Marketing Your Practice for Success: Insights from Dr. Buddy Touchinsky

Hello, friends, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today I've got a very, very special interview that I've been looking forward to for quite some time, actually. And I know that if you're a new practitioner starting out, you're going to feel really inspired after my conversation with my dear friend Buddy today, or you're going to be somewhere in the middle where maybe you've started a practice and you want to evolve your practice. You'll get a lot of value out of our conversation today. And then perhaps you've evolved your practice and then you're trying to figure out what can I do for more people, what can I do for my community, and then how do I evolve my vision from there? And if you fall into any of those categories, you're going to really enjoy our conversation today because you're going to meet someone who I've known for many years, almost 20 years now, maybe even more, maybe close to 21, 22 years, and somebody who I would consider a dear friend, somebody who has worked with me by my side in coaching practitioners. So he's very familiar with what it takes to get a business up and running, what it takes to get through some of the sticky spots and some of the challenges that come up. And he runs a very successful and thriving practice. And so he's going to be sharing some of his insights from the journey that he's been on. So, without further ado, please welcome my friend, Dr. Buddy Tachynski. Welcome, Buddy. Thanks for being here.

Thank you. Sachin. It's always great to sit down and speak with you and love speaking about these topics. So I'm looking forward to this.

Yeah, me too. So I know we've, we've had a conversation before. This is your second time coming on the show, so I'm excited because a lot's changed and evolved for the better since then and, and you're making a huge splash in your community and of course, knowing you and the way you are, you're always looking out to help others. So I know that you're also an open book in many ways and willing to share the ups and downs of running a practice, which I, which is something I really admire about you, you know, what you see is what you get. So thank you for being such a great friend over the years and a mentor to me in many ways and thank you for coaching people in our community. It's been wonderful to see, you know, kind of you ascending to the peak and I know you're not quite there yet. I don't think we ever are quite there. But it's wonderful to see how far you've come and, and I, I know you want to go to a whole new level, so I'm also excited to unpack that today.

Yeah, I can't wait. And I'm just thinking, as you're saying that, I'm thinking back, I was right next door here in my old building and I remember being on the call with you about joining your mentorship and it's, and thinking to myself, it's if I want to do this, I want to do it right. And, and I loved what you were talking about at the time and ever since. But yeah, it's pretty amazing to think back at where I was like mindset, personal growth, everything and to where I'm at today. And like you said, there's still a lot of work to be done, but it's amazing to look back and reflect on that journey.

Yeah. How far we've come, you know what I mean? From our both humble beginnings and just starting out as chiropractors and then you know, kind of evolving and you can never take that out of us. But I know there's new hats that we've worn and acquired along the way. Maybe you can give, give us a quick update on what you've been up to these last couple of years in setting up your practice the way you have it now.

Yeah. So I went from, started as a chiropractor and then shortly after getting into practice I saw a need for diet, lifestyle counseling, coaching, integrative medicine, functional medicine, whatever you want to call it. And then I got to the point like when we, when we re engaged after being in school and then going our separate ways there for a while and I got reacquainted with you and decided to jump more into the functional medicine world. And then the 2020 hit and shook everything up. So we took things mostly virtual and then that worked out pretty well using a lot of the systems that you teach in perfect practice. And then it got to the point probably around 2021 where I wanted to re engage with my community and start to get back more into the in person stuff. So we had been working on an idea for a While and without 2020 and all that happened after, I don't know if I, if I would have jumped into this, but it was kind of the control alt, delete and the, the, it just, it's if, if that could happen in the world, what happened then anything could happen perhaps. And I remember sitting down and looking at an email from my Landlord asking me if I wanted to take the space that he was adding on to the building and thinking to myself, if I'm 90 years old on my deathbed and I didn't do this, I would regret the hell out of it. So at that point I'm like, well, we know you lose, you lose your, your income because of everything that happened. And we all, we're all, we all were okay. And I knew no matter what, I'd be able to fall back on, on some other things. So why not? Why not? What's the worst that could happen? So we launched what is now Peak Integrated Medicine with three other partners. So we have myself, we have another chiropractor, we have a nurse practitioner and a physician, and it's Dr. Liana from our community. Then we since added another nurse practitioner who works full time in the office here. But essentially what I wanted to do was take all the concepts we were learning in functional medicine and apply them to a broader audience. As we know it's one to one, functional medicine can be difficult. So how could we work this into more of taking the group program concepts, concepts from Metabolic Reset and some of those types of programs and then blending it with family medicine? So here we are two years later, a lot of bumps along the way as, as they say, we built the plane on the Runway on takeoff and. But I think we're making it work. We are making it work. I don't think so. We are making it work. We can make it better. But right now we are seeing many people in our community, we have lots of members, and we're getting some pretty good results with those members and ranging from just the simple family medicine stuff all the way to the more complicated functional medicine type cases like mold, mycotoxins, chronic lyme, et cetera.

Amazing. Well, thank you for sharing that. I'm curious, what, what were some of the things, the fears that you had that never came true?

The fears. And yeah, great question. So one fear is that I'm going to have these partners join me and pay some, pay some money, invest, and then I invest basically everything I had at that point. And then it doesn't work out. Then what happens? Now I'm in debt to my partners. Not that it's a debt that, I mean, we all took the risk, but that was, that was kind of soul crushing for a while. Like, what if this doesn't work? They trusted me. It was my idea. I went to them and I said, hey, let's do this. And I sold them the idea. And if it didn't work, that that would be. That I would have felt really bad about that. And not only that, then my family, of course, and my wife, who supported me, a couple different things over the years and different ventures and to let her down. So for a while there, that was really clouding my. My judgment, my vision, and especially when things didn't always go the way we had planned.

So how do you feel like that changed your behavior? Did it cause you to play small? Did it cause you not to take as big of a risk? I'm just curious how, how that showed up for you. So thanks for sharing, you know, as it's coming up for you. But how did you play different or what did you do different as a result of having that fear?

Yeah, so I definitely spent some time, I guess someone say, spiraling out and just not knowing what to do. So there's. There's probably weeks and weeks there where it's like, okay, what do I. Where do I go from here? And I still remember it was my home office and I had the screen up and spreadsheets with the budgets, and they weren't anywhere close to being like they should have been. So I'm like, how can I pay the employees I need to play? How can I pay for my overhead based on the current situation that we are in? And part of that was construction delays. So we were bleeding money like crazy. So we reconfigure things. I just communicated well to my team. Well, here's. Hey, here's the reality situation. I still think this is going to be a great idea. I still, this is, this is the way to go. And we are attracting more and more attention. And so I communicated well with my team. We discussed it. I leaned on coaching. I leaned on your community. And we, we had some, some monthly meetings there at that time. And that certainly helped me get through that. And then I have a small business mastermind group that I'm a part of here at home. And without those groups, it would have been very difficult to make it through those times because once you discuss those things and everyone needs that type of support. I mean, it could be a mastermind group, it could be a mentor, it could be a therapist. I think you need someone, you need some type of people around you to share this stuff. Because if I would have just internalized, might have crushed me, I might have not recovered, but I did. And the one thing I just tried to do was just focus on what are the next steps. I like to vision stuff out five, ten years down the road and Picture myself being in that place. One book I think you've shared before is Vivid Vision, and I love that. But at that time, things were cloudy because the vision wasn't clear. So what I did instead was just focusing. What are the next one or two steps that I know I need to do? And take those two steps and then just continue that week to week, month to month.

Yeah, you just got to know what you want and keep going for it. Right. I think one of the things that I like to say is, you know, you're married to the outcome, not the plan. Because the plan doesn't always go as, as we envision it, but as long as we can hold the outcome fixed, like, it's kind of like, you know that that mountain peak behind you and your logo, it's like there's only one peak. Right. And if that becomes our focal point, then there might be a million different ways to get to the top. And as long as our goal stays steadfast, I mean, if we change the mountain, it's different. But as long as we, we kind of stay focused on that end goal, it, it's great to be able to think long term. But then we're presented with things that require our immediate attention and decision making. So in when it came time to making difficult decisions, was there a process that you use? I mean, I mean it could be something as simple as muscle testing or. I know you soundboarded ideas in our community and with the other coaches that you work with, perhaps your wife even. But how did you end up making that final decision? Was there a process that you used.

Intuition, maybe? Intuition and just having that vision? So there were nights where I just, I. I just knew like it was going to work. Like I just had, I guess it was confidence in, in what we were doing. I knew the community needed it. We just needed time to get the message out there. We just needed to keep doing what we were doing. And one thing that, that I, that I almost lost sight of, almost made a mistake with was so we had our initial opening and we had a, I think we had 30, 30 members sign up with our practice. We're a membership based practice, so people pay a monthly fee and include the set of services. So we had 30 people that were fans of mine, that were followers. So we had those and then we accumulated maybe 10 to 15amonth after that. So I got like four to six months out and I was so worried about building the practice that I almost forgot about the people that were already with us. And I think it's something that you said, you say often it's, if you. Was it the first hundred patients or something like that are the most important, if you make them happy, then you don't have to worry about the next thousand. So that's absolutely true. Where. All right, let's go back and just make sure we're really taking good care of the people that are already with us, and then the rest will come. Now, there's obviously more to that than that with marketing and advertising and stuff, but that's really helped ground me, too, and helped me move forward, because I saw the work we were doing and it made me realize, okay, this is why we're doing it. So just having that vision and having that why. Why we're doing this.

Yeah, you kind of answered my next question, which is, you know, what do you do when you feel like you want to throw in the towel? Because I'm sure you came across that at some point, like, maybe even asking yourself, is it too late for me to go back to what I was doing before? Did you ever come to a moment like that in the journey?

Maybe a couple hundred times a week early on now it's maybe once a month or if that. But no, honestly, like, it was many times a day, probably many times an hour, where it's like, why did I do this? And. And some of that was. It was. It was. I was pushing myself further than I did before because we all got stuck in that comfort level. And we do what we do. It's easy, it's low stress, it's low friction. And then doing something new is always going to be more difficult. You join CrossFit for the first time. You walk into that yoga class for the first time ever, it's intimidating, it's stressful. Let's see. There's a lot of unknowns and a lot of fears. And so it was just about doing the work. And now what I'm doing today would have crushed me two years ago. Now today, it's like just normal for me. So we just kind of learn to. We grow, we get stronger. So I think that was a lot of it, just learning to deal with that.

What was the most difficult decision you had to make?

I don't know if there was any single one decision. It was just. It was death by a million cuts. So it was all the. All the little stuff like, when do we hire someone? Do we hire help? Do we sign up for this program? Do we. Do we get a lease on this piece of equipment? Because will that help serve our patients? And attract new patients. What do we do for marketing? What do we do with the websites? What accountant do you have? So it was a lot of just different things like that. And I didn't make all the right decisions all the time, and. But we corrected them along the way. And so, yeah, it was. I wouldn't say there's any one thing. It was just a lot of different things within a short period of time that made it difficult.

Yeah. You know. Thank you. So Jeff Bezos says that his job as CEO of Amazon, when he was CEO of Amazon, was to make three good decisions a day. And so his number one priority every day was his sleep, because he recognized that if he slept well the night before, that he made better decisions the next day. And if he only has to make three a day, then he's got to do everything to set himself up for success. So I'm curious, like, what was your equivalent to sleep for Jeff Bezos? And yours might be sleep as well. But I'm curious if. If there was something that you turned to. To. To kind of keep you going, to keep you motivated, to ensure that you were in the right peak state, so to speak.

Yeah, so. So from a personal health perspective, sleep is one of my biggest changes in the past, even five years. So I've been working on that. But to help. To help keep my head in the game, it was just getting out and talking to people, even at times where I didn't feel like it. Like, I remember the one day I just. I just figured, hey, I'm just gonna walk around town, hand on business cards, and just talk to people. And to be transparent, I did that twice. So first time I got out of my car, I went to walk in the first business and got back in my car and went home. I wasn't feeling it. I was scared. I forget what it. But I just. I just. I couldn't do it. And then a week went by, and I'm like, no, I'm gonna do it this time. So I went out and regrouped and then walked in, and it was fun. Like, I thought I was gonna get through town. We have a small town. I thought I was gonna get through town in like an hour and a half, two hours. Five hours later, I'm telling my wife I'm coming home soon. It was because everyone was stopping and I was talking to people, and it was like, I went to the bank and I knew the one teller. I was telling her what we were doing, handing out cards, and then, like, three. Three people from the bank Followed me out, customers and were asking me what I, what we're doing. And, and so there again, it's like when I got out of my own head and got out in the public and started talking to people, meeting people, and that's what really kept me on track.

One of the excuses people use for their, let's say, lack of success or impact or. A lot of times it's not even that. It's just something that they say without realizing how important the work they do is oftentimes. But Sachin, you don't understand. I live in a small town. So you're an Orwigsburg Penns. How many people are in your town?

I think we're up to 3,000. All right, so really small. Our whole county is like, it's basically like a, I'd say a 10 mile radius from our office is maybe 150,000 people.

Okay.

Median income is. I don't know what it is recently, but it's around, it's not much. It's around 50,000 household income. So it's. We're not in an urban area, we're not in a suburbs. And so yeah, I hear that a lot where it's like I'm not in the right area where people would want this or can pay for it. I talk to them and they're in like a suburban area where it's like double the median income where I'm at.

But yeah, yeah, and I want people to hear that because I think sometimes we make up our own kind of stories or have limiting beliefs and maybe that's something that even crossed your mind. Is there enough pull here or draw here to put this type of practice in place? Right. Because sometimes you might think, oh, that only happens in big cities. And what I love that you're doing is you're providing world class care to people who, hey, definitely need it and appreciate it. You're making it affordable and accessible for them. And you're also proving that this can be done anywhere, so to speak, with the right effort, the right intention. Right. And the right know how as well. So after speaking with these people, you know, getting, you know, putting yourself out there, getting to know them a little bit better. What came of that? Because this is something I actually tell all my clients to do is just go down the street and meet people, connect with them in person, join the chamber. Right. Get to be a beacon of light in your community. So I'm curious what came of some of these interactions that you have?

Yeah. So one, don't expect it to be Immediate or even within a few weeks. Heck, I even had one woman. She's, she's 19 now. She just got through her freshman year of college. I remember her going to one of my health talks. It was the, it was the webinar you shared with us, the seven Hidden Causes of Autoimmune Disease. She was at that talk. And I know that talk was probably 2018 maybe. Yeah, probably 2018. So last month she called and said, hey, remember me? And I do remember her because she was like, she was only like 14 at the time or whatever. She was 13. She was in the community garden. Gardening. She wanted to start a community garden. So she's a real go getter. So I, I remember exactly who she was. But she developed an issue since then. So this is what, six, seven, six years later almost. And now she's becoming a patient. So definitely be in it for the long game and. But you're going out and meeting people. Health fairs, like I go to health fairs. And we had a health fair last week. Like two participants showed up, the rest were vendors. It wasn't very well promoted, but I got to meet all the vendors there and I've been at health fairs where it snowed and only one, one participant showed up. So I walked down off the stage and sat next to her and talked to her. And it still, it was still worth it because we were still reaching people. So all those little things add up and eventually those things start coming back to you or they meet someone that they might know that needs our help. And so, so yeah, I'm a big believer in getting out there and promoting. And you don't always know what you're going to say, what you're going to do, or it's a new situation. Is that group worth going to? I say, hey, if you're not busy and you have the time, get out there and put yourself out there as much as you can, even if you're all virtual. Because when we were all virtual, we still had a majority of our audience from our local area because those are people that know you and trust you. To become well known on the Internet is very difficult. And even like the, the big names that we hear about, the Mark Hyman's, the Osborne, all those people, I'm sure they didn't start their online virtual customer base or patient base all online. It was their local audience first and then their, their reputation expands from there.

