How One Woman Used AI to Build a Healthcare Empire with Lauren Powers

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Rockstars. You have to listen to this episode all the way through. It will change the game. I get nothing financially out of this. This person is Lauren Powers. She is a leader. She is a huge genius when it comes to lots of things. Marketing being the key thing. Marketing specifically for healthcare to get you new patients. I am so pumped about this episode. Share it with everybody. This is one of those rising tide moments that will help raise all boats, all businesses because we're going to talk about how AI integrates with marketing and how artificial intelligence can automate that top of funnel which is like that extra work that has to happen. She is going to explain the marketing process and how she has customized with another genius AI developer this solution for healthcare owners, company owners who are going to be able to get new patients. But not just new patients, guys. Like automated patients that are better fit for your practice, who pay their bills and do what they're supposed to do. I know that sounds like a big lift, but it's going to be all explained in this video. So I've already gone over a minute, guys. Enjoy the show. Okay, so Lauren, you're the marketing expert in health care. You have this wonderful new AI product. My fans are going to just love this thing. Let's get right into Cortex. First of all, why is it called cortex?

Because we're the brains of the operation. Come on, I are handling it all for you. Come on.

It's the best. So it's a I based marketing for medical doctors and physical therapists and people in the outpatient space. Tell me all about this product.

Totally. So essentially, you know, we've been in the marketing business for many, many, many years and we've seen how all these advances in technology have really changed the way that we work and change the way that we are able to support our practitioners. And yes, all of our clients are medical practice, wellness clinic owners, dentists, things of that nature. And there was such a gap in, you know, their marketing efforts externally versus the marketing efforts internally in terms of like lead management and lead nurturing and all of those things. And it made our external marketing efforts fail, if that makes sense. Right. We were generating leads, but it's like, you know, they're not talking to them. The time to contact is like, you know, taking forever. So what we've done is we've taken what we believe is the best of AI and we've kind of cornered this market for agent marketing. Okay, so that's going to be a term that you're going to hear. You can say you Heard it here first.

Heard it here on the Willpower podcast first with Lauren Powers. Yes.

Yes, you heard it here first. So agent marketing is going to take over. I know. For healthcare it's going to take it take over how we run our business and how we manage our leads and traffic.

Sure.

So we've done is we've niched down and made health business a health focused agent. Right. So we cortex what she does. She channels feminine energy. So her name is Grace. Grace is lovely. Right. Grace is also happens to be the name of my goddaughter who's in college now and had an internship with doing some stuff with AI. So it's so cute. So full time.

So it's easy to say that you love Grace in every way.

I do. And Grace is making us money. And so yes, we love Grace.

We really love Grace.

We really do. Right. So yeah. So Grace is this super cool piece of technology that basically makes it so your leads, your top funnel, which in a lot of ways are your most, most precious opportunities to grow your business.

Yeah.

She's making sure that 24, all of those precious little drops of gold are contacted and managed immediately. So it's 247 as agent marketing answers the phone, two way conversation.

She's talking to people.

Oh my God. Yes. Like on the website, you can actually hear her in action and she says, hey, this is Grace.

What's the website? What's the website?

It's mycortex.com and it's spelled crtx mycortex.com.

My crtx.com. got it.

My crtx.com. and you can see her in action. You can actually call her, you can talk to her. It's totally interactive. Right. Because honestly, like it's, it's like she's a little magician. So she kind of lives in the ethers. So the only way for you to experience is to actually call or you know, actually interact with it on the website and essentially. Yeah. So imagine if you're running ads or running, you know, doing Legion for your business. I know a lot of your, your, your audience is practitioners, clinic owners. Oh yeah, they're do, they're doing things and most of the time they, you don't have this intricate sales process, you know, in your office or you have someone who's just waiting for the lead to just pop in. Usually that's not the case. And if it is the case, you know, more power. More power to you, kudos to you. But we have to lean in to where AI is taking us. In a safe way. Right. We're not talking about the crazy stuff, but in a way to really help us create more profitability in the time that we have in a day. Right. So now what we're doing is we're taking a person who could be doing something more profitable for your business.

Right.

You know, as opposed to like chasing leads, words. Take, repurpose her or him into, into a more profitable situation, making money for you, and let the agent do the phone calls, do the emails and do the text messages. And then you'll just be talking to essentially vetted leads or patients that really.

Want to come in and buy versus just getting general information and clogging phone lines and emails and text lines, because it's all of that. That's the biggest chunk of our time spent at that level. For a lot of practice owners, these are the front desk positions where there's people are just spending all this time doing the simple interactions and not getting the core work done. That's the most profitable stuff. This is really groundbreaking information.

Yeah. And think about it too, like we're training this, the AI on you specifically. So it's very, very custom to you, your pricing, the insurances. You may take your approach to, you know, healthcare, whatever it is, your story, she's trained on that. Right. Imagine, you know, a new front desk employee or somebody who's, you know, two weeks in, their learning curve is going to be what, a few weeks to months? Grace is ready right now. You know, it's, it's kind of takes that learning curve out of, out of the picture. And again, you can focus your energies on things that bring more profit into the business as opposed to the, to the, to the things that just take their time suck. Right. And we're, we. What do we want? More time, more money.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Rockstars. As Lauren is talking, a couple key concepts I want to punch for you for that. She just said number one when she was talking about the problem that she experienced back in her early days of marketing, which she's done forever. And you heard in the intro how I know her, she's the marketing expert. For her, what she found is this thing called all the work they were doing outside to bring in leads was getting clogged when the, the doctor's office wasn't able to like handle the work that she was giving them for patients. And so one key concept I want to punch just globally is this idea that the bottlenecks and the drops always occur at handoffs. So whether that's from marketing to conversion or whether that's front desk to back office, whether that's back office to billing, the biggest points of resistance in our business are in those key elements. And so when you can automate the front to middle portion, basically what Lauren is saying here is that she found a solution using AI and her marketing expertise to automate one of the key, most expensive, lost revenue generating opportunities in our business, which is that conversion of all of the things that you do in the community that relate to people who show up in your practice. So all of you, I know as you're listening, you have two elements. You have somebody that you're just struggling hiring to find someone great at the front desk, or you have a great person or people, but they're overwhelmed because they're doing all the things, all the profitable based things, all the non profitable based things, they're just doing all of it. So to have Lauren like in Cortex remove that is game changing because it frees them up, which frees you up and then your time spent is way more profitable. This is such exciting stuff.

It's so cool, right? I'm leaning more and more and more into AI just for the efficiency and optimization. And what we're also doing is another layer to it. So our marketing agent also has a CRM that's attached to it. So people opt, may opt to not use it because they're using some of the other softwares out there. But it does, we have it set up to give you really, really great marketing data, especially if you're running paid advert. So we can hook up to anybody's legion. All right. It doesn't need to be ours in any way. And it gives us a score of each lead that comes in. What the score is is not a credit score. It is a score based on the quality of your name, phone number and email. How many people have spam and bots and things that hit their contact form right every day those are going to be out of your, out of your one. Ever see them right out of your purview? And what it'll do is it'll score it. You know what, this is a good lead because I can tell she's got a LinkedIn, Amazon and a Facebook. Right. She's a real person. Right. And then obviously the quality goes down when we get into like the old Hotmail email addresses and AOL email addresses that people put in for junk just to like, you know, to grab your lead, lead magnet or whatever you're doing. So I love that portion. I'm really big on data as you know, using data to grow our business. Another thing too. It can also show you the keywords that somebody was typing to find you. It'll also show you the landing page that they landed on for conversion. Especially for people who have more intricate campaigns. Maybe in their. Have multiple pages and things floating.

Sure.

There. But you can take that information and you. That's a better view of your business and how your marketing is performing. So there's some other tools that we have in the background just to help you be a more efficient lead generator.

