We flew out to Sarasota to see Gaffin Institute.

Yep.

I remember that. So in the process I was already building the website.

Remember that we had done the mastermind and you guys went out Wasn't Tracy's Place amazing?

Amazing.

Yeah, Tracy's Place.

And that's all I needed to see because up until that point it was like theory. I mean, you were teaching us everything, but, and I was designing, right? I would show you web pages I was building. You're like, this is great. This looks great. You know, like the feedback I always got was like, good job. You know, and I think it's because, well, I mean, you tell me because I think it was beyond, I called it sterile marketing versus like real authentic storytelling marketing.

So what I've learned in marketing for 25 years and really I've been marketing since I was 6 years old, meaning I would walk around the neighborhood and knock on doors and get cookies, right? That's door-to-door sales, right? So I've always understood like the human experience, right? But the thing that, here's what I've learned in coaching people for 20 years, especially when you have something where they have zero understanding, not you, but like they've done zero webinar marketing, any of that stuff.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't have to be textbook great. If you force them to make it textbook great, like if I were to submit copy to my friend Paris Lampropoulos, who's a world-class copywriter, Paris would be like, he wouldn't even look at it. He'd go, this fucking blows. Do it over again. Right? That's that. I know Paris, right? If I did that to you in the beginning, it would crush your soul. So my whole thing is let's just get, let's just get it in the system. Let's just see what it gets.

Right.

Let's get some baselines. Let's see what it is. Because it was better than anything that, like, I saw the other stuff. I was like, okay, this is going to be way better. Like, this is, it's got to perform better. That gives you confidence. That's one of my jobs as a coach is when I'm working with someone, when they're in crisis, is my whole job is to give them a little bit of confidence. If I can get them some wins, they don't have to be big wins.

Yeah.

Like, I've got a friend of mine, And he's, he's not in the medical space, but he is, you know, he has a retreat center and it's been a little rough. And I'm like, he's like all excited because they did like 11 grand last week from some recommendations. I'm like, he's like, yeah, but I need to do 25. I'm like, you used to do 2. Let's just focus on—

Let's count that as a win. Yep.

So that's the— and I think that's a really, for people that are listening, you know, when you're doing your marketing, it's not about making it perfect. It's about advancing it. Yes. 3 yards and a ball and a cloud of dust.

Well, you inspired me and a few other coaches since, 'cause I have since transitioned out of FMI to become a business coach for functional medicine practitioners.

Yes. And I wanna talk about that.

So that's one of the things, but that's the first thing I ask is, so what are some wins we can celebrate? And you, and I write about it in my book too. It always throws them off.

Really? Even though it's the first question. So why does it throw them off?

Because I believe as entrepreneurs, we're not programmed to look backwards a lot. We're programmed to keep looking at the next goal. And the next thing that we have yet to accomplish. And so before I start any coaching call, I say, hey, so what are some wins we can celebrate since the last time that we talked? And usually they're just like, oh yeah, it's the hardest thing ever. Yeah, let me think about it. And I'm like, no, think about it.

I'm like, what are your 3 wins?

What are your wins?

Yeah. And if somebody doesn't put it in for a couple of weeks, I fucking call on their ass. Yeah. I'm like, they're like, well, I don't think I really have any wins. I go, so that's the thing we need to work on.

Yeah, 100%. It's your mindset. It's seeing how far you've come.

Yeah. Like that to me is Um, you know what? I'm fascinated by this. I'm curious what you think. You know, when you get 2 clients that start at the exact same time and they're both really similar, say they're both functional medicine practices doing $50,000 a year or $50,000 a month or $25,000 a month. And let's say they're in a mid-city size, like a Boise or a Wichita Falls or something like that. Why is it, and they do the exact same stops and process, why is it that this one goes here and this one goes there? Why do you think that is?

Uh, I think there's a lot of— I think mindset has a lot to do with it. And I also think a lot of these practitioners, which is what I'll explain about what I do modern day now, but I have learned from coaching and seeing a big gap is they don't have like an integrator. They don't have someone to bring their vision to life.

Yeah.

You know, so they're getting all this coaching.

Or they are the integrator and they're overwhelmed.

They're doing it all. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Or they're the founder operating, the creative.

They're doing everything.

Nothing worse than the creative operating as the integrator.

Yeah. So there's the visionary. And then there's the integrator. Typically that's what makes a business thrive. And so they're the visionary, they ought to be, right? They're looking, they're creating the vision for the business, where they're going, what they want to accomplish, but they don't have that missing, I believe from what I've seen, that puzzle piece to that equation to make it happen. And so essentially being at FMI, that's what I became. So doing the marketing. Yeah, same with the company. And then Sam had the vision.

Visionary.

Visionary. And he's like, can you do this? I'm like, yeah. And it's so funny, you, you're probably the same way, is I always say yes before I actually know how to do it.

And then I learn how to do it. Yeah, me too. I've gone through a lot of therapy in the last 2 years.

I don't do that anymore. Oh, same, same. Yes. No, I've learned as well, but I'm like, of course, like I'll figure it out. And that's what it was is, hey, can we build this cash fee practice? Yeah, just gimme the right guidance. Yeah, I'll do it. Right. Can we build an online store? Where are they today?

How are they, do you know where they're, I mean, are they fully out of insurance today?

Uh, no, I think they still have the hybrid model, so it's 2 separate entities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew they were going in that direction. Yeah. But essentially they have a cash-based—

Yep. So they have the whole cash-based side. Um, and that was just, I, I'll never forget what Sam said during this time. He said for the first time, yeah. And having the cash pay side, he is like, it feels like we have a business because now, yeah, like it's, it is about revenue and it is about like, how can we scale? Because you couldn't do that on the insurance side.

And Sam, if you do wind up listening to this, this is not critical of you, dude. Like, no, man, it was a really difficult time. Like really hard.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

100%.

And then come on down to LA and get your ass on the podcast.

Bring your wife with you. That'd be great.

Uh, let's talk about it. 'Cause I think people need to hear it 'cause those are hard journeys.

Oh, 100%. Yeah. So I, yeah, so that's when I came in right in the middle of it, saw the light that you presented, which was, all right, let's build a cash pay practice. Went to Gap+ Institute shortly after we started with you, saw that firsthand and it just clicked. I'm like, all right, this is how we're going to build the cash pay practice, is how we're going to design it, use it as inspiration. And I would say the 2 biggest takeaways I got from that, what would you call it, like a mastermind weekend?

Yeah, it was a mastermind weekend. Yeah.

The 2 biggest takeaways that we got that really scaled the cash pay side of things. Number one, I asked, okay, what did you do marketing-wise? Gapin, what did you do marketing-wise that just, that helped your business grow the most? And he said visibility.

Yeah.

Right? Getting on podcasts, doing events.

Absolutely.

The power of visibility.

He's crushing it.

Yeah.

He's absolutely crushing it.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, his numbers are insane.

Yeah, so that was the first thing is visibility. I can't think of the second thing. Oh well, we'll get back to it.

But that was the big thing is this experience.

Like, so we started a podcast right after that. I think we actually started before that, but we got it out everywhere. We're like, okay, let's kind of like what, you know, meeting with you today, just inviting people, having the right people.

Yep. Having a book, doing a podcast.

Yes.

People are like, I don't want to be a social media maybe. And I'm like, I don't give a shit. Like, I'm not, I don't want to be a social media. I don't want anybody to know. Like, you look at my personal account, there's hardly anything, right? Like an occasional picture of Christina and I like You know, yeah, Italy or some shit. Or not Italy, but you know.

Well, funny you say that because the one post I saw from you was about you living in California. Yeah. And the rest is history.

Yeah. You're like, hey man, I'm in California.

What? I'm right behind you. I'm, I'm literally, I think I was, you moved like I was putting the house together. So we had just had closed. Um, but I came earlier to kind of get it all nice and beautified before the rest of the family came down.

It's beautiful here.

Oh, it's amazing.

Driving in, coming up, driving up the hill to Sunset, looking at the Santa Monica Mountains, the Hollywood Hills right behind you.

Oh, it's beautiful. And living here my whole life, being away for 6 years, coming back there's this like appreciation that I think is so weird to other people. But every morning I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you, God. Like, this weather is perfect. All day it's perfect. So anyway, it's—

yeah, it's super thankful every frickin' day. Yeah, perfect. We were just in Austin and it was like 94, which was like, oh, it's cool. Like, you know, it's normally 100 this time of year.

I know.

And I like Austin. We were in the hills, we were at Lakeway, and it's beautiful, and I could totally see myself living there. I'm just kind of over the 100 degrees in here. I'm like, you know what? And we landed here. I'm like, oh yeah, it's great. My going to my office in the back, I've got a separate house in the back.

I've built a back.

That's my office. I've got all the doors open, all the, like, I'm just sitting there. I'm like, there's no mosquitoes.

I'm like, this is awesome. Yes. Amen.

So let's, I'm curious about mindset. So you had said that that's one of it. You say it's all, what is mindset to you? Tell me.

Man, I think it's your, your ceiling or your floor.

Oh, okay.

And that just came. I don't know if that's the right definition of it, but my mind's— I believe so many, man. I have, you know, I'm in my 40s now. Not that I'm, you know, I still consider myself young and I still am excited.

Wait, are you young or old 40? What number are you?

I'm 41.

You're 41.

41.

You got time.

41 next month.

47, it gets really good. 43 is when you stop being a total fucking knucklehead.

Looking forward to it.

Yeah.

But what I've seen, man, and I'm still getting started, like I know the best days are still ahead, but I've seen so many acquaintances and friends not achieve their dreams, not because they didn't try or not because they didn't start. It's because they didn't finish.

So why do you think they don't finish?

They allow life things to get in the way, to get distracted, to get discouraged. And the reason I say that, 'cause I've seen it firsthand as an integrator type, as a marketer type, kind of, I can wear multiple hats because I've been an entrepreneur since I was 15. And so I come alongside, I get invited to come alongside and support them on their dreams. And I'm all in, like, I'll do my part. I'm 100%, right? But as the visionary, right, you gotta do your part. And so as a support, I'm like, dude, bought in. I believe in what you're doing. Let's do this thing, right? And then after a few months or years or whatever the timeframe is, they get tired or they get distracted or they get whatever. And I'm like, man, if you just stuck it through.

And isn't that the entrepreneur experience though, is that you see all the possibilities, To me, that's like, I think that's one of the things that I've accepted as my, for myself.

Yeah.

As an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

I've been doing a lot of deep work the last couple years.

I've been doing Rich— That's great.

Yeah. I've been doing Rich Schefren's Zenith Mind. You know who Rich is?

No, but I—

Rich is a brilliant internet marketer. Like, you know, he basically is the fricking, the guru behind, you know, billion-dollar companies like mentor Ryan Deiss, Russell Brunson. Like he's the real mentor of those guys.

So cool.

Uh, helped build Agora to a billion-dollar business.

Wow.

Like, you know, personal friends of, uh, Mark Ford, all of that.

Okay.

So Rich is brilliant. So like everybody, I've been paying attention to the AI stuff. I am not an early adopter. I am not the pioneer. I let, I let all my friends go take the arrows and break all the shit. Like, I'm not gonna go do that. Right. So I'm like, okay, it's time. And Rich has got this program and what he, he, the Zenith Mind is fantastic. I highly recommend it. It takes a lot of work, right? But it's like you go through like these profiles and you get AI wired to exact. So it answers like it knows you.

Wow.

It's got like a 94% confidence of me right now.

Wow.

Yeah. And you go into all these things and what happens, the reason why I'm saying this is what happens, and this happened to me. So I've been an entrepreneur basically since I was 15, 16 years old.

Very similar. Yep.

Really started my first business when I was like 31, 32, like pure, like providing for the family. I'm 58 today. I've been bankrupt. I've been insolvent a couple of times. I've been married and divorced twice. Right. Like, you know, And the thing is that all of those scar tissues, what they do is they make us less and less bold. Okay. Now my wiring is to be very bold.

Yeah.

Right. Like, totally fuck it. Let's try it. Right.

Yeah.

But what happens is that society gives you a little nick and a little nick and a little nick.

Totally.

And then like all the wiring of your growing up, like what my mom would say. And, you know, usually entrepreneurs have conservative parents is what I find. And so they get that voice going. And what happens is that we think it's wrong for us to have multiple different things going on. It's fine as long as you have an orchestrator or an implementer.

Right, right.

I'm lucky I've got Heather. I'm blessed beyond— I have 2 amazing women in my life. I have Christine, my partner, my life partner. And then I have Heather, who's my life partner, who's my business partner. Yeah, my life partner.

Yeah.

Like she is like a Literally, like we joke, like, you sure we weren't married like in another life? Okay.

Um, super important. Yes.

When you, when you have that orchestrator where you're like, I got this idea, like we're creating, we're creating a new company, uh, new division, new company called Mavericks Marketing because we have massive demand. It's awesome, right? Yes. I have no idea what it's going to look like, right? I just know, like I've been chewing on this for a year, right? Cool. And the, and, but she's great. You have to, here's the thing every entrepreneur needs to hear. You need to have that orchestrator. I think an orchestrator is better than an implementer.

Mm-hmm.

Because I'm at 40,000 feet, she's at about 20,000. Mm-hmm. And she knows who to hire at 5,000 and 10,000. Mm-hmm. To go get stuff done. Yeah. Let's, uh, you know what I mean? She orchestrates the whole team. Because I think when you, the other thing with entrepreneurs is, I'll just speak for myself.

Yeah.

It's, you feel incredibly guilty for not working hard. My brother's a union plumber. My other brother's a professional musician. My other brother's a political operative in Washington, DC kind of guy. They all work insane number of hours. My dad worked 16 hours a day, right? Great Depression, World War II guy.

Yeah.

You're it today. Now, granted, it's a holiday, but after this, I go get an IV, I get an H-bot, I go to Cairo.

We're very fortunate.

I'm going to go to Coachella.

You've got a great life.

Right? But that's work for me because in that session, in that time, I'm contemplating, I'm thinking. When you work with entrepreneurs, I'm curious, hearing all of that, what is there something that, is there anything that sticks out to you? Or like, as you think about your journey as an entrepreneur, like the conflict between what the world says and what the entrepreneur really is wired to do and be?

Yeah. One of, so the thing about my book is, um, it's kind of a memoir.

Oh, really? Yeah.

Again, more, it's like real life experience.

So this is like volume 1 of Sammy.

Prob— we'll see. You know what I mean?

I hope it's more, but there's a volume 2.

One of the chapters is called The Most Overlooked Business Strategy.

Okay.

Tell me about it. And in my opinion, the most overlooked business strategy is rest.

Yes, absolutely.

It's taking care of yourself.

Okay. So let's talk about that. What does that mean?

Oh, it's one of my favorite topics, man.

What does it mean? Is that, I mean, we're not talking about like a 3-day vacation to like—

No.

Santa Clara or something.

You know, as an entrepreneur, you know this very well also. There's seasons where it can lead to burnout. It can lead to, you know, heavy amounts of stress, bankruptcy.

Fucking been there.

Team members that are just like, ah, you know, driving you crazy or whatever that looks like, but more so needing rest for longevity. Like if you can't show up for your family well, if you can't show up for your team members well, if you can't show up for yourself well, then which is more important?

If you have to pick one, self, teammates, family, which is the most important you show up for?

I would say self. I would too, because it starts there.

Right. Because you can, I, and I'm, I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. Because then we would've had to like, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. No. And I'm, I listen, everyone has an opinion, which I am so grateful for. Like I, I learn from, you know, whoever I need to learn from. Um, but yes, taking care of yourself. Yeah. Right. And so, um, working with practitioners now for the last, well, CEO, like, you know, at the first practice I was at seeing firsthand that level of stress and then directly working with practitioners that own their own businesses. Imagine the extra layer of stress.

Right. Mm-hmm.

So working directly in that coaching role, I saw the stress firsthand, like every single time I met with practitioners.

What are some of the big stressors you see?

Oh, it's always revenue. Yeah. It's always, it's always, are we gonna hit, it's always, yeah. Are we gonna hit our numbers?

Why do you think we put such an emphasis on hitting the numbers? Why do you think we get so stressed out about it?

I think because as a practitioner, like solely in the, in this, in the functional medicine space, I mean, you, you're all in, like your, your house is riding on it. You're, you know, whatever you're, you're, your retirement is relying on it. So I see a lot of stress working directly with practitioners. And so I mentioned this in the first chapter of the book, but the book was inspired by my practitioners. This book was written for them. So this was my onboarding book after working with them for over a year. I'm like, I'm just going to write a foundational book, super basic. Like, this is what you need to know as an entrepreneur, because just because you're a practitioner that owns a business does not— you're not 100% a CEO or an entrepreneur. Like, you don't, you didn't go to business school. And so my, my hope was to help them like get into that mindset of Rest is a business strategy. Don't feel guilty for taking time off. You need that time for clarity, for health. And it just boggled my mind that they were carrying the weight of the world, helping these patients heal, but always putting themselves last. Always, always, always, always. And so I was that constant reminder.

Yeah.

I'm like, take care of yourself. So I remember one of my practitioners, a little bit older than me, like very, you know, in his 40s, relatively healthy looking. And he's like, man, I don't drink water all day. I haven't been to the gym in years. I'm like, dude, before we go into any business coaching or anything like that, take your wife out on a date and go to the gym and start drinking enough water. Let's just start there. And I'm like, and I'm gonna send you my book, read the last chapter, 'cause it's all about pretty much that mindset. And dude, he was so thankful. He's like, thank you for not putting more work on me to do. The hardest work is working on yourself. And so I'm like, start there.

Yeah.

Let's get you healthy before I just give you all these things that You know, to-do lists. Like, that's not what I want to do.

No, the to-do list. And I think a lot of people think that's what coaching is, is I'm going to have to work harder. No, people are like, well, how many hours a week do I need to, you know, commit? I'm like, I don't know. How free do you want to get?

Right.

They're like, what do you mean? Right. I go, well, here's what I know. If you come to work, if you come to work with us and you're expecting me to fix your problems, right?

Not going to happen.

It's not going to happen.

Right.

If you're expecting me to have like better Facebook ads or some tactics, it ain't gonna happen.

Right.

What is gonna happen is, and I tell 'em, my first job is to make you an extra, well, our average client adds an extra $50,000 in 90 days.

I said, awesome.

My, if I make you an extra 10 grand in the next, if I help you make an extra 10 grand in 30 days, are you gonna be happy? Well, how are you gonna do that? And I go, If you told your patient, I'm going to help you lose 10 pounds in the next 30 days, would you care how you did it? Well, no. I'm like, I'm not going to do anything illegal. So that's my first job.

That's awesome.

Because once you make an extra 10 grand, you're bought in a little bit more. Then I'm going to show you how to start taking time. And they're like, they can't understand it because they're so busy. Insurance right now is just awful.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

It's just awful.

Yeah. So I, yeah, I would agree. The most overlooked business strategy. I think it's the most important one starting there. Rest, just like you're saying, getting an IV, getting massage. Like that's my self-care is I get massages, you know, like just taking care of myself. Walks, you know, going for walks daily, multiple times. Like just resting is so essential. So yeah.

