Welcome to the upper hand for Chuck and Chris talk Hand Surgery.
We are two hand surgeons at Washington University in St. Louis, here to talk about all aspects of hand surgery from technical to personal.
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Oh, hey, Chris.
Hey, Chuck, how are you?
I'm pretty well, pretty excited about our podcast today.
Aren't you always excited about our podcast, Chuck?
I'm always excited about spending time with you this. This is true. This is true.
I know. I know that you enjoy dedicating at least one hour a week talking to me.
I do, it usually is good for good for a few laughs and a little education perhaps. So here we are today?
Yes, I think we're continuing our practice Development Series. We didn't really foresee it as a series, but it's kind of turned into one.
Well, I as you know, I like this kind of stuff. And we are very fortunate to have a friend of mine from St. Louis, a marketing guru, a published author, and a podcast host himself in a different world. But Aaron Perlut is joining us this morning, Aaron, thanks so much for being here.
Hey, guys, thanks for having me on.
All right, I want to say a few introductory words. So our audience knows the level of expertise where we're lucky enough to have on our show. So Aaron is a co founding partner of elasticity, with over 25 years of experience in journalism, PR and digital marketing. He worked Initially, I think, initially at fleishmanhillard, which in the St. Louis region is a really big name, and it seems to launch many careers. And he's been a communications executive, for several really large companies.
He has written is advised. And he has a great practice today in the St. Louis region. And so we're really, really happy to have him.
Appreciate you having me.
All right. So yeah, first of all, I would just say that Aaron is the co author with his partner, Brian Krause, of a book, which is called f your formula, which I think captures the spirit of the book, but really has a number of amazing, amazing points. And we'll get to some of those as we move along. But let's start basic, if that's okay. And just tell us how physicians and those in the medical space, should be thinking about marketing. And actually, hopefully, they are thinking about marketing.
Yeah, I think, to me, it always starts with the the why, why? Why do you want to invest time in marketing? And and you find, when I when I look at across our clientele and the work that we do, typically it's tied to revenue. But sometimes, if it's an individual practice, in healthcare, you know, realistically, there can be a number of different reasons why
you're doing it. It could be to advance some nonprofit efforts, it could be to drive revenue to your practice, it could be because, you know, doctors don't have egos. And it could be simply that they just want to get more face time and be on television be published authors, what have you. But the important thing is, you know, what, why
are you spending effort? Why are you investing dollars into marketing, a practice or your reputation, and then once you understand why it's, you figure out who the audience is, and how
to reach them. And that that can be especially because there's so many specialized practices in healthcare, whether you're a hand surgeon, or whether you're a general practitioner, whether you're an OB GYN, it's really gonna be a wide swath of audiences, and you need to figure out, you know, how to drill down and reach that specific targeted audience. And sometimes it's a b2b audience.
You know, typically, let's say you're a specialist, the way you are Chuck, you know, you are more often than not getting referrals from other physicians. And so you're more thinking about marketing to other audiences that could potentially refer people to you. The other thing is that you want to think about search, because some consumers, a lot of consumers today, they they don't really care about referrals. They'll actually go do the research themselves. And they want to go
to search. They want to go to Google and they want to say, find me the world's greatest hand specialists. And you know, you come in eighth I believe after somewhere like Kermit the Frog. Chewbacca, Merv Griffin, the late Merv Griffin, somewhere In that ranking, but but it's how do you think about search marketing? And so there's a lot of different aspects. But again, it always gets down to the why, then the audience, and then it kind of moves forward from there.
So Chris, what's your why, what why do you and I and Chris, Aaron, I know you aren't terribly familiar, Chris and I both have interesting practice. We're both hand surgeons, which is pretty specialized. And then we both go one level past that. So I go into the sports and birth anomaly world. And Chris is a known expert in nerve surgery. So Chris, when you talk, we know you never I don't know that you ever had. But if you were to talk to someone, an expert like Aaron, what would your why be?
What do you What? What's your build request?
I mean, I think that, for me, it breaks into three different categories. One of them is the referrals and a practice generating kind of thing, because, you know, if somebody types in brachial plexus, St. Louis, I want my name to come up. And, you know, I think that that's one aspect of it, you know, and there're obviously various iterations on that. And I think the second big Why is, you know, our personal
brands. And I think that's one thing, too, to discuss maybe more detail later, you know, we are in academics, and we kind of touched on this in the last episode about, you know, the fact that we do want ourselves to be known for certain things. And then lastly, I think, you know, for us, specifically, Chuck, with our educational mission, we want our hand fellowship and our residency to
be out there. And in all of those different three different big buckets of why you see consumers of different sorts going to the internet first, you know, for example, like Aaron, when we were going to have you on today, the first thing I did was go to Google and YouTube to look up, you. And I learned a lot of very interesting things about you, like you're the president of the American mustache Institute, and you're your expert, expert level at karate.
That's true.
That's impressive. But now I know more about you. So I think those are the three big why's. You know, I think maybe we could talk about the first one to start about, you know, how to, how to think about generating interest in our practices and, you know, getting patients to, to find us and referring doctors too.
Yeah, that's a, it's a, it's great, you laid it out into those three pillars of the stool, because, you know, it's interesting, because you mentioned the fellowship piece, because I've been talking about could have nonprofit interests. And while I don't know if that necessarily falls into that bucket, you could think of it in the same way. But yeah, it's a it's interesting, the way you framed it, though, because, you know, driving practice, that's b2b, your personal reputation is
important. Because as you know, it's very easy today for people to go and criticize any type of service provider, and that includes the doctor. And you might have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of successful surgeries. And you might have one that did not end as anticipated. And then all of a sudden, you have a patient who takes to Facebook or takes to Google, and starts leaving terrible reviews and saying things that are very one sided, and have a way of framing your
reputation. And, and then for your in terms of your fellowship, you know, they're there. Again, these are three, three separate tasks. So you have to think about them in individual means, and then prioritize them and attack them in in with unique strategies for each one, because you're going to be trying to reach different audiences with with each opportunity, because for your reputation, again, it's more of
a b2b thing. But you also might want to, you might be interested in speaking, you might be interested in aligning with pharmaceutical companies, or what have you, and there's ways to achieve those, those means So, yeah, it's, um, each. Each effort is very individualized, and has to be specifically tailored to what that what you're trying to achieve.
Well, let's go into the thing that probably most surgeons are familiar with, and probably hand therapists too, online reviews. And you touched on that, and that is so
important in what we do now. And one of the issues that we have as healthcare providers is the inability to really respond, because then if we respond to an unhappy patient who didn't have a great result after surgery, or in some cases, wanted surgery, and you were not willing to provide that surgery, you can't respond cuz it's a violