Ep031: Increasing Your Business with Sachin Patel

Welcome to the Perfect Practice podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel, is a functional medicine success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

What is up, my friends? This is Sachin. Welcome to Perfect Practice. Today I'm going to be talking about something that comes up almost weekly in my conversations with practitioners and that is how can I get my message out to more people? Also known as how can I increase my business? Well, a couple things to realize and why increasing your business is so important to your community. Increasing your business is vital to your community because it means that if people are seeking out your care, they're getting better, they're getting to the root cause. Your community is saving millions and millions of dollars if your practice is busy. Because what you offer is so much more effective, it's so much more affordable, it's so much more accessible because you teach people how to fix themselves. So it's an absolute critical situation that your practice is busy, okay? So let's get that out of the way. You must be busy and you must also be busy helping people and be busy teaching people how to stay out of your office. Because that's the, that's what's also powerful about our message, is we can teach people how to stay out of our office. And to me, that's true magic, right? And we can have a lot of fun with that. We can keep thousands of people out of our office. But the people that do come to see us, we have to provide them the best care. And again, a reminder, in case you're not aware of this, there is no shortage of sick people. So today we're gonna be talking about marketing. We're gonna be talking about two different types of marketing. One is active marketing and the other one is passive marketing. So here's the thing. Passive and active marketing are vital to your practice. All marketing can essentially be divided down into active and passive. Today I'm gonna share with you how to use this amazing combination of strategy to get the best outcomes and so you can help more and more people. But first, I wanna kind of share some funny stories about myself. So As a practitioner coach, I have to remind some of the people that I work with that, you know, you know, you can't just do what I do now and expect to get the same results. And so let me backtrack this for you. So if I were to post something, and you were to post something, and you're just starting out where I was, you know, five, six, seven years ago, then guess what? You're gonna get a completely different result posting the exact same content. Because you probably haven't built up your tribe and you probably haven't built up the following. And there's nothing wrong with that. Cause I was there at one point as well, and there's people that are ahead of me that, you know, that I admire. So what's important to realize is that your strategy is going to have to change based on how long you've been in business, based on how well people know you already, and based on how quickly you want to grow your business or whether you're just, you know, coasting. And there's nothing wrong with that either, because we all have a capacity. You can't just keep exponentially growing without at some point driving yourself nuts or having to scale. A practice is a lot of work. So just something to keep in mind. The majority of people listening to this will be at some point having a busy, steady, stable, healthy, vital practice, and you'll be a staple in your community. So that's the goal that most of you are probably after. Some of you are going to want to. To take it to a whole new level, and that's okay, too. You're in the right spot. So what I want to remind you of is that when I talk to my clients, I have to remind them that, you know, hey, you've got to do the things that I did, not the things that I do, because I'm a few steps ahead of you. So if you're just starting out, then you have to realize that you've got to do a little bit more active marketing. And I'll share what that is in a minute. And later on, you can do a little bit more passive marketing, but you can't skip right to the passive. So there's a certain order that you have to go in and a certain balance that you have to have. So I'm speaking to one of my clients, and he says, hey, Satchin, how do I increase my business? My Facebook ads are doing okay. They're doing decent, but I wanna scale. And so we backtrack and we try to figure out how much active marketing is he doing? Because I believe that active marketing might be the easiest and for some people, the most difficult type of marketing, and that's what holds them back. And I'm gonna tell you why he it's difficult for people and has nothing to do with money or it has nothing to do with capability. It has everything to do with another C word. And we'll get to that in a minute. So that's what I have to remind people. So I want to remind you as well that I'm going to share with you what you need to be doing in the beginning of your practice, when to transition into doing more passive type of marketing, and then when you can rely primarily and only on passive marketing. But, you know, you'll find that all marketing is a combination of both. So, you know, I started out doing weekly workshops. Some weeks I would do two workshops a week. And that's how I built my practice. And that's why I believe that workshops are the fastest way to grow your practice. Now, at this point, with a larger following and a bigger email list and, you know, resources where I can invest into Facebook advertising or other online advertising strategies, I don't have to do as much active marketing like that. I don't have to be grinding it out so much. But if I didn't do that grind, I wouldn't have the following. So you still have to go through that. It's not like you're gonna put up a passive ad and do passive marketing only and build your practice. I think that's delusional and unrealistic, and I think you're setting