Yeah. It's really, Um, and I would, you know, I would tend to agree mindset. I think there's a layer below that. And I think that there's a lot of, I know that there is a lot of hidden trauma underneath the layer, like in the basement of your soul that is driving a lot of—

Yes.

Your ability to have mindset, what your mother said, what your father said, what your grandmother told you, like the environment you grew up in. We have a client right now. He's in Florida, ER doc. He's first family member, mom, single mom, worked 3 jobs, first generation, right? First, his mom immigrated here. Doesn't know his dad kind of thing.

Yeah.

You know, working 23 days a month in 2 different ERs.

Wow.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, just cortisol spikes left and right.

Oh, always.

Yeah. And And first go to college, let alone become a doctor. And he's an ER doc, right? So, you know, the whole fricking, you can see the whole cascade. And I told him, and I said, now let's do the real work. Let's dive into that trauma. He's like, I don't have any trauma.

His wife's like, we all do.

Yes, we all, everybody's got trauma, by the way. It's always, you know, and it doesn't have to be that you were in World War, you know, you're in Vietnam or Nam or whatever, or like you grew up in an abusive household. Everybody's got some level of trauma.

Well, even—

How do you see that? Do you see that getting people— how do you— or how do you see that getting people stuck?

100%. Yes. Even for those that have made the transition from insurance to cash pay, one of the first things I'll ask them is, okay, what's your hourly rate? What are the costs of your packages or your memberships? And then sometimes they're extremely low. And it's usually the answer is, well, I want to make it affordable for everyone. And that's a whole nother topic.

Yeah, we'll dive into that one.

You're speaking to everyone. You're not talking to anybody. But it's their imposter syndrome. Sometimes feeling like—

Isn't it?

I'm not worth it.

Yeah.

And it's so cool.

Where does that come from? Where does that— where do you—

So there's a particular client that I flew out to North Dakota for an onboarding, getting to see the clinic. I always like to see the clinic physically in person because it just— I get to touch it, I get to feel it, and I know how to market it or how to represent it well. And I can just see it on this certain practitioner who's amazing, amazing friend of mine now. Um, but that was one of the questions I asked him. Like, do you believe you could be successful? Like, are you—

What'd he say?

He said, well, I've never seen it before. So I'm like, do you believe you have a scare? And I just see a simple, you know, coaching is fun sometimes just asking a lot of questions and letting, you know, that's all it is. I'm like, have you, have you struggled your whole life financially? Like, like where does the scarcity mindset come from? And yeah, he shared that there were a lot, you know, that he's never really seen the abundance. And I'm like, man, well, Let's get there. Like, I believe it.

How do you get them there? What kind of work do you do with them?

Um, what I like to do personally is share my story. And the reason I do that is not to elevate me, but to encourage them that if I can do it—

Okay, so what's the story?

You want to hear it?

Of course. I just asked. We got— I got an hour and a half to kill. I mean, Thomas is not— he's not going to go for a little while and he didn't invite us, so.

Okay.

Well, you know, he's going to— his wife's vegan, so there's going to be some leftovers.

That's right. Um, well, one thing I was taught my whole life is no one is beneath me. No one is better than me. If someone else can achieve something, I can too. And I don't need to be intimidated by anyone.

There's—

anything is possible essentially, right? And so, Matt, you're sitting down with someone, and I say this very humbly, but every single dream I've ever had has come true.

Really?

Every single one.

Wow.

Yeah. And it wasn't easy and it wasn't handed to me. But I went after it, you know what I mean? And God placed the right people at the right time. Like nothing I attribute to myself, but I guess, I don't know, there's, when you have vision, when you have a calling and you go through open doors and you don't go through the closed doors, I have achieved every single thing I've sought out to achieve. And I'm not just saying that like career-wise, but like— just in my life as a whole. Even being back in Orange County, I'm like, man, what a dream come true. But what I— the reason I say that is to encourage others, don't live your life in the fear zone. And I think that is— and that's what I had to learn is stop listening to the lies of fear.

So do you meditate every day? Do you pray every day? Like, what's that process look like? Because it's so easy to go in the fear zone. Even me sitting here going, I've accomplished every dream I've ever had. It sounds kind of bullshit.

I know.

Right?

I know.

'Cause I sure as hell haven't accomplished every dream I've ever had.

Yeah.

I haven't won the Masters yet.

Right.

So.

Yeah. Well, I mean, no, I'm just kidding. But I say that not to like, to BS anyone or anything like that, but more so to inspire them. Like, hey, listen, here's what I did though. I failed. You know what I mean? Like, I learned and I don't see failure as like failure anymore. I see it as a door closed that opens another.

So what kind of environment did you grow up in? What are your parents like?

Super encouraging for sure. You know, once again, I know a lot of our upbringing, uh, it wasn't perfect by any means, but definitely positive, definitely encouraging. Um, yes, I do pray every day, do journal. Trust me, it's so easy to sway off of.

Yeah. Yeah. I journal every day.

You know what I mean? It's so easy to be like, you know, a couple days of not, and you're just like, man, I, I need to get centered for sure. Um, so yeah, with this particular practitioner, just as an example, I'm like, Listen, if I can do it, you can do it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not any more different. The thing is, I just didn't let fear stop me. Like, yes, it confused me at times, but it didn't stop me from what I know I was called to do. And for most of these, honestly, every practitioner I've ever worked with, they feel like it's a calling to heal people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, they call themselves healers, and I truly believe that they are.

You ever ask them— we call it healing the healers, right?

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah. They— you ever ask them when they knew they were going to be a doctor?

Um, I have sometimes.

You should make that part of your intake.

Okay, I will.

I think it's amazing to me. The average age is 13, 14.

Wow.

Now I have a couple doctors like Dr. Rydie McGee. He's like 21. He's the outlier. I just interviewed, I just had a new client in and I said, when did you know? And he goes, my dad's a pathologist. My mom's an orthodontist. My dad took me to the, basically his dad was like a coroner, like, you know, he was cutting open a dead body in front of him when he was 11 years old. And he's like, this is really cool. I would've been vomiting. Same. The smell alone.

Yeah. Oh man.

Yeah, it's fascinating. They all knew at an early age. It's really interesting. It's not, it's not like, 'cause it's really a calling.

It is 100%.

It's a total calling.

Well, and that's what, and that's what I try to convey is like, you've been called to this. Like, imagine the impact you're having. And I know there's a lot right now. It's business and now you're the CEO and there's a lot of stuff, but don't be in bondage of fear. Like—

How does that calling impact their ability to be business people, do you think?

Well, 'cause that's the thing, right? I think, when someone signs up to be a practitioner, they're not signing up to be an Instagram star also. No.

To go on social media. Let alone a CFO, a CEO.

You know what I mean? So, there's these things that you don't realize if you're going to own your own practice, you just have to do. You just have to be visible. You got to put yourself out there. So, I think there's like that, maybe that mindset, like, I didn't sign up for this. Like, I didn't sign up for this part of owning a practice. And I get that. I don't like being— I love being behind the scenes. I love You know, pulling the strings, making things happen. And then what's presented is beautiful and a reflection of the brand of the clinic and all that stuff. So I do get it, but that's my hope is to inspire them like, hey, you can do this. Anytime I say like, hey, please record yourself, let's create a reel, just an introduction that we can put online. Let's just start there. And they're like, oh, I always know the answer is going to be like, I'm just not comfortable doing that. Like, I've never done that before. I'm like, I know you and everyone else are not comfortable.

Okay. So you want to know how I help my doctors get through this? How? Okay. So I have a doctor.

Teach me.

All right. And if you're going to be offended, then like fast forward this for like 20 minutes or 10 seconds or whatever. I have a doctor. He was, uh, he's actually in Australia, a client of ours, and we're on a group call and he's like, you know, hey mate, and I can't do the Aussie accent. You know, I'm getting ready to do my first webinar. What, what do you think? What advice would you give me? And I said, uh, Ben, I said, I want you to think about the first time you had sex. And I want you to think how bad you were. And every, there was like silence and everybody just started laughing. And I go, and then you'd remember like the next 4 to 5, 7 times and you were equally just as bad. Now today you're a little bit better. You're probably pretty good. I go, think about it like that. He's like, sure. And he's like, I got you, mate.

Noted.

It was just, he still says, I couldn't believe you said that.

Yeah.

You know, you can actually relate a lot of things back to sex in life. Like, remember the first time you ever had sex? It was really bad. You thought you were great, right? You're like, and she's like, yeah, right, good job. And, but you know, like, it was just awful.

That's so funny. But exactly that.

But when you just kind of like, okay, surrender to the process, then it gets kind of, you kind of get better.

Yeah. So I think I say something similar. These are a little different.

Yeah, probably a little bit leaner since you're a little bit, yeah, you're a little bit closer to the faith than I am.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm a little bit more of a renegade believer.

I'm like, let's do it. Just get it done. Doesn't have to be perfect.

And let's learn from it. Perfect is a bad thing.

That, and that's okay.

That's what I was gonna say.

Really bad. Going back to what I said about like, the older I've gotten, I've seen people start but not finish. And that's the other key is it's not perfect. And I always say done is better than perfect. Let's just get it done. Let's just move forward.

This is going back to like when you would show me your webpage, your landing page.

Yeah.

My list of things I can change with it. Yeah. And your numbers were fucking great.

Yeah.

I remember I'm like, yeah, I'm surprised it pulled. I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, shit, I'm surprised it pulled that well.

I'm like, we're not gonna screw with it.

Yep. So, yeah, I mean, your, your poll on your numbers on your landing pages, which I do remember them and they were, they were basic. They weren't remedial. They were, they were good, but enough to bring in new clients. And I remember your numbers, like you were converting like 35% of the people on the landing page, if I remember correctly. I was like, and your show rate was really great. I'm like, we're gonna leave this shit alone.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna screw with it.

Right, exactly. And so, yeah, just doesn't have to be perfect. Just, and so going back to like why someone doesn't finish or why don't they don't accomplish, I think is maybe you have a different vision of how it's supposed to look. As an entrepreneur, you just gotta be flexible with going with the flow.

Yeah. And when you do something new, you don't know how it's supposed to look.

Right.

You think you know how it's supposed to look.

Right.

And the other analogy I use is I will say, do you remember the first time you did surgery? Because all of them have done some form of surgery or delivered a baby. How bad was it? Like, it was pretty bad.

Oh, wow.

They're like, yeah. Okay, so this is just, look at it like that.

Right. You get better and better with each time.

Yeah. You just, it's about the reps. It really is. You know, you said something about affordability, and I want to talk about this.

Yeah.

Why do you— what's your view as to why doctors, providers have such a hard time charging more?

I think it was you that taught me this, Matt. Your bleeding heart will bleed to death. Do you still say that?

Sounds like something I've said.

Okay. You have said that. I've used that hundreds of times now. It comes from a good place. Well, I think that there's 2 answers to that. One is the, I'm not worth it. And then the other aspect is I wanna help as many people as I can. If I can keep prices as affordable as possible, then I can help more people. So it's that bleeding heart syndrome.

Which is worse, do you think? Oh man.

I think what's worse is the one that you don't believe that you're worth it. the keeping the prices more affordable to help people, like that's noble, but it's not gonna—

It doesn't bring in more clients.

Yeah, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. And it brings in the wrong clients.

Right.

Yeah, 'cause you're not speaking to your ideal dream client, your avatar. But that place of just not believing and thinking that they, I learned this firsthand because I had a similar mindset in the world of photography where I kept my prices expensive because I wanted young couples to be able to afford us. I wanted just young, vibrant couples, because I was young at the time. But as I got older and older, I'm like, man, this is, I got to shoot 60 weddings a year to like—

It's a lot.

It's a lot. Yeah. And I'm like, man, what if I just doubled my prices? Then I only have to do 30. Or triple my prices. Let's like each time I book at that new rate, keep increasing maybe every 2 or 3 clients that I get, keep increasing the rate and see where it goes. And that's exactly what I did. So I try to, to reflect that mindset on them too. Like, hey, let's just bump it a little bit where you're still comfortable, but, you know, getting a little uncomfortable.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and let's see if that changes. And I'm telling you, like, just last month there was a clinic that they upped their prices by 35% and they hadn't upped their prices in 5 years or so. And that was one of our rocks, one of our quarterly rocks. Like, hey, let's, let's reevaluate our pricing and let's increase by 35%. I really believe this is where the clinic needs to be. They were nervous and they did it. And through that whole process, obviously it was a process of communication, education, getting the front desk on board with scripts and all that stuff. And so as we'd meet up, as the rollout happened on June 1st, I'm like, so how'd it go? Any pushback? They're like, no pushback.

Yeah.

Everyone said, you guys deserve it. Like, I can't believe you didn't do this sooner. I'm like, whoa, and you guys waited 5 years now? And just seeing the revenue for June, I was like, this is amazing. Like, let's celebrate that. You know, like that's incredible. So yeah. Um, I think there's what I've seen from my vantage point, and you can definitely, I would love to hear what your vantage point is, but wanting to help more people, which usually doesn't happen. Uh, and then also just not believing they're worth it.

Yeah, there's, I have a lot of thoughts on it because it's our number, it's probably our biggest teaching point. A lot of people think that at Mavericks, the only thing we teach is just raise prices. That's not it. It's the starting point. Because when I can, again, if I can make you more money and more profitability, you're going to listen to me than me, our team.

Yeah.

When it comes to staffing, buying a building, like you moving yourself out of the day-to-day of the business, like you, we need, I need confidence, right? I learned that from being a golf instructor of like, if you can get somebody to hit a couple of shots better, it doesn't matter if it's the right thing that you like, you have to get them hitting the ball better before you can get them hitting the ball worse. 'Cause the, the bet, the early victories are gonna get 'em through that period where they hit it like shit.

Yeah.

Okay. 'Cause it's, everybody's got it. It's always gonna happen.

Totally.

So to me, price is, and I have an entire, I've done trainings on it and teaching on it. Um, I have an entire, I should probably turn it into a mini book, but do it. The, there are a couple of key things. So here's the great thing about working with doctors. It has forced me to become a scientist. It has forced me to prove all of my theories scientifically.

How do you do that?

Well, one, we're marketers.

Yeah.

So like we don't normally do that. Because we don't— in medicine, they have an idea, they go test it, they look and see if there's studies. If there's not studies, they find, try and find something that is similar. And if there's something that's similar, then they'll use that as a basis for which them to run their tests. Okay? So every decision that they make in their life is based on scientific research.

Mm-hmm.

So what I found is when you and I come in and we start saying, just raise your prices, they can't do it. Because I'm not giving them a framework with which to make the decision. I'm not giving them any proof. And if I give them proof of our clients in the past who have had success, everybody has the voice in their head and providers are very skeptical, especially because I work with a lot of pain management, orthopedic, right? Like, yeah. And a lot of like OB-GYN, you know, internal medicine. Like that's kind of our big chunk of who we, who we have.

Yeah.

They're all all very skeptical. So what I had to do was I was sitting in my office one day and in classic fashion, I'm like, what am I going to teach on tonight? It was on a Wednesday night. It was like 1 o'clock. I've been on the road and I'm like, well, let me dive into the science of price. And so I dove into the science of price and I spent the next, like, literally I'm doing this up until 3:59, calls at 4 Pacific time. And again, I'm like, all right, we're going to talk about the science of price. So here's a couple of things scientifically about price. Is that I say all the time, what you charge tells your prospect everything they need to know about your skillset.

Yes.

Okay. Well, how do I prove that? Well, there are studies that started in 1899 and there's no less than 15 of them, main studies, not counting the hundreds that have been redone in college campuses, like as a thesis test or whatever, that show that to be the case. So when I show this, when I talk about price with people, we always provide the scientific data. I love it. And I give them the research and I give them the notes and I say, you can go read it right here because that's how their brain works. Right?

It's great.

So like, um, like with packages, biggest challenges we have is packages versus à la carte. You're going to sell more, you're going to have an increase in sales of like 30-plus percent. I forget what statistically what the number is. It's like 33% increase. of sales, number of sales. I have packages over, uh, oh no, it's a combination. One, it's like a, it's like a 13% increase just with packages. The second thing is if you have 3 prices and you start with the highest price, that's a 33% lift versus à la carte. And you, you know, you have to have the highest price first. If you show the highest price first, and we have a whole model and a whole formula that we give to our clients about how you set the pricing and everything. like the different gaps, 60% of the people will take the middle price every single time.

Right.

If you start with the highest price. Right. If I start with the lowest price, 60% of the people will take the lowest price.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So there's all these things that you and I take for granted in the world of marketing that we learn from split testing shit.

Yes.

Right.

Seeing the data.

Yeah. But split testing to them isn't real. Mm-hmm. Because I don't have a— in 1978, this study was done and it was redone 14 times.

Like, right.

They don't buy our form of marketing and sales.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's not a control, a real control. Totally. So you have to, this whole price is a funny, funny thing.

Oh yeah.

And when I sit with a doctor or a client or my team does, and we find out what they're charging, I know exactly, exactly where they're I know the origin of their trauma. I don't need to go very far. It's usually one of like 3 or 4 things. And then we, without them knowing about it, will actually start to work on that trauma.

Okay. So I was going to ask, how do you help them?

So we don't confront the trauma. We T-bone the trauma.

Okay?

So, and I don't want to get— I'll give you an example. Um, let's say, so I had a client and he's, he's a very well-known trainer. I have a couple of those, so nobody will be able to figure out what it is. And, um, his prices were so low, like $650, $700 for PRP. Today it's $5,500.

Wow.

Okay.

That's good.

And So trauma, that trauma is either one, there's some type of family financial struggle, generational. Okay.

Yeah.

So that code is passed down epigenetically.

Totally.

Okay. Depression, slavery, starvation, something like that. So you have that one. The second one you have is, um, is they usually have some kind of financial personal trauma themselves. that makes them feel like they're not good enough. And then the third thing is the voices in their head. And the voices in your head are your parents, your uncle, your grandparents.

Yeah.

And in the medical field, the voices in their head are their professors in med school. And those professors in med school tell them, you're a doctor, you shouldn't worry about money. If you talk money with your patients, it's evil. You're not a good doctor if you do it. You don't want to charge too much and be greedy. That third one is probably 80% of our client base.

Wow.

So we will then approach my coaches because I don't do, I don't do one-on-one coaching anymore. The coaches approach it and they start talking about it and the processes that we take people through. And then you have to, you know, it's a whole, anytime you're dealing with a belief system, it's really hard to change somebody's belief system because the more you try to change somebody's belief system, the more entrenched they become. It doesn't matter. You can show them a raft of data, right? If you show them all this data, it's actually going to cement their belief system even more. So you have to like go at it in a very Socratic method to change it.

And that was, okay, that was the second biggest takeaway. Now you reminded me is, uh, at the mastermind in Florida was power of visibility. And the second one was hire a sales team.

Yes. Hire a sales team.

That revolutionized the clinic.

Yeah.

Once we hired the right salesperson because of that belief that a lot of practitioners have, like, I don't want to talk about finances. I don't want to introduce the membership pricing. Um, okay. And then let's bring a care coordinator in or a sales lead to do that for you. Um, yeah.

But the doctors that do it themselves and they hold their own providers, great.

They're better. Yes.

They're better than the salesperson.

Of course. 100%.

But if you're happy, if you're not willing to deal with the trauma, then you hire a salesperson.