Yeah, I think that's, that's an excellent point because a lot of times we just kind of make up these stories in our head. And they might be partly true, but you know, they never, they never really amount to much. And I love what you said about don't expect anything in return. Right. And don't expect a certain timeline of, of that roi, so to speak. And when you're building long term relationships, I think the key is building trust and just being there when people need you. Right. There's the four principles we talk about with Bant. Budget, authority, need and timing. And for some people, the timing might be at some point in the future. My philosophy, and I'm sure you share this as well, is essentially treat every person you'll ever meet like a future client because someday they're going to need you. Someday you'll be the most obvious choice to them and that isn't why you're friends with them. But just maintain a, you know, a positive, engaging relationship with everyone you meet because at some point they're going to seek you out, whether you know it or not.

Yeah, definitely. And the other thing that drives me too is that it's seeing people out there that don't know what we do and they're going off and trying all sorts of things or don't know what to do and they're suffering because of it, or they develop a cancer, they develop a disease and they're going on drugs with side effects. Like, I just had a friend that went on one of the weight loss meds and went blind in one eye.

It's.

And he's kind of a friend of a friend. So I was like, man, if he just would have worked with us, if he really needed to work on his metabolism and his metabolic health, maybe he wouldn't have had the, have that, that bad side effect.

Man, that is kind of scary to, to think that, you know, and obviously you didn't know that, but, you know, that's why it's important for all of us to, as much as we can get our message out there in the world. I know you've had to, you've been ingrained in your community for, for many years. And you know, when you started this new venture, you probably had at least that familiarity with, with the community. And I believe you grew up there, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Okay, great. So it's wonderful to give back to the people that, that helped raised you. Right. Because it takes a village to raise all of us. What I'm curious about is, is how you find talent. So I can imagine that, you know, being in a small, relatively small town and only having a certain population to Draw from and, and the rare work that we all do together. Um, I was curious, like how did you end up hiring people and finding people?

Yeah, it's, it's something else I learned from you is you attract what you deserve. I think was one phrase that comes to mind. And then also it's you need to put yourself out there and speak your truths and you'll attract who you need to attract. So the example of that is our nurse practitioner. So one thing that we needed, we needed a full time nurse practitioner here at the practice to see people in person and, or a physician, a medical practitioner to do the family medicine part. So that was one of my stresses early on, was like heck, we're in Schuylkill county, we're in Oryxburg. People like that aren't necessarily moving here. They might grow up here, get trained and they go and they want to live in New York City or around Philadelphia or wherever else. But we have a, we have a reputation. Not a good one for people out migrating. So I'm like, where am I going to find a quality, a really good quality practitioner? And she found us, she found me because I was putting out the messages. Here's what we believe in, here's the types of things we, we stand for. It's the faith, the long. And my friends bust on me all the time for writing these like 6 paragraph Facebook posts and it's like that's too long. No one's going to read it. Well, you're not my target audience. I don't care about you. I care about you, but not in that way. They, it's not to them, it's not written for them. It's written for the people that I, that will resonate with what we're doing here. So it just so happened that one day we had a nurse practitioner who was working for one of these big conglomerates. She had a classmate that was training in functional medicine and she's, she really liked it. And then she took a training, a certification. So she asked to observe what we're doing here. So took her out to lunch and had a conversation and she shared with me her passion for diet and lifestyle medicine. All this stuff, functional medicine. And I said, well, once you get certified, what are you going to do with that knowledge? Like you can't go back to this big conglomerate that's. You just told me to see 30 to 40 patients a day and you get three minutes of a visit. She's like, well I'd like to work for a practice like yours one day. And we'd only met for, like, 15 minutes at that point over lunch. And I said, well, when. When can you start? And I said, well, well, we got a lot to go through first. You got. We got to. We got to do our due diligence, and there's a lot more details to work out, but honestly, like, would you be interested? And she said, yes. And, well, she's here. So to answer your question, it's. We got lucky. The universe provided we attracted the right person. I don't know, but if I wasn't out there talking to people, we didn't have our good website with the good messaging. If I wasn't on Facebook sharing my beliefs, my passions, what I stand for, she may have not found us.

What a great story. I love. Kind of reminds me of this saying that what you're looking for is also looking for you. And. But we just have to know what we want, right? And put it out there so that people can see that, you know, that beacon of light and say, okay, that's where I want to go. And that's actually how so many of the people that have joined my team have come on board. It's like we just put it. Put the thought out there. Here's what I'm looking for, who I'm looking for. And that person just magically somehow shows up in my life. And it seems like that formula is working for you as well. So keep it up. When you talk about marketing and promotion, I know that you were doing a lot of it on Facebook and just really putting the message out there, letting people know what you were doing, making people aware of it. You have always shared powerful information, and I've always appreciated your content. And you're very balanced in the way you share things, too, which I think is really rare, especially because health can be very polarizing. And I love how you see both sides of the coin. I'm curious as to what messaging you felt like landed the most for people. If you identified any patterns that, you know, phrases or. Or things that you did that that really said, you know, what that post really converted well for me. Or. Or that message converted well. Did you. Have you done any postmortem analysis or have any insights there that you could share?