For your business, which is so fantastic. I think you know, part of my audience I know as you were talking started to get lost because they're not as familiar with terms like CRM, client relationship management software. These are. Oh no. I just want to make sure I'm clear because we have lots of our audience who are like is just following with you and. But this is part of your expertise is that is knowing these elements. So what is. What is the software you use? Is it. Is it something that you guys built or is it. We built. So it's proprietary.

It's proprietary. We took the time and invested in our own business. I mean we were. Me and my partner Bill. Extremely visionary and in our approach to practice growth and marketing and yeah we invested in it ourselves. So it's custom built. Yeah.

That is. Congratulations on that, Lauren. And it feels to me, I don't know Bill, I'm excited to get to meet him on Super Cool.

Really too.

It feels like you guys are a perfect blend of like marketing and all of that with like science and computers.

Yeah. So having that is. Is really. So it's the art in the science of getting new patients. Is Lauren and Bill the clients of that.

And now we have a new podcast. How did that.

Yay. That's true. You guys are intersecting at that. That place there between those two. And it's. If I have found in my experience, Lauren, that when I am looking for a solution that I outsource, there's usually a blend of things that make it powerful. It's not usually just one person because there's elements to. There's nuances to every business, especially in healthcare.

Absolutely.

Such a difficult time. I remember. So my uncle is a retired business professor from the University of Washington. He had published numerous textbooks that were used across the country. Not bragging because he's actually I married into that. He's my uncle through my wife. But he. But. But he. I'll never forget him sitting down. We used to talk business for hours and he Would tell me, he's like, man, there's five classifications of business and the four are mostly related to each other. And then over here in the middle of nowhere, you have healthcare. Nothing ever connects or relates to healthcare in the business sense in the way that the others, other four do.

Right.

So that's what's so powerful too, is that it's not just a really cool AI marketing software, but you were born in this healthcare space. Like, that's where you have sharpened your teeth as an expert marketer is understanding those nuances of how to get a lead or a potential patient to be converted into becoming a paid client. And. Yeah, yeah. And I think what people can relate to as well is when, when they aren't doing the funnel. Well, when they're not like getting the right leads, that means they get patients that drive them crazy. They get people who aren't good fit. So your system isn't even about just offloading all those key people or helping you replace people who aren't great and converting all these sales. It's about converting the right people to become patients for the doctors and the pts and all the different people who are going to be treating. I think that's, that's a big part of that. So how. Lauren, I know you, you light up very easily in general because you're just one of the most magnetic people I've ever met.

You're so sweet and I am.

And yet I. You're just like on a different level of being lit up around this. Like, this is something. What's your. Like, what do you want? What do you see this being?

So. It's so easy for us to implement this, you know, quickly. Right. Like for, for multiple, multiple practices. Honestly, first, in terms of just building awareness, I want everyone to be talking about agent marketing. I want that to be a household name or household thing where you're like, not cool if you don't have, you know, somebody like, ew, you're still managing your own leads. Like, I want it to be like that where there's a certain like virality, if that's the word. I know. Did I just make that up?

I don't know. I'm going to use it though, right.

To, to that phrase. Right. So I see that. And then outside of that, I want. We're. We got big goals. We're. We're looking at millions of practitioners that have this, this is easy to implement part of as part of their marketing and their growth. So this year our goal is to get a thousand users. We are well on our way. And then we're going to keep going and keep going and keep going.

Yeah. And, and, and I love that your vision is so transformative for the healthcare space because it, the tooth. I've learned this that most medical owners, especially if they're providers themselves, like if they're a doc, if they're an MD or PT or whatever, a dentist, whatever, their number one fear is this thing called running out of patience. And I know why it is. It's, it's. I had a friend of mine say this once to me, he goes, will, there's no problem that more new patients can't fix. And I remember thinking, you're insane. It doesn't solve recruiting. If anything, it makes that worse. Like here's a, it doesn't have anything to do with revenue cycle management or medical billing, but this is how providers think. And I get why we think that way because as a PT myself, I. There's something temporary. And you remember, you remember this, this is another thing that you can relate to in the marketing space. You work hard to get a patient, you get them better, they're gone. You've got to reconvert a brand new person or hope the other person needs you again. And so you're in this concept, the.