100%.

My doctor's—

And that's most practitioners, like you said. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we had it to about 90% of our practitioners now do the sale.

Wow.

Awesome. Yeah. 'Cause we saw the numbers were, they were both like significantly better. Right.

100%. Yeah.

And then I supported it with data.

Well, they're the trust or the authority and yeah. What you say is, yeah, it's going to close that sale because of the trust.

Um, I'm curious about, and I'm looking at your book, but you talk about, and you talked about this earlier and it's in chapter 5 is Storyteller.

Oh yeah.

Why is story So important.

Oh, I love this topic, man. People remember stories.

Okay.

People remember stories over facts. And once again, this was what I learned in the wedding industry, starting my journey there was just the feedback I'd get from clients or family and friends. They would just talk about how this photo spoke to them, right? A picture can speak 1,000 words. We've heard that before, but it's really true. What happened here really tells a story. And so I came with that mindset when I started in the functional medicine marketing space of let's tell the story of transformation. Let's tell the story of healing instead of let's remove the needles. Let's remove, you know, the white lab coats off of landing pages and let's put real people that are thriving in whatever arena that you're speaking on, whether it's weight loss or energy and vitality or whatever it might be. Right. And also people love, I know I'm just using myself as an example. I know I'm drawn in when I watch a video, if it starts off with a story, like I wanna hear what was the outcome of that story, you know what I mean?

Right.

As opposed to like 33% of people are this or this or that, you know, it's just like, that's cool, but I'll forget that number and it won't stick with me as much as storytelling will, you know? So yeah, that's in a nutshell where the storytelling aspect comes and that speaks to people like, The way I define brand is it needs to be clear identity that has something compelling, a compelling message that speaks to your dream client. So what are you conveying to your client that really speaks to them? And for me, over facts, I want to see—

Can you give me an example of something that you've helped somebody construct?

Yeah. Yeah. So I've done, well, let's use Functional Medicine Institute, right? Where it was more of that sterile marketing. So it was still beautiful, but it was really boring. Yeah, more, I would call it more sterile. And just the hero section, putting it with videos instead of real-life people that are— their slogan was helping people flourish in every stage of life. So we started from a newborn to that newborn growing up, becoming a teenager, then an adult, and then the thriving grandparent.

Mm-hmm.

So it was like following one person's journey from like the very beginning to thriving in their later years as well. And the feedback we got was every time people visited to that website, it was like, wow, this is beautiful. Like, this really speaks to me over just, like I said, needles or lab coats. And it grabs you in because that's what we all desire, right? We all— if you're that avatar, which I know I am, having a family is like, I want to have a healthy family. I want to have— I know what I'm here for. Like, I know why I'm landing on this page. And then something that coincides with that is something I like that's called the grunt test. I'm not sure if you ever heard of the grunt test.

No, what is it?

It was coined by, I think, Donald Miller. He wrote StoryBrand.

Yeah. Yeah. His stuff on StoryBrand is great. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I've known Don. I've known of Don. We were in a mastermind, I'm sure, 25 years ago.

Cool.

But, you know, like a lot of people struggle and it's really cool to see Don have some unbelievable, amazing success.

Yeah.

StoryBrand is so good.

And that's the thing. So, so as I have been learning, you know, and learning from, from amazing people such as yourself, he said, Any marketing you do needs to pass the grunt test. And essentially the mindset is if a caveman living under a rock were to land on your social media, were to land on your website, were to land on a funnel, can they know what you're offering, why it matters, and how to get it? It needs to be so simple within seconds. What you're offering, why it matters to me, and how to get it. Right. I need to know that within seconds. So visually, right, having either video clips or photos of showing what I'm here for, and then how do I get that, um, is how I've seen marketing really flip the switch on getting the ideal clients in the doors.

What is your, is there a favorite story that you have used in marketing that you're like, you wish you could replicate it?

A favorite story in terms of like a marketing story, a personal story, or—

Well, I mean, a story that you use in marketing to generate generate leads, like a story. 'Cause you know, the story, the, you, you talk about how to be a storyteller. Yeah. So I'm like you, I like to use story. Yeah. Like my entire, every chapter of my latest book, Out of the System, starts with a story.

Oh, I love that.

Okay. And it ends with that story wrapping it back up because—

So cool.

I want people to read the book, but I want them to be able to pick up a chapter and read it.

Yeah.

Without it having to tie into something else. Right? Yeah. So, because I agree with you, I think story is the most underutilized, misunderstood process in marketing today. I think people are, they try a million different ways to get somebody to buy versus the one thing that always works. Tell a story. So do you have a favorite story that you've used over the years to sell? And what was kind of the structure of it? If you were to look back on that story, what made it work? And was there— is there a structure that she used?

Oh man, I think—

I'm really putting you on the spot here.

Yeah, yeah, no. And there's, there's someone that does come to mind. And she, she is, was, and I believe still is a pretty well-known podcaster in the Boise area. And she actually reached out to me when I was the director of marketing there and said, hey, I love what you guys are doing. Is there some way I can be a part of this? I have a health journey, you know. Um, and got together over coffee, um, and I got to hear her story and I was like, we would love to help you, you know. And I won't go into the details for HIPAA reasons.

Right.

Um, but creating that JV or that joint venture with her, that partnership really helped the clinic scale. being a podcaster, her seeing the root cause medicine working directly for her, same thing, it was a last resort. She had done surgeries, she had gone through this whole painful journey to try to fix what had been broken or needed healing along the way. And within that year's timeframe of getting on a membership, being seen, I mean, she couldn't, you didn't have to, we didn't have to pay her a dime. I would say the number one form of marketing is always gonna be word of mouth, like a referral.

Absolutely.

You know what I mean?

And so just seeing that, Hope Come Alive, same thing.

Like a lot of the things that functional medicine doctors do, you know, hit home on is emotions and trauma, things you gotta heal from, you know, and all that stuff. And she had never been asked those kinds of questions, you know? Um, so her then getting on her podcast and then speaking it out to, you know, her listeners really scaled the practice. Like up to that point, no other marketing campaign. And that was her just telling her story. Oh, And her being really authentic and real and other women that related with her were like, well, if I always say one person's testimony can lead to someone else's hope. That's why I'm huge on getting testimonials for clients. Like, oh, you gotta get testimonials because them hearing that or reading it or seeing it is really gonna speak to a similar person. Yeah.

I, for story, I mean, it's somebody once said, it's really simple. It's struggle, victory, struggle, victory. I think it's more than struggle, victory. I think it's struggle, struggle, struggle, a little bit of hope crushed by struggle, struggle, struggle, hope, hope, victory.

Victory.

Right? Like the more—

You know, before you said that, I was going to say struggle, process, which is that whole thing. And then the victory, there's a whole, which this is the amazing part right here, the journey in between.

When we had the clinics, we realized after about probably 9 or 12 months, probably 12 months, And I remember I was sitting there and we were talking about marketing. Our marketing was great, right? It was, you know, we had it perfect, right? It was, you know, it was fricking great from day one. The phones rang off the hook, right? And my partner was in my office and he's like, what are we going to do? We got to get more leads. I'm like, what are you talking about? We have fucking 150 appointments a week. Like, what do you mean more? And, and I go, well, here's the thing, Kevin. He came up with a bunch of ideas. I said, we don't want I said, we don't want the 30-year-olds in here. I said, we want people that have struggled using pills, potions, pumps, and porn. And he's like, that's it.

Run that on the ad.

Well, they're not going to let me say that on video. Okay. But what we came up with, has the little blue pill failed you... again? Not the little blue pill failed you. Has the little blue pill failed you again?

Hmm.

Because we wanted somebody that had had 2 years of struggle and they've tried everything, the pills, potions, pumps, and porn.

Yep.

To try and get an erection that didn't work.

Right.

And so that was like, because that epitomized the story of the struggle.

Mm-hmm.

Because if you think about a guy, he's struggling first, well, okay, I'm tired. Second, oh, I might be stressed out. Then their buddy throws them a Viagra or they order some back in the day from Canada. Now you buy it from Hims and that doesn't work. And then you're like, well, maybe I'll watch some, maybe I'll get this potion at the the sex store and then I get a pump that doesn't work. I get a cock ring that doesn't work. Sorry if I can't say that.

Oh, you can.

I'm sure. Sure.

It's my own show.

And then, you know, they try watching porn and we started asking guys, I'm like, this is the journey that they all did. Your customer will tell you their journey and the journey is the same for all of them. What do you think about, what do you think about that comment?

I agree. And I think even taking it to the next level is when the practitioner shares their story. And that's what I try to get out of them too.

Okay. So tell me about that.

I'll say that. I'll say like, what, you know, anytime I'm if I'm doing marketing, fractional marketing for a clinic, and I have a series of videos I wanna record either to put on the website or social media or both or YouTube, I'm like, why did you, like, what's your personal story that led to functional medicine? Like, do you have a personal health story that you're willing to share? And that for me, instantly, once they, they share it, I can relate to them at a whole nother level.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Because I don't have perfect health, you know? And I'm like, man, there's just that relatability aspect of like, thank you for sharing that you are not perfect.

Mm-hmm. 'Cause as a doctor, you think you're doing all the right things.

things, you should have perfect health. But is there a reason why you went down this direction? And so I love hearing those stories as well. It's like, hey, where were you? Or what are you— whatever you're willing to share, you know, comfortable-wise, that you're struggling with, that you believe in this type of healthcare. So yeah, it's powerful. I think it's— there's emotion attached to it. There's connection, relatability, and that's what draws people in.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really— story is such an underrated tool. And most people suck at storytelling, right? Like they, you know, every, I joke that, you know, growing up youngest of 6 kids in an Irish Catholic family.

You're the youngest too? Me too, of 9.