yourself up for major disappointment. So I used to do weekly workshops. Now, how I would get people to these weekly workshops was primarily through word of mouth. Okay. And so I used to work in a gym, and I had a lot of contacts. Just being in the gym environment, knowing the personal trainers, and also having connections in my community, because I was a community guy, which you should be as well. You should be active in your community and in your neighborhood. So I pulled a lot of resources from that. I was part of a BNI group, so I had, you know, a network of 20 people that may not have necessarily been referring a ton of patients to me, but they were always aware of what I did. So I was building relationship categories. Okay. And that's really important in your practice as well. It's not just the online capital. It's the relationship capital that's really important. And so that's what I did. I did workshops. I was posting stuff on Facebook. I Even did newspaper and magazine, I'm sorry, magazine ads about our practice. And so I've learned. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on marketing, and I've learned what works and what doesn't, what order works and what order doesn't. And that's what I coach people on, is figuring out what that order is. So hopefully, by the end of this conversation, you can figure out where you are and actually apply your energy and efforts and money in the right direction. So no matter where you are, if you're starting out, you've got a busy practice, or you're primarily an online practice, or you're scaling to a whole new level, you should find some value in this. And so I want to start with defining what active marketing is and then obviously, passive marketing, and then we can figure out, you know, which one you're leaning on and if it's the right ratio that you're leaning on. So active marketing is going to be things like workshops and webinars and, you know, connecting with other businesses. You know, it's one of the hardest things for people to do, but the easiest way to do that is to just go and learn about other people's businesses. Okay. Local business owners love connecting with local business owners because you speak the same language. The entrepreneurial language is the same. You have similar problems, you have similar challenges, you have similar upsides and similar issues going on. So the business owner is always going to want to connect with another business owner. Just go learn more about them and just listen and watch what happens. They're going to want to learn a little bit more about you. It's just the reciprocal nature of human beings. But it's hard for people to do that and put themselves out there. And the reason it's hard for you to put yourself out there is because you're thinking about yourself and you're not thinking genuinely about the other person. So lean into it and actually ask yourself, how can I help this individual? And as a result of that, as Zig Ziglar says, if you help enough people get what they want, you can have whatever you want and whatever you deserve. Another thing to do in terms of active marketing is be active in your community. Volunteer places. Okay? You know, you could be a coach. That could be something that you do. You know, for me, I volunteered at different shelters. I volunteered at a place called Wizkids. And. And so I did a variety of things. I sponsored a few events in my area, and we sponsor about 2,000 dinners during the Christmas holidays every year. So we do things like that to stay active and engaged in our community. And guess what? That builds a lot of relationship capital. And who doesn't want to hang out with other volunteers, Other people who are abundance minded and give, you know, pay it forward minded as well. You want to surround yourself with people like that. So that's going to help you. And they're gonna look at you in a different light as well because you're their people. So it's a way to raise interest a little bit more about what you do. Cause you learn about people when you do these things and also create awareness and also learn about other people and see if you can help them in any way or refer patients in their direction at any time or clients, whatever type of business they do, if they're business owners. So that's active marketing. It's engaging with patients. That's another thing that you can do. It can be active marketing, you know, having something like a patient awards night or you could have it a patient appreciation night. You know, things like that are going to be active ways for you to market your practice. Now of course you might be saying, well, how do I market to get people to these events? Right? Well, a lot of it in the beginning is not marketing. Who do you know? Which contacts do you have? You know, send people a text message. You've got to be, you know, you've got to be a few things. You've got to be absolutely convinced that what you do helps people and changes people's lives. And you've also got to be absolutely convinced that everyone you know knows sick people. And if you know somebody who doesn't know any sick people, then I want to hang out with that person. Okay? And I don't think you're going to find that person. So you need to go through your phone book and actually actively let people know what you do. And if you're hosting an event, you know, you've got to be absolutely convicted, okay? Not just convinced, but convicted that what you do saves lives. And only then will you actually have the courage and the wherewithal to message people that, you know, like, aren't those the people that you want to help the most? What about, you know, and if they're, if they don't need your help, they certainly know someone who does. So it's very important that you reach out to your own existing network instead of just promoting to strangers. Okay? Very, very important, very overlooked. But it takes a lot of courage. And you've got to, you know, the only thing that gets in the way for whatever reason is ego. And it