Deadly turn, the what you call it, the churn, where it's like in a patient, in a patient out. A patient in a patient out. And you can never get off that stage cycle of churn. Yeah.

And you pay people or you do it yourself to like spin this wheel, to keep producing patients. So again, having something that's, that's super affordable.

Yeah.

That is automatically out there spinning, that is going to create massive value. And that allows the, the pt, the md, the doc, the dentist to start focusing on the parts of the businesses that actually need their greater attention. Like the quality of the care is always there. Usually they have that mastered. It's more about recruiting is what I've learned. They, they really stink at and they need help with. And so there's those elements that I think that this will free them, their fears up. It will actually give them way more space and time because they're not spending as much money trying to reinvent the wheel. Patient after patient after patient, like they're out there. There's something out there constantly just helping generate that. The other thing I want you said, I really want to hit on is this idea that you said this actually before we hit record is that, you know, this bot, this whole grace concept of cortex is there to manage these leads that are being generated. And you mentioned that Facebook and Google Ads are becoming way less predictable.

Yes.

And so let's talk about that, because what I hear is this potential, because I don't think anyone who's listening knows that. So, like, I can see a PT going like, I don't even know what to do with a Facebook or, you know, like. So, like, you know, first of all, you know, let's talk about the predictable nature of these things called Facebook and Google Ads. And then. Because obviously, if we can understand that, then we can understand how grace comes in and takes those leads and converts or helps set them up or qualify. But talk to me about that predictable nature and then offer support anywhere that you can around how people can maybe get help in that area.

Absolutely. So over time, specifically, more specifically in the health space, it's becoming more and more challenging for ads to become predictable. Meaning, like, you give me X amount of dollars based on past history and algorithms, you can get X amount back. Right. That's typically would be a relationship between a marketer and a client. And in, like the influx of AI tools that these actual advertising platforms are using, we as marketers can't keep up with the updates faster than they can keep up with the updates. Like the people that actually work for Google and Meta. Right. Wow. It has, it is. It's starting to favor the algorithms, quote, unquote, are starting to favor those that are spending a ton of money each month. And by a ton, I'm talking like, you know, five figures a month or more. Okay. And it is definitely, and I'm not going to say, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but there's a lot of things going on in politics and health ads are becoming. There's so many policies for what you can do and say for a health business, it's really, really, really challenging. You can't even run what they call a purchase ad. Like, let's say you had a little health course or something you wanted to sell and you just wanted people to click and buy. You can't do that if you're a health business. Right. That was, that was taken away a few months ago. So it's, It's. We're like, fine, okay, we're gonna play ball. We're gonna play the way that these companies want us to play because, right. For us to grow our business, we still need to advertise in some way, whether you pay for it or whether you don't, and whether we like it or not. Google and Facebook, you know, those platforms run the world. And for advertising, they're the number one and number two places to be seen or found. So with that said, because of this AI thing.

Messing up like you know, our targeting and our keywords, you get more junk these days than. And when I say junk, I mean very, very low intention.

People opting into your advertising.

Right. Just like lots of like almost congested traffic of correct aren't necessarily going where you want them to go, where you.

Want it to go. And where we found it to be more predictable for things to go where we want them to go. We find ourselves sometimes looking at our doctors like a doctor will be advertising. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but he's getting leads from New York. And we're just staring at each other. We're like, we're not targeting New York. You know, I don't. There's no New York zip codes that we put in here. And that's a function of the software. Yeah, yeah, right. So just different things like that. So having a tool, light cortex and, and grace kind of sifting through the traffic for you still, because like I said, we still have to advertise. Right? Or still, you know, however it is that we're generating traffic, we still need to try to get new, new leads every day. That's what we, that's what we do as entrepreneurs. Have, have the, the top, the top layer covered for you. So by the time you're talking to people like the intentionality is there and you should be more excited too. I think it's more exciting to like go to a list of hot leads or you know, you wake up in the morning and look at all these appointments that were booked overnight or, or you know, with your, your marketing working on in your favor, it just makes it more energizing and motivating, you know?