Really?

Yeah.

Are you Irish Catholic?

Uh, no, Romanian.

I was going to say Romanian. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's probably even more fun.

You know, so you're, uh, oh, this all makes sense.

Yeah. Doesn't it?

Yes.

This just makes sense. Like, you know, oh, let's deal with oppressive regimes and whatever. Yes. Um, so yeah, I mean, like the only way that I could get noticed is I had to be funny.

Mm-hmm.

Right now my brothers will tell you, you're not very funny. I'm like, well, I'm funnier than you. Um, it was a low bar, people. I just had to be funnier than you. So yeah, like you, And you had to, uh, I also remember as a kid, like I had to distract, I literally had to distract people if I wanted to get food. So I would tell stories trying to distract 'em. So yeah, like I remember this, I'm like, oh, anyway. So yeah, I think—

Were you the only one in your family that was artistic or are there others?

Uh, my brother Dan's a professional musician. He's very artistic. Um, and that's about it. We, we did not grow up in an environment where for Dan and I that our entrepreneurship and creativity was celebrated. My father celebrated it a little bit, but he was always working and then he died when I was young. And my mom was like, no, go get a good safe, go work at a bank. Go get your union card. I think my mother's 2 happiest moments in her life is when my brother Tim got his union card as a plumber and when Kate got tenure at the college as a professor. The rest of us are fucking posers. So yeah.

Still working through it.

It's okay. I'll be working through it for the rest of my life. Yes. She's been dead 8 years and I'm still working through it. Oh man. But look, You know, I joke about it and it's real.

Like that trauma. Totally.

The trauma of what we deal with, of what we grew up, like that trauma of your parents and your grandparents and whether you like it or not is encoded in you.

Totally. You know what's so funny is my parents, some, my parents are first-generation immigrants, 1980. I was born in '85 and they encouraged us—

They left communist Romania?

Yeah, yeah, they left.

Yeah, it was— How the fuck did they get out?

Oh, my dad wrote a book about it. I mean, he was part of the underground church movement that was illegal. You'd get shot if you were, had any form of faith. Like, it was crazy. He went on hunger strikes to get his family from Romania to Austria.

Is your dad still alive?

He's still alive. Both our parents are.

Oh, I gotta meet him.

Yeah.

Seriously, would he come on?

He's phenomenal stories. I think so. Yeah. He'd be— yeah, sure.

I would love to interview him.

Yeah. He's got a lot to share about his journey. So he came here and started $3 to $4 an hour in construction. That's how he started. And he didn't want any of us to work nearly as hard as he did. And so he encouraged all of us to go in the medical field. So I don't think I ever shared this, but I started out as an ultrasound technician.

I think I remember you telling me that, but I hated it. I mean, yeah, I could see you totally.

I think it hated me as much as I hated it. It just was not—

But you're such a creative.

That was it, man. And so, and I did it because I took photos. Like, I'm like, what's the closest thing to photography that I can do that's like least invasive? Um, but it was just hard working with radiologists. Um, and so the dream was to be a photographer instead, worldwide, traveling the world with my wife, taking photos. But it's so funny because all my siblings are still in the medical field and they're amazing. I mean, some have ventured out into like, you know, business side or marketing things, but it's so cool how like full circle I'm still in the medical field but on the business side of it.

And so your parents came from Romania?

From Romania, yeah.

With 9 kids?

At the time it was—

Oh, that's right, because you were 6.

And the other 3 were— yeah, the final 3 were born here. in Orange County. So 9 total, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

What a great story.

Yeah, so my fascination of art or marketing was, I grew up in the '90s, so cassettes and CDs, just like evaluating and asking, why did they choose that? Or how does this correlate with the song? And so that's when I started falling in love with marketing and just like the symbolism of it all or the storytelling and super weird, you know, like in terms of my other siblings were just having fun playing outside and I was evaluating books and covers and artwork and all that stuff.

Wow. That's fascinating.

Fascinating.

You know, and I think, you know, my art was, I wound up in art by accident, right? Like a lot of things. I remember as a sophomore, I got into, I was taking a bunch of pictures. I remember, so when I was in 7th or 8th grade, I really got into photography 'cause I was not very much of an athlete. I was this short, fat, dumpy kid and I wasn't very smart, right? Or my grades weren't very good. I'm very smart.

Yes.

But, uh, and I remember I got into photography in 7th or 8th grade, and then a friend of ours, Peter Tolinus, had a darkroom and he gave it to me. And I had a darkroom down in the basement, which I hate. I hate basements. Uh, so I'm sure there's some kind of trauma there. Um, so, but I would go to a darkroom in the basement.

Chemicals.

Yeah. Like smelling chemicals. But yeah, I would go take pictures and I would develop 'em and I, I did all that. And then And my art department in high school was purportedly the best art department of all high schools when I was in it. And we'd always sweep like all the national awards. Like I won 4 out of 5 national awards for photography when I was a junior.

Wow. Amazing.

Like, um, and I got into that program when I was a sophomore, but it was like, for me, the thing about art was a big part of it was it was a place that I could excel. when my friends were excelling in football or basketball. It was a way for me to get awards. It was my own—

Recognition.

Being captain. Yeah, it was my own. And it was individualistic. I never was really all that great in team sports because of a variety, a host of reasons, probably why I played golf too.

Yeah.

Interesting. But it was the thing. Yeah. It was a way for me to be able to excel and get recognition. And because it was such a big art department, I got a lot. It was a lot of citywide recognition and stuff like that. So it was like the equivalent of being like all city or all state, right?

Yeah.

So art's a fascinating thing to me. I love it. I find art, and I try to explain this to people, like the interesting thing about an artist and living here in LA, there's art community.

Vast.

Christine's in the entertainment industry. She's an actress, she's an artist. We hang out with her friends and I tell them, Art doesn't have a timeline and art doesn't have rules. The reason why you're an artist is for you. And if people— that's where it starts first. And if people love it, like it or love it, that's great. You'll make money. Right?

Right.

But the reality is, is that art is something that you do to express yourself.

100%.

You don't do it to satisfy others. If you want that, go be a chiropractor, right?

Right.

Or something.

Yeah.

Thoughts?

Uh, yeah, I agree. And I think it's just, it's the way you see the world, you know what I mean? And so, um, bringing it full circle to, um, you know, I, man, we can, 2 people can literally wake up, look out at the same sky and see something different. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah.

And so for me, once again, coming from my background of of wedding industry. Like I saw beauty, I saw love, I saw, you know what I mean? Possibility, all that stuff. And so coming back to the marketing of like, that's how my eyes see the world. I see it with possibility, you know what I mean? With renewal, with hope. I mean, I have a tattoo that says newness right here. Like I believe in being new every single day. Like there's a new beginning, there's a new chance. And so infusing that, I think speaks to me, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Where someone else can go on the other, like the fear factor side. Like, if you don't do this, you're not gonna live long. You know what I mean? That fear marketing that I'm not a huge fan of at all, actually. I hate fear marketing. Yeah, the fearmongering and all that stuff. And there's a few practitioners that do that.

And it works.

And I have to, but I kind of have to be like, hey guys, like, let's, you know, switch up. Let's like infuse life into this. Like, let's not talk about death. Let's talk about like the opposite because I don't know, there's already so many negative things in this world. Like, let's infuse the like positive—

Let's give some hope.

Hope, exactly. Healing, possibility. So when it comes to art, you know what I mean? Like you, exactly what you're saying. It's like what satisfies you, what fulfills you, how you see the world. So coming from that vantage point of marketing is like, how do you see the world? Same thing with a practitioner. Like I'd love to, you know, how do you see the world? How do you want to convey this? Like having that conversation. But yeah, every practitioner is unique, very similar. They're all very similar.

Yep.

But also obviously unique DNA and all that stuff.

So are you, when you're working with folks, are you handling their marketing like an agency or are you showing them how to do their own marketing or is it a little bit of both? How do you, how does that work?

Yeah, you know, it's evolving and growing pretty rapidly. So my vision has always been to be a fractional role, to come in as an actual embedded team member. So not necessarily as an agency where it's just like, you know, here's all this work and then report to us once a month or whatever that might look like, but I'm actually embedded in the team. So as an actual team member, so I'm, you know, doing all the things, coming up with the strategies, the campaigns.

How many clients can you handle?

I'm at capacity right now, but I do have support. I do have a partner, also my daughter who's 15, and she helps with editing and content.

Amazing how much those little kids can do.

Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, I mean, they grew up with technology. We had to learn it through the years.

I grew up with tin cans and ropes.

Yeah, exactly. Pogs, I don't know if you remember Pogs, but that was my day.

I was born in '67.

I know, just little round cardboard. I try to explain to my kids, How did you have fun with that? I'm like, you just had a blast.

You had a great time.

Yeah. So I do have a little team for sure, but I'm in every single strategy. So I'm in, and it's a lot for sure.

I was going to say, that's a lot.

It's a lot. It's exciting. I think it fits my personality. Like I have that energy that I want to place it in the right places for sure. So yeah, an embedded team member is the best way I can explain it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think the, How do you, 'cause I see this all the time, it's the, there's so much fear of the unknown with marketing. It's so foreign. I liken it to if you and I all of a sudden were like, hey, you're gonna deliver a baby today. You'd be like, what?

Really?

Um, how do you, do you, is your goal to wean them off of you? Or like, is your goal that you work with them for the next 5 years or that you never leave? What's 'Cause I believe that there comes a point that they have to step into the marketing in some way. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, I think every clinic is unique. So there's certain clinics where I do fractional marketing. There's others where I'm more of like an integrator, chief operating officer. So it just depends, I guess, for the outcome and the goal for each clinic. There are certain clinics where I want to have longevity with them. I'm like, I believe in this vision. I want to grow with you. Like, I want to see this until, You know, as long as we can go, like, I want to, I want to help and be a part of the vision. So I think it depends. Yeah, I think, like I said, so going from FMI to business coaching because I learned so much, right? And after learning from you and other business coaches after, I'm like, man, I would love— this seems so fun.

Yeah. You know, it is a lot of fun.

I'd love to do it. But then the gap I saw was the implementation part. You know what I mean? So to answer your question, like them stepping into doing their own marketing, um, most practitioners just don't have the ability to do the marketing on top of everything else they're doing. So that's why I love to come in as the support piece.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure if that answers the question, but every clinic looks different. There's certain clinics where I'm like, man, I want to ride this with you until, until you retire, until I retire. You know what I mean?

Do you take an equity position at all?

Um, those are conversations I've had for sure.

That's a little challenging because of the whole medical corporate practice of medicine.

Yeah, it's—

I mean, shit, if the venture capitalists can figure it out, we can figure it out.

Right, right. Yeah, I love opportunity. I love, yeah, being a part of things, you know. So it's pretty— every clinic, it's a different approach, you know. It's not like a tailored fit. It's just unique. What do you see?

What do you see happening? Put your vision goggles on. What do you see this industry in the functional medicine space? What do you see it evolving into over the next 5 years?

Man, I'm already seeing, uh, I'm already seeing clients, patients, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, what you're seeing, um, be kind of stressed and overwhelmed by all the biohacking in the sense of, yeah, that even causing stress on their lives because now they know so much numbers and they're their wearables and all that stuff. And I think what I'm noticing and seeing is going from extremes, right? I've always tried to be in the middle and not extremes. And so, how can we balance the tech and the biohacking, which is phenomenal, with the natural and with the earth, with the grounding and meeting right in the middle?

Yeah.

So, it's not all heavy this and then you miss the humanity aspect. So, I think I'm seeing even in the, in the marketing that I'm seeing is like going back to like natural, going back to like just the way God made us, you know, or whatever that, you know, right. Yeah. Messaging looks like. Um, so yes, I think the biohacking space is the longevity space is, I'm excited by it. I love it.

Right.

But I think there needs to be this balance of like, hey, there's this, but there's also of course the lifestyle, right? So going back to things that don't always cost money, but what's the free medicine that we can keep doing, you know what I mean? So I don't know. That's what I'm seeing.

How do you think that's gonna impact the clinics in 5 years? What's your concern?

Well, I think it'll—

Or what's your hope?

Oh, my hope is for more people to still pursue the functional medicine space. 'Cause it is that. Yeah, it is lifestyle. Right. So not losing that holistic, natural approach, just marrying the tech side of things really balanced. Does that make sense? Like, Um, because I am, I mean, I personally don't wear any wearables more because it stresses me out.

Yeah, I don't, I used to have an Oura Ring.

I used to.

Yeah. I keep thinking I'm going to get a Whoop.

And it's just, I think my personality is like, I want to keep crushing it and then it causes stress, unnecessary stress. So I'm like, let me just be like human. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like human being. I think there's a point with me with the wearables that I reached. I'm like, okay, I went through my season. I had the wearables. I've done the Whoop. I've done the Oura. I don't necessarily, even though I wear rings, I don't like to have multiple rings on it. Like one ring each hand is good for me and like having another one. And I don't know anyway, but here's what I found is once I figured out a bunch of things about my body, like, oh wow, my sleep score is cut in half when I drink one drink of alcohol. So I don't drink anymore. Like occasionally, like I'll have a drink this 4th of July weekend. Right. Like I just know I'm going to, my numbers on the road are never as good as they are when I'm home. Like, you know, I know what they are.

Yeah.

I mean, I have an InBody scale at home, which I use once a week. Like, and I have my regimen of stuff that I take. I mean, I've got it kind of zeroed in. So after a while, To me, that data becomes a little redundant. But yeah, you know.

Yeah, not to take away from it, but you know, the big concern I hear from practitioners is, are we going to be replaced by AI? I personally don't think so.

Part of you will be.

Yes, but I don't think fully. And the reason why is because of the inundation of information, that's not the solution. I think the guidance is the solution. And so for me personally, I still wanna be guided by a human, you know what I mean? That I connect with and that I, that can relate to me and vice versa. And this is, you know, speaking on myself, but I feel like I represent a statistic of people. You know, they want that human experience still as opposed to just tech. That's my personal thoughts.

I think AI in the functional medicine space is a massive threat because if you look at at, if you look at disruptions that have happened. So let's talk about the internet now. So I'm 58. So when the internet came out, I was 28, 30 years ago. Okay. My mom was a travel agent.

That changed things.

Do you know anybody who's a travel agent today?

I've heard, but never met one.

Yeah. They used to be everywhere. Travel agents used to be in every town.

Right.

Right. Totally. You'd have a place on the corner every town. You'd walk in, hey, I wanna go to Botswana. Right. Okay. Yeah. Great. All right. Hey, here's your ticket. Big celebration. It completely changed the industry.

100%.

And everybody said, oh, people are always going to want to go to the office and sit down and talk. No, they don't.

Virtual is a lot more convenient.

And because you can fantasize on your own and not have to have somebody call you back and say, do you want to book that trip to Botswana?

Okay.

I think what's my— I think what's going to happen in the functional medicine space Is, so there's a couple things that I see happening. So I was at A4M last year. They had 10,000 practitioners, providers there. Uh, when I was there 3 years ago, they had 5,000. So there's more. Okay.

Definitely.

And those practitioners don't know shit about business, which means that they're going to make bad business decisions. And what they're going to do is they're going to compete on price. They're gonna do buy ones and get ones. They're gonna do BOGOs. They're gonna do all these things that have happened in the med spa space. Okay? So you're gonna have a segment of the industry that's going to eat itself. Happens every single time.

Mm-hmm.

You're gonna have a segment of the industry that tries to play the middle ground. They'll constantly struggle. And you have a very small sliver of the industry that will dominate their markets because they will have experience, price, and they will leverage AI. So here's what's, here's what's already happening. So this weekend I will build an app. I don't know how to code fucking shit.

You don't need to.

I can't plug in a hammer.

Okay?

This weekend in the span of about 30 to 45 minutes, I will build my own app for my own blood work. And I'm going to actually go back to doing a wearable because I want to sync it up and my InBody, I'm going to take all my blood panels. I'm going to take everything that Dr. Will Haas has me taking. Okay. And I'm going to plug it in and I'm going to see what it says and I'll build it in 30 minutes because I want to see. Now what's going to happen is the barrier to entry is, one of the barriers to entry is blood work. Well, Ways to Well out of Austin's already democratized it.

Hmm.

They're doing really full blood panels very inexpensively. And Jelly Roll's been there and he's been on Rogan. Okay. Brigham and Wheeler's smartest shit, right?

Okay.

Yeah. So what's going to happen is people are going, there's going to be a segment of people that are going to be able to get their blood work and they're going to run it through AI. Now, right now there's a rash of doctors going, but AI is not going to give them a right answer. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's the speed with which they can get the interpretation and get the answer to their problem. it doesn't matter if the answer is right or not. So what doctors have to do is they better embrace AI today.

Oh, 100%.

Because I tell my orthopedic surgeons all this. I said, you all think that your job is secure. They can open an egg and take the shell off the egg and leave the membrane of an uncooked egg using AI.

It's crazy.

They can rebuild a pool table. You want to tell me they're not figuring out how to do joint replacement surgery? Because you're their biggest cost point. AI's going to massively change medicine.

Yeah. Wow.

And it's going to massively change medicine in ways that we can't even comprehend over the next 5 years. And if you were sitting there with the belief system that, well, it's never going to touch medicine, it's going to touch medicine.

Well, it already is.

Yeah. For sure. And it's going to radically change. And so when I look, when I squint out in the future of 5 years, you're going to have way more people doing anti-aging, longevity, functional medicine. The prices of things are going to come down. There's going to be more competition and there's going to be more confusion. The job is not then, today, to be the educator. You have to start that positioning today. You have to do the books. You've got to do the podcasts. You've got to be the truth teller in your market.

Right.

You don't need to— if you're in North Dakota, you don't need to worry about what anybody thinks in South Dakota. Okay, maybe you're getting clients from South— maybe you don't have to worry about what people are thinking in Nebraska. Your market is a 25-mile radius. Um, if you're in North Dakota, it's 50, right? But like, you know what I mean? Like your boys, your market for IFM was what, 20 miles?

20-mile radius? Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

85, 90%. Yeah. Dominate that market with being the educator, with being the truth teller. Right. Don't worry about, and then, then you, people will come to you. You have to be positioned as the person that you have the answers. Right.

Because you're the go-to.

This is, this AI stuff is rapidly, rapidly changing the world. It's rapidly changing my Right. I mean, we have completely shifted in the last 2 months. My gal in the Philippines, Marie, is taking— she's taking AI classes. She built an entire CRM for us that does exactly what we want to do. It's going to save me $1,200 a month.

Amazing.

Now, if Marie, a mom of 4 kids in the Philippines, okay, Thank God. To do this.

Yeah.

What do you, what do you think is possible?

Anything is possible.

And so like, this is, it's a fascinating time.

Totally.

Right?

Yes. Oh, it's, I mean, it's why I get to do what I do today.

Yeah.

We're, like I said, 5 years ago, 4 years ago, I had to take books home.

Yeah.

And then correlate it with articles to make sure what else I want.

No, I give you a summary of the book and then I go read the chapters I want to read if I want to get a basic understanding of something. If I want to dive deep, then I go back in It's crazy. It's gonna change the— it's gonna change our businesses dramatically.

Yeah.

It's gonna massively change our business. Okay.

What do you think about, 'cause this is what I'm seeing now in the marketing world, is a lot of the ship-at-home blood draws. Have you seen those?

Oh, fuck yeah.

That's—

Okay. Dude, that's gonna, that's gonna kill us.

Okay. That's already happening.

It's already happening.

I'm seeing it on every single—

And then people are gonna come up with their own blood panel.

Yeah. It's wild.

This is what I want you to do. They're walking in. It's already happening. Oh, this ship-at-home blood stuff.

Okay. So what's your advice then for practitioners that are listening right now? now thinking 3 to 5 years out, what should their focus be? What should their priority be? Is it adopting AI sooner and not being like—

Yeah, we're gonna teach it in our mastermind. We're gonna have a segment every quarter in our mastermind on AI. I'm already bringing in people. Um, so the first thing I would tell you is don't be scared of it. It's not that complicated. It's a phenomenal tool. Somebody said, well, how do I learn about AI? I said, what you do is you go to Claude and you type in Claude, Claude, how do I best utilize it? Right. It'll tell you. They're like, wait, what?

I'm like, yeah.

Okay. There's some really good programs. Rich Shefferin's program is out there. We'll probably build something in the next 6 months. I would bet, like for doctors, because it's such a big topic. In fact, it's on the list. It's something that we will probably build. I'll probably get one of my friends to help build it with me.

Amazing.

I have 2 friends that are fricking brilliant on it, but it's going to massively change It's gonna massively change your customer experience. And so then, like, I, so this is just off the cuff. What I would probably do is if you have an at-home blood test from such and such, bring it over to our clinic and we'll give you 50% off our blood panel. Something like that to like get them to come in. Like you're not gonna beat 'em, right?

So join 'em.

Right. Like how do you leverage it?

Right.

How do you leverage it? Like we ran into the same thing. So Hims came out when we owned the ED clinics and my partner was like, oh my God, there's, you know, we're going to lose all our business. I said, no, we're not going to lose shit. I go, what it's going to do is going to open more people up. And then we marketed as the little blue pill.

Matt, I'm not sure if you remember this, but when I was at the mastermind in Sarasota, this was 3, 4 years ago, peptides were the hot topic.

Remember?

And I remember, remember it was like so new. Yeah. And the whole mindset was ride this wave because it's only going to last a year. And I think what has since transpired is exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. No, I remember when I said this, people, we got 2 to 3 years.

The more people, I mean, now it's everywhere.

Yeah.

I'm like seeing all these ads. I'm like, whoa, what was so new and thinking it, it was just so cool to be at the beginning of that like revolution.

I'm pretty lucky.

Peptide therapy. Yeah. I was just like, whoa. And seeing how it's so widespread now, it's exactly what you're saying.

Well, history always repeats itself.

100%. Yeah.

So I remember, I remember that mastermind. Yeah. He was like, what do we do about it? I said, I'll tell you exactly what you do about it. What should I do about it? I said, well, you got a 2 to 3 year window where you can charge the shit out of it. And then what's going to happen is the price is going to drop, the government's going to get involved or whatever it is. The price is going to go from $700 to $70, right? And then it's going to be ubiquitous everywhere. But you know what? There's always another thing. History always repeats itself and there's never anything that lasts forever.

Right.

Okay.

So what do you think is next? What's on the horizon?

What are you seeing? So the whole peptide craze right now is Like, I was just at a mastermind and people are like, oh, you're in longevity? Yeah. Yeah. I use peptides too. I'm like, what do you want? I'm like, I don't know. I get it from like my friend who gets it shipped in from like Bermuda. I'm like, no, no, no. Like, go talk to this guy. So the whole peptide conversation is kind of silly to me. I'm like, everyone's on peptides, especially here in LA. Oh, I got a great guy for peptides. Like, it's hilarious to me. Where do I think, what do I think is the next big thing? Yeah.

What are you seeing?

So I'm not much, I'm not much of a, I'm the one that looks at things and then sees what gets traction and then kind of understands. I think in the longevity space, I would tell you that there, I think we are in the silliness Really? Yeah. I think we're in the, I think we're in the tools silliness stage. Now, part of it's because my algorithm on Instagram is to get Dave Asprey's feed and all that shit.

Yes. Okay.

I think we're definitely in the silliness stage of what's truth and what's not. Okay. I think a lot of that's also pushed by the fact that Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s head of HHS and he's into a lot of these things. And I love Bobby. I think Bobby's, I think he's a I love him to death. I can't wait to meet him.

Bring him on.

Yeah. If anybody knows him, actually, Kat knows him. So my— so we're working on it. But yeah, like, I just think that the— I think there were a season of just the device-ness, the nobody knows what's real. There's a lot of bullshit devices out there. There's a lot of fake fucking studies that people are selling that this tool works and it doesn't. Like, there's just a lot of stupid shit out there right now. And that's dangerous to the industry.

Totally.

It's very dangerous to the industry.

Right.

In the regen space, what we've made it through is we've made it through the third-party stem cells IV, and it's going to signal in your body where it's supposed to grow, go and grow, which there's no real studies that haven't been funded by the company that's selling the thing that show that to be the case.

Wow.

So like, ultrasound-guided for the PRP or your own stem cells injected into the tear far outperforms the signaling. Like there's plenty of studies that show that. So, yeah, I just, but here's what I do know. The industry is not going to stop growing.

100%.

It's going to become more and more mainstream. Your generation is much more in tune with it.

Yeah.

And they're, and they want solutions.

Yeah. That's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing the direction of it becoming more and more mainstream. mainstream is what I'm seeing, like gyms adapting more to functional, more holistic, more like, I think it's still hype. I still see a lot of hype marketing out there, but I think at least going in the, hey, drinking is not as cool as it was. It's actually getting healthy. Getting healthy is cool.

Have you seen the numbers on the alcohol industry in the last 5 years? Yes. Thank you.

For the first time in history, I think.

Oh, it's horrible. A college buddy of mine's like, hey, I want to buy this distillery in Bourbon, And I'm like, why?

Probably not the right time.

Yeah, dude. He's like, oh yeah, you know, it's gonna come back. I'm like, it's not gonna come back.

If you look at the studies on drinking, like, well, I mean, that's why my generation, the way we're raising our kids, which is a lot of my peers, right? Are raising 'em.

You don't drink, do you? No.

Very rarely.

Yeah. Rarely. You'll have like a big celebration.

I mean, we're educating our kids on organic and why don't we, we eat these foods and why don't we eat out all the time?

And, and if I drink, I drink Italian wine.

Yeah.

Or French wine because it doesn't have all the chemicals.

Yeah. Drinking the, yeah. Yeah, the best. So, um, yeah, so I just think that this new wave of generation, you know, is, is teaching more on that mindset of health. And so I think, yeah, it's gonna keep growing and expanding because that's what we want. Yeah. We want a healthy, healthy, yeah, future.

Cool. Well, I'm getting the high sign. He's gotta go cook. He's gotta go cook.

He's gotta go. Yes.

That's all right. Yeah. So tell everybody how, if they wanna get in touch with you, how do they get a copy of your book? Again, The Unforgettable Brand. Check it out. Uh, I've known Sammy for a long time. He's brilliant. Brilliant. He's a really brilliant, brilliant marketer, everybody, and a brilliant business guy. I wouldn't have had you on here if I didn't think it.

Oh, appreciate it.

But like, I haven't read the book, but I'm sure it's great. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to it.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

But tell 'em, how do they get in touch with you if they wanna get a copy of the book? I know you said you're full with clients, but if somebody waves a big check in front of you, I'm sure—

no, I'm kidding. You never know. Well, first and foremost, thank you. Like, yeah, you were my first introduction to functional medicine. Oh, like as a guide, I'm like, All right, what are we doing? Like, what is this? What does the longevity clinic look like? So it's been really, I don't know, it's a full circle moment in, in the best kind of way of like, wow, this is so cool to reconnect with you, you know?

Yeah.

Based off of our, our, you know, virtual calls and meeting you in person in, in Florida. Um, I learned a lot from you and I still am learning a lot. Thank you. So thank you so much.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Um, yeah. And when I saw you coach, I'm like, man, I wanna do that. So it's, it's so cool. That's what I mean. It's been one of my dreams and I get to do it. And still in the beginning, so I'm learning and I'm growing. So just really cool to be able to look to people like you. Yeah, kosacollective.us. Kosa is my last name, C-O-S-A, but also created as an acronym. C is for clarity, O is optimization, S is strategy, A is action. So it's what I believe creates a really successful business and marketing plan.

Awesome.

Clarity, optimization, strategy, and action. And yeah, just thankful to be here. The book can be on Amazon. Um, simple read. The goal is to be able to read it in 45 minutes because, yeah, who has time? So something super simple, easy to digest, uh, and hopefully, um, take a few principles and apply it to your life and move forward in success.

Cool.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Matt. It's been amazing.

Hey man, thanks for, thanks for fighting LA traffic. Thank God it was Friday.

I know, there was no traffic.

Like, wow, there's no traffic this morning.

It's holiday. I timed that really well. So thank you so much for taking the time out of your holiday weekend.

And, uh, know, wherever down in OC, or you guys are up here. What's your wife's name?

Natalia.

Natalia. Well, then we should get together for dinner.

Yes. What's your girlfriend's name? Christine.

Christine. Awesome. So everybody knows her there at the events. She's worked— so she's been working with me for 2 years. So, so yeah, awesome, man. Appreciate it. Have a wonderful 4th of July weekend. By the time this goes out, it's going to be post-4th of July, but happy 250th. Yes, happy 250th as well. Look, let's, uh, seriously, let's get your dad on here.

Okay.

All right.

That'd be Great.

I'll do it.

He would do it.

All right, cool. Yeah, Sammy, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

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