Yeah, well. Well, first, I wasn't always good at that early on in Facebook days when we would just share our thoughts, and I wasn't always balanced, and it would become polarizing. And I. I realized that winning a debate doesn't necessarily mean you win. It just turns some learned that it's not wise to attack the, the people in the system. It's the system. So when we're talking about the medical system, I see a lot of posts that sometimes I cringe out a little bit where it's a little. Seems a little bit of attack on providers. So doctors, physician, nurse practice, they're doing the best they can. They don't know what they don't know. So I, I try to, I try to toe that line where I'm. I'm criticizing the system, which has plenty to criticize, but still acknowledge that the people in it are just doing their best. They're just trying to stay above water and they're, they're trying to help people. They're not evil people. They're not just in it for the money. They're not. So all of that stuff. So I try to keep it balanced. But that took some practice and took some making some mistakes. Then from there, what I realized and this so I learned from others. So this isn't all you. There's a lot of people that's. Like you said, it takes a village. So what I've learned over the years, that people don't necessarily care about our great functional medicine program or our. What our packages include and what our program includes, but they care about solving their problems. So I tried to focus more on that. And what really helped me with that was spending some time. And this was a marketing professional that I worked with. Kid right out of school. He actually dropped out of college to, to help. And I think I was like a second client. I didn't know that at the time. He didn't tell me, fake it till you make it. But one thing he did with me, he's like, hey, I want to talk to five of your best patients and just introduce me out. Say we need 20 minutes to chat. And I think his shortest interview was an hour and a half. And he recorded everything, transcribed it, and what we noticed that these people were saying the same things over and over again, why they chose to come and work with us. And they were saying the same things about their previous experiences in healthcare, their frustrations, how it made them feel and what they were worried about. So from that we compiled, they were all saying like the same, same bunches of phrases. So like 80% of those interviews were very, very similar. So we use those phrases in the messaging. And one great example of this is shortly after that meeting, I had a. I had a talk in a coffee shop about 20 minutes north of here. New audience. The only person that knew me there was A coffee shop owner. Everyone else were seeing me for the first time. So it wasn't a real, like, friendly audience. And we talked about IBS and gut issues. And I used some of that language that I'd gotten from that meeting with the marketer from our interviews. And for the first time in my life, I had people walking up, like standing in line to talk to me afterwards, saying like, man, you finally, like someone finally gets what I'm going through. Finally a doctor that understands what that constipation isn't just so it's a little bit difficult to go, but it can be really life altering. And I credit to using. We called it there, he called it voice of the customer or voice of the client. And that resonated versus what we think they want to hear. We're focusing too much on what we do.

Yeah. And I think we kind of, not that we're not empathetic, but when we don't have the pain acutely or the issue acutely, like the person does, then we forget what that might feel like, even if we did have it at one point. And so we really have to put ourselves in the customer's shoes. And that's a great lesson for all of us. You know, I, I have clients that I coach privately and they'll ask me like satchin, like, what do I. What do I say? Or what, what copy should I use? Or what problem do I say that I'm solving? I'm like, well, you probably should just do a focus group and let your clients tell you, because that's who the message is for. Right. Like, if I don't have that problem or I haven't experienced that problem, then it's hard for me to speak into it, aside from any assumptions that I might make and what I think is important might be different than what they think is important. And you know, just constipation is an example you're giving, but there's a spectrum of that, right? There's some people that might miss a day here or there, but there's some people that don't go for weeks at a time, believe it or not, who have severe constipation. And in fact, I didn't realize this until I saw the stat. But the number one digestive complaint that people have isn't diarrhea and loose stools and bloating, gas belching, heartburn, it's actually constipation. So it is a, it is a huge problem for people. But yeah, I think it's really crucial if we can do focus Groups or have someone like this gentleman who did it for you. I don't know if he offers that as service is not, but he offers that as a service at the moment. But I think interviewing your clients or having somebody do that and capture their words is hugely beneficial. It's an invaluable tool and resource. And in fact, there's ways that you could potentially do it now, which would be a little bit assumptive, but I would say probably 80 to 90% accurate, is you can actually do it through ChatGPT by giving it the right prompts and asking it the right questions. It can extract from, you know, the entire Internet to pull answers for you. So that might be, maybe version one is asking Chat GPT and then version two is actually doing it and then.

For this discovery call. So if you do free calls before people join your programs, record all of them and transcribe them and then you can collect that data. And I haven't played with it yet. I need to find an efficient way to, to pull the, the transcripts from Otter, but I want to feed it into something like Chat GPT and say, hey, with, with all of this information, can you pull out the most common phrases? And there's probably going to be ways to do that if you train it the right way and ask it the right questions.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a wonderful point. I mean, there's all this, you know, data that we could be recording and all this information that we could be recording. And before, you know, AI, you're like, what am I going to do with all of this? Or I don't have time to watch that, or I don't have time to review this. But you can actually get feedback from different AI services. There's actually one called Read AI which actually coaches you as a speaker on, you know, your audience's engagement level. It reads their face and body language to see how engaged they are in the conversation. It will tell you how many filler words you're using per minute. It'll tell you how many words per minute you're speaking. So in real time, you can actually like kind of coach yourself as well by using tools like that. And I think it's important you know that we have some sort of feedback loop. So real time is always great because you can adjust on the fly and then again, recording the TR or acquiring the transcripts from the recordings and then plugging that in somewhere and getting some feedback would be a great idea as well.