Absolutely. I know that feeling exactly. You know, my, one of my favorite quotes ever is that production is the basis of morale. So production being the basis of morale. So what. What's the fundamental element of a good morale or high energy is getting things done. And so when we can put some efforts into things and like a marketing effort and we generate a response or a successful completed cycle of action of a patient scheduling, it's so great. And I think a lot of times providers forget that when they're out there marketing to other doctors or doing whatever they need to in the community, like that feels like they're not spending money because it's their time, but absolutely, they're spending probably the most expensive dollar they can spend, which is their time. Versus investing in Facebook and Google Ads. So do you support that? Is there anything that you do to help that or do you have, can you point people in the right direction when they need help in that space?

Absolutely. So a few things and there is something major, Will, that I neglected to mention about why this agent marketing is just why I'm so passionate and excited about it. Oh yeah, but what you just mentioned in terms of offering support and like, you know, and ways to help practitioners kind of sift through all this like you know what to do and is our ads for me? A few things. One with our, with our company. I forgot to tell you that I have an actual like AI marketing collective that comes along with it. So for all of the, the subscribers to our agent, they get two, two hour basically mastermind type of sessions with me where we are, where you're with other practitioners. So, so like yeah, yeah, it's a group call and we're, we're going through marketing elements. I'm looking at email campaigns. I'm giving you new ideas on ways to grow your business. It really is just to put our, put our resources together and I'm teaching you new tools and AI for prompting for, for how to maybe become more efficient in your practice. It's a whole thing where you, you're completely supported for two two hour calls a month. And that is just, has been the most exciting thing. Every time I show up people with their questions, we're looking at campaigns, different things like that.

So that's really cool because a lot of times doctors aren't obviously I don't want anyone listening who's an owner of the company to do this themselves. They can put someone in that mastermind and learn those elements and then your bot obviously handles all the resulting traffic from that.

Yes, that's the, that's the point. It's like, you know, if you are, if you have a team managed organization which I hope we all strive to have.

Sure.

Where you're not, you know, the person doing everything, then yeah, send your, your, your smart marketer in the office, you know, to, to get on these calls and really, really use the tools that you're investing in. So your tools are making you money. Right. There's no point in having an agent on the side answering all of your leads if you don't even know what to do with them when they get on the call. Right. So there's, it's important to feel supported. So outside of that too, my agency actually does run ads and we do it with small budgets and with large budgets and for. Yes. So for, for health businesses that are looking for, you know, even the entry level, like I just want to put my toe in the, in the water. We don't cost a million dollars for, for a small campaign like that. We'd be happy to support you get on a call and the cortex agent is included, of course, and the membership.

So that is so exciting. Lauren, I, you know, for me, I'm, I again, I'm grateful that you're here for my audience, but I'm very selfishly listening to this conversation because you know, we have in my world, like I was sharing with you, this huge inbound of business coming in and that's. I think every healthcare provider who's listening to this has enough time to listen to a podcast. They're at a point probably where they have some momentum, if not a lot, where patients are constantly calling in because they've got good word of mouth, other types of lead gen type things that are causing people to call their practice. Um, and so my hope is that rock stars, as you're listening to this, you recognize a very core principle that I live and die by, which is that anything that's not directly tied to our core revenue producing center of our business should be outsourced. Anything that's not our core business should be outsourced. Yes, we can do medical billing cheaper in house, but it's a different business. Find someone who does it better so you don't have to worry about it marketing if you can find a service like this. What I love about this, Lauren, is that my rock stars can be, can go to you and like get their experience. Not only like creating the Facebook and Google Ads that you can train their people on how to connect those dots and then you have Grace supporting all the inflow so that they can focus on learning how to like, like, it's just, it's a complete automated system that you guys are building. And so selfishly, you know, I'm very excited about talking later after this call about how you can help virtual Rockstar, which by the way, I will say this Rockstars. As you know, I work with virtual assistants. That's my core business. Lauren and I are early stages discussing what it would look like to put her services in combination with mine. Because as you know, I have VAs that are patient interacting, who are handling all those calls, who are all that. So if we could combine those two and create a mega force that's like crazy affordable, that produces way more new patients and easier lifestyle with no management oh, my gosh. I think, anyway, I just see a day where we're standing in front of thousands of people and they're like, thank you.