shouldn't. You should. People should know what you do. What you do saves and completely transforms people's lives. So that's how you actively market. Okay? This typically doesn't cost anything except the, you know, the fee to rent, you know, the workshop space or the platform to do the webinar on. It really doesn't cost very much money for these things. Okay? And then you have passive marketing. So passive marketing is going to be Facebook ads, it's going to be Facebook posts, it's going to be YouTube videos, it's going to be a newspaper ad, a television ad, a radio ad, where the engagement is really one way, it's not conversational. Active marketing is a conversational form of marketing. Passive marketing is one way marketing and it's difficult to engage. Now here's the one big difference between active and passive marketing. Active marketing is not scalable. Active marketing relies on high touch points. Active marketing is something that you've got to do actively and you can only really be in one place at one time. That's why you gotta choose where you go very wisely. Passive marketing is scalable. So if I'm using Facebook ads, I just put more money. All I have to do is change the number on the screen and, and it scales. Okay? So that's one big difference. And the other thing too is that passive marketing is a one sided conversation. And you can bump it up and beef it up to be a two sided conversation by engaging in your posts, by engaging in the ads that you put out there. You can't do that so much with newspaper, television or radio because that's primarily a one sided conversation. And so the scalability of passive marketing is attractive. But in the beginning, to build your business, you can't do it by starting off with passive marketing. You've got to do the active marketing first. And those are the people that know, like and trust you already. And a referral is a million times better than a cold call. Okay? So keep that in mind as well. The active marketing takes a bit more effort, it's less scalable, takes, you know, of course, more time. But, but it's the fastest way to grow your practice. The slowest way is to do strictly passive marketing. Okay? And we're talking about long term and short term. Now another big difference is the cost, right? So active marketing costs time and energy, whereas passive marketing costs money. So you've gotta figure out which one you have more of in the beginning. In the beginning of your business, you probably have more. And as Your business transitions and you become, you know, filled up with patience, then you can put the gas on the passive side of the marketing because you're getting paid for the time that you're spending with people that the advertising is bringing in. And so you're scaling your money up so that, that's, you know, a good time to transition. So if you're wondering when that transition should take place, it's when it costs you more to do the marketing than it does than you. That you would be then versus seeing patients. Okay? So that's, that's when that transition takes place. So you want to make sure in the beginning you're spending your time actively building connections, relationships, building community, building a little tribe or army ambassadors, people who know what you do and know like and trust you. Getting those people aware of what it is that you do is going to be huge, huge, huge, huge at actively building up your practice. So you've got to do it. You've got to have the courage and the conviction in order to make sure that that happens. Another thing that you need is you need to have balance between the two. In the beginning, it's more active, and then it can become a little bit more passive. And, and you need to be doing both at the same time. So, you know, when you do a workshop, you know, there might be some passiveness to that in terms of setting up the Facebook ad. But of course, in that Facebook ad, you want to stay heavily engaged in the conversation that's taking place. If you're promoting a webinar, then, you know, you want to obviously have some sort of passive marketing, such as your email autoresponder that's going out to these individuals, but engage in that conversation. You know, really have your email autoresponder set up so that you're aware of who's engaged and you're scoring them as they're opening up all these emails so you can identify who the hyper users or buyers might be. So, lots to talk about, but I think this should give you a great insight into active versus passive marketing. Heavy emphasis on active. And then you transition into passive as you become busier. You've got to be courageous, you've got to be convicted. You have to make sure that you're balancing these two bad boys out. And to a certain degree, you're going to have to do both at the same time. So, you know, what are you doing? What are the things that you're doing right now that are active and what are the things that you're doing that are passive? And do those activities and ratios match where your practice is? That's what you've got to ask yourself and be honest with yourself. If you're just starting out, you know, really, really focus on the active side of things, get out there, get engaged, get, get seen and really share with people on A1, on one level what it is that you do. Everyone knows sick people, okay? Everyone you know knows sick people. So there's no shortage of people that can help you build up your tribe, build up your community, get your practice off the ground. And those are the same people that are going to be there when your practice is busy and you're not having to be as actively marketing because they're actively going to be doing the marketing for you. They're going to be ambassadors for you. So that's what you want. That's how you build a long term, fun, healthy, sustainable, you know, really enjoyable type of practice. So hope that helps. Have an amazing rest of your day. I wish you much success in your practice. This is Satchin Patel signing off. Talk to you soon. Bye.