And probably the most important part of that is listening and Shutting up. Because one thing I did early on with my discovery calls was I'd probably talk to 90 of the time. I would be exhausted at the end of discovery calls. Now I'm energized because they're doing all the talking and I'm interacting here and there. And when you give them time to talk, one is like a lot of people have said, like these are, I haven't been able to get all this out because I don't have the time in my, this is a free haul and I'm paying to go somewhere and I haven't had the time to get all this information out and share this. And two, you learn, you learn a ton by just letting people, people say something and pausing, just being, giving that three second pause at the end of them speaking because that's when they really tell you what they feel and what they're thinking. And then listening to all of that, I think I've, I must have, I need to go back and add them up over the past two years, but I'd say at least 500 calls. And it's, it's amazing how much of the same things are said over and over and over again. And you get to the point and sometimes I gotta hold back because I'll start to predict what they're saying and interject. And sometimes it's cool because they're like, yeah, how did you know that type of moment? But other times I don't want to cut them off. But yeah, you can almost predict what they're going to say before they even say it.

What are some common phrases that come up for you?

The most common one is I go to my family doctor on an annual basis. They run the blood work and I tell them I feel horrible and I have all these problems. And he comes back and says that blood work looks great, see you next year. Like I hear that over and over again. Or they'll get their thyroid tested because of fatigue, they'll get treated with a medication, they'll go back in, they won't feel any better. But the doctor says, yep, thyroid's normal, my work is done. It's essentially the attitude so that they hear that a lot or if they go to specialists and I don't know if this is a GI doc thing around me or it's GI docs in general. I don't want to throw them all under the bus, of course, but how many times people have been going, going with IBS to a GI doc and they just said, you need to get out of the House and get a job and get over. Get over it. Take your. Do something. Take your mind off it. Just go to work or you just need to see like a counselor or psychiatrist or something, because it's. It's all stress and anxiety and it's usually women, unfortunately.

Yeah. It kind of takes me back to something you said earlier. So is it the individual or the system in a situation like that? Right. And I think it's a bit of both. I think we have to all hold ourselves to a certain level of accountability as practitioners, especially the role that you play, certainly on the. For the people that come. Come into your life and into your practice. For the role that I play. And all of us who are listening to this, we have. We have a certain responsibility to our clients to. To listen and make sure they don't feel gaslit. And. And thank you for sharing that, because it does. I would say we hear that often as well, is that people don't feel seen, they don't feel heard. You know, I remember I went to my parents. They had a doctor's appointment. They haven't seen a doctor in years. And then they're just like, you know, let's just go get, you know, go see a doctor. And so I went with them, and there's a huge sign in the front that says, you know, your appointment today. You're only allowed to talk about one problem. And I was just like, thankfully, they don't have any problems, and the doctor couldn't believe that they were not on any medication. So, you know, she asked them a whole bunch of questions, and she was asking me a bunch of questions because I was there with them. And. But I can only imagine if somebody has multiple conditions, like how many different appointments are they going to make to answer those questions in a situation like that? I would say it's the. The system's a problem. Right. And, you know, because she certainly went above and beyond, and we talked about more than one thing, but I think we also, as practitioners need to be empathetic towards what our clients are going through. And I bet you a lot of gastroenterologists never had the issues that they're trying to resolve. And in fact, most specialists probably never had the issues that they're trying to resolve, and that's not what perhaps drove them to do that. Whereas I feel like a lot of functional medicine practitioners, it's. It's not our first rodeo. Right. It's kind of our passion project, if you will. And we usually start with ourselves as the client, so we can be Very good at relating what the client is going through and the journey and the frustration and all the things that they have that come up for them.

Right, right. And I think part of it too is they're probably frustrated because they can't help. I think probably some of them feel that way and. But I'd almost rather hear them say, look, I can't help you with what I do. You need to seek answers elsewhere versus like you said, gaslighting them because then.

They don't know what to do. Right. Then they don't even have a possible solution. So I think it's, it's great that these things happen because then they end up in our practices, which can be the best thing that ever happened to them beyond just their initial complaint. Because you and I both know we can take them a lot further than even what their baseline was. But yeah, it's just. I wish, I wish it didn't have to be that way. Right, so tell us, tell me a little bit about peak. Like what, what some of the things that you guys offer, services that you guys offer there, what's included in the membership?

Yeah, so in our membership, we try to make it as all inclusive as possible. I think it's really good value and sometimes maybe a little bit too much, but we like it that way. We like to over deliver. We have basically all your. It's unlimited family medicine so people can come in for their initial workup and earache, cold, flus, whatever. There's no limits on that. There's no extra co pays or anything like that. We also include 12 chiropractic visits a year with a limit on that because people will be here every week getting adjusted if it was, if it was totally free. So we do 12 at no cost and then we would discount on the rest. And then we have diet and lifestyle programming. So a lot of your viewers are familiar with the metabolic reset program that, that you teach. It's essentially that. And to help make it efficient, we do group zoom visits. We also have some in the office, some options in the office where it's groups. We do group zoom visits that allows people from wherever to join. We're licensed in pa, so we can see anyone in pa. Um, but that's, that's the foundation. So we have basically three phases. Phase one's the foundational stuff. Diet, lifestyle, sleep, hydration, movement, all that good stuff. And then we run comprehensive blood labs to get a good baseline. So liver, kidney function, nutrient levels, mineral levels, cardiovascular risk. We do advanced panels on that. We do advanced panels on metabolic health. And then we address what we find, find what we fix what we find. And then from there, that usually gets us through the first month or two. Then from there, if people are having issues that remain and they have more work to be done, then, well, then we can start doing the deep dive. So that's where we start weaving in. We used to have separate programs, the basic program and then functional medicine would be separate. But we felt like it's one of those things where once you see it, you can't unsee it. Like, you can't hold back and treat this person as a family medicine patient only and not give them functional medicine. So what we do is we. We found ways to build in. Okay, if you want to gut test, we'll do a gut test and we'll address that. So we don't do a deep dive, like everything all at once, because that. That would overwhelm our systems. But once people get started and they're going through the process, then it's. It's not a ton of work to order a gut, test one off and then address what we find there, or if we're suspecting mold, mycotoxins, order that type of testing, and so on and so forth.

What's something that people are shocked to find out about themselves when they go through this type of testing?

I wouldn't say shocked. I would say relieved. So a lot of people we see, we get in there, we do our comprehensive blood work, and we might find that their vitamin D is like 12 or their B12 super low, and it explains some of the symptoms they're having. Or we do go on and do mycotoxin testing, and they have numbers that are off the charts. And these are people. Most of the people we see are coming to us because they have a problem. They're probably more purely functional medicine cases than they are just for general family medicine, to be honest. But we get those results back, and it finally explains why they've been feeling like crap for 10 years. And they've been. Most of our people have been to all sorts of specialists. That one woman I talked about, the college student who went away to college, probably ended up in a dorm that was moldy. She was at a rheumatologist, a neurologist, a GI specialist, and an ob gyn. This summer, her mom had the visits lined up as soon as she got home from school because she started suffering. Last winter, nothing found. Came in to see us, and to me, it was mold. And sure enough, mold showed up, and it's probably one at 19 is one of the worst gut results, microbiome tests I've seen in our practice so far. So that's bad. But as I told her, well, at least we have something to work on now. So, yeah, it's mostly like, oh, there is something wrong with me is more of the, the epiphany versus because some of these people honestly think, because all our other doctors are telling nothing's wrong with them, they think to themselves, am I just getting old? If they, they're over 40, they usually say that maybe I'm just getting old or maybe there isn't anything wrong with me. Maybe it is mental health. And yeah, so to be able to find something, it's almost a relief.

You know, it's such a great point because I think people oftentimes are seeking answers for a long time and to finally have something that they can point their finger at or something that they can start working on. I think hope is like the original medicine. Right? Is like it's. There's hope that something can be done because there's something that we can identify.

And to go back to your earlier question of like, what messaging hits home, part of that is like if there's two things, one, it's the voice of the, the client voice of the customer and explaining what they're feeling inside, what they're thinking and what they're dealing with. And the other one is, hey, there is something we can do about it. So we'll often share like cases like that. Usually I'll wait a couple months and let that go by in case people know of that person. But I'll, I'll share those stories and sometimes we'll do, we'll get their permission, we'll do a case study and we'll do it or we'll do a testimony. I want to do more videos in the future where they, they explain their, their, their journey from being sick, striking out and then working with us and getting results so that people resonate with that as well.

Thank you. Were you using, when you're doing your marketing, did you use any paid marketing strategies? I know you did some health fairs and things like that, but were you, your online strategy, was it paid, was it organic? Did you use any other paid strategies that you want to share?

Yeah, so early on it was mostly organic because we didn't know when we were opening. So I just tried to build an audience. I would try to post at least once a week, like a real well thought out long post. Usually on Fridays. It was just my Rhythm. So we had that and then as we got the Facebook page, we got our logos, we got all that stuff. Then I started posting more on the Facebook page and most of that organic as well. Although if it was a post that I thought looked really good or if it started to get a lot of engagement, I would boost it for and I don't think I ever spent more than $1,000 in a given month, but I would boost that post for 100 bucks, another one for 100 bucks, see which one's a little bit better, maybe extend the one that's working better. And with that strategy we've been getting some steady people in. And then a year ago we added SEO and that's something I was, I thought was for the dinosaurs. I thought that was like 2000s marketing and not 2020 and beyond. But I got hooked up with a gentleman locally here and we've been working on SEO and even our slowest day on the website is higher than our grand opening which I was doing tons of mailings and we had radio advertisements etc so we're really gaining some traction there. Lots of that could be a whole couple hours, a whole day training on itself. But SEO, when done right, I think could be a real good, solid foundation to a marketing plan too.

Speaking of marketing, SEO, kind of online presence, what are you guys doing to get reviews?

So for up until now it was all me. So I would just wait a few weeks if they got really good results or if they were happy with meeting with our practitioners after the first couple visits, or maybe they're a month or two into it, they've lost £20, they're feeling better. I would reach out and said just check. I would check in on everyone early on like that. At that point it wasn't just for the review, but if they share like hey, I'm feeling great, I'm doing awesome. I would direct link them to the Google review site for our page and then ask them if they could do a review and then I'd follow up once or twice because some people won't do it after just one ask. So be a little bit persistent, make sure you get those. I think we have 60 some, I want to get many more. But we're going to start to build that into a process. So I'm working with, with an agency now who you're familiar with big boost and only and they have that part of their process. So we'll set up some automations where we'll. It'll be the onboarding, it'll be all of that. And then at some point they're going to get some surveys and then they'll be prompted to leave a review. But yeah, get those reviews. I've had people reference those and say, hey, I checked out reviews. Everyone got 65, five star reviews. People look for that stuff. It's like, like we shop, I go on Amazon. I'm not buying a computer with like two reviews, even if they're five stars. I'll buy the one with 300 reviews at like four and a half stars. So I think those reviews are very important if you want to build your practice long term.

Yeah, great suggestion. And one thing I'll say is it's great to have it automated so that you know that every client is going to have that opportunity. One of the things that I found that has made a huge difference for us, that might be a good kind of ninja tip for some of you is that there's a lot of things that we do that provide value for people that they don't necessarily pay us for. And so, you know, I know part of your, you know, business is to deliver, you know, wellness to your community. And that might be in the form of working with somebody one on one, or working with a family, but it's also in the form of giving a presentation. And so now what I've done is anytime I give a presentation, if it's a webinar or a masterclass, or if I'm a guest and I'm speaking for another community, all I'll say is, hey, guys, like, if you enjoyed what you learned today, the best way that you could pay it forward and, you know, or say thank you is by leaving a review and just letting other people know that you found this information valuable. Just leave two to three sentences, that's all I ask in return for what you learned today. Because that is my business, right? It's my business to bring people into the office, but it's more importantly my business to keep people out of the office. And in doing so, we were at like 4. I just checked. We're at 492 reviews. So my goal is to get to 500 in the next week or so. And yeah, it's amazing how many people we actually help that we may never actually serve individually or through our business. And another tip that might be helpful for you, buddy, is, is getting reviews based on their experience, not on their results. So sometimes what happens is we, we expect people to not expect, but we would enjoy or appreciate if people would leave a review based on their results. But people don't like to talk about their results a lot of times. Right. Especially if somebody's had chronic constipation, they might not want to be like, oh, like I went once a month and now I go every day. Like they may not want to share that, but they might be very happy to share that your team listened, that the place was clean, that you, they were seen on time, that they were greeted with a smile. Right. So we can even ask like how did you enjoy your experience today? And if they say, oh, this was amazing, all my questions are answered, blah, blah. Hey, would you be so kind to leave a review so that other people can know about the work that we do here so that that could be an opportunity even much earlier in the journey. Because I want to see you at over 100 reviews by the end of the year, if not sooner than that. And those are some things that can be helpful.

Absolutely.

So I know we've, we talked about a lot, we covered a lot and I love for you to perhaps share where people can learn more about the work you're doing. You talked about your website. I'd love for people to check out your website and see if they can get some tips and clues on how they can improve their website presence. If there's a place that they can follow you online, I'd love for you to share that as well. And I'd also love to have you share kind of what is your vision for the next three to five years. So I know I packed in three questions there, but I'll let you start by sharing your vision and then we'll share how people can get ahold of you.

Yes. So my vision is continuing to grow this and part of, part of my, my vision with this type of practice was to bring the, bring practices back to the providers because a lot of the medical providers I know, family medicine, they're in these big conglomerates. Most during COVID went out of business, went bankrupt and got bought out and got gobbled up by large hospital systems and large corporate medicine systems and by all accounts their hate in life high volume. They very little control over what they do on a day to day basis. So I'm going to take this model that we're doing here of direct primary care. One, proving that hey doctors can own their own practices and practice the way they see fit and they don't have to be slaves to the insurance anymore or to big corporations. And then two, integrate in the functional medicine and chiropractic because it just makes sense to have everything under one roof. Because you shouldn't. If you have back pain, you go to the doctor. They're not going to be able to do much for it. So the chiropractor's here. Walk down the hall, see the chiropractor. So, so I like that part of it. And as part of the vision for our personal, the business here, who knows, we might have, in three to five years, we might have five to 10 locations. We'll see, see how we want to scale this if, if we can prove it works. And so, yeah, that's, that's where we're at with that. But we need to perfect our systems here first before we take the show on the road. We're close, we're close. We're 80% to where I want to be before I would want to do replicate this.

Amazing. Well, I'm here cheering for you, brother. Thank you for what you share today. What's your website and where can people follow you online?

Yeah, check out our sites. It's peakintegrativemed.com and you can check out what we have going on there. We also have a Facebook page and Instagram page at Peak IntegrativeMed. And then I was telling Sachin before this, I'm the only Buddy Pachinki in the world, I think. So if you look for me on Facebook is the primary social media account that I use where I'm the most active. So if you want to follow along with what I'm doing, what I'm posting, I'm always looking forward to connecting to others. So just look for me, Buddy Touchinski Touch in sky.

Amazing. Thank you, buddy. And for all of you that know Buddy, you know how amazing he is and for those of you who are learning about him for the first time, wonderful human being, amazing social media wingman, he's always got your back but always put you in your place too. And I just love our friendship and relationship. Thank you so much. Here's to continued success to you and the rest of the team at Peak.

Thank you.

Bye for now.