We'll have to walk out with our hands, like. Like, held up high. I could see it. I actually just saw that. Thank you.

Me, too. And it's so funny because the reason I say that is because I remember, man, having my first five locations and just drowning. And it was weird because even at that stage, Lauren, I had enough inflow of business to where I felt like I didn't need to stress out about new patients. But it was still this constant button of, like, well, new patients are down this week. Oh, no, what are we going to do? And I had these things that we would do, but if I could have had the peace of mind of, like, something's already out there, always generating.

Something's working. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That there's nothing that you can exchange for your peace. Like, serious, you know, like just. Just that. That where it's like, oh, it's just handled. And it's a decision that you've made as the leader of your business, you know, to. To figure out new ways and learn new skills and other, like, just other ways to just enhance your practice growth, putting more time back into your life. That's. And peace, you know, like, that's what we all want.

Well, all right. Well, Lauren, this has been such a phenomenal conversation. I would love to. How do people get a hold of you? Like, how does this look?

Okay, so it's a few different ways you can. I love talking to people on Instagram. So if you're on Instagram, I am at. I am Lauren Powers. I'm a bit of a nut over there, but I have a lot of content that is related to what we are talking about today. And I am. I put it out there on purpose to educate and to. Hopefully it plucks the nerve with somebody. And all my links are there. So Instagram is the best way. My website is there, which is mycortex.com my C R T X. Com. My podcast is up there, too. Power Moves Health Marketing Podcast. So there's just all kinds of ways. And Will is going to be on the podcast.

I am. And we're going to have all your information on our show notes. So, guys, if you're listening to this and you're feeling as inspired as I am, and if you're not, then please, please get inspired as I am and go to the show notes and look this woman up, because I'll tell You guys, I don't. I'm very selective of who I have on the show, but there are very special 1 percenters, and Lauren is that 1%. You have to reach out to her. Well, I've always felt that you've done so much for me already. As we're recording this, I've got my event coming up that you. When I, you know, I think I teared up when I first met you.

Because of how impactful we're talking with each other.

Yeah, it's a very. A very, like, emotional experience because, you know, we just are so aligned and wanting to help these wonderful people, these heroes in the healthcare space that are doing all that they can for their patients. So, Lauren, is there any. Thank you so much for. Is there anything else we forgot? Anything we need to cover?

No, no, no, no. I'm just excited to. Just. Thank you for having me. Will, this topic, let's. Let's keep it top of mind. Just remember, y', all, agent marketing. You heard it here first.

Okay. Yes. Lauren Powers is the person who taught you agent marketing, and she taught me that in real time, guys. So we're right there together.

We're all.

Yes, Lauren, thank you again for being on the show. I sure appreciate you. Thank you for listening, rock stars. And if you're one of the many medical professionals and leaders who have had it dealing with the drama of hiring and training people that you think are overpriced, then let's think about how virtual assistants can offload you to do what you love, which is changing people's lives. In the show notes, there's a link to jump on our calendar so that we can show you why LinkedIn shows that virtual assistants is the second fastest growing trend in health care next to artificial intelligence at no obligation. We'll see if this is a fit for you. I hope to talk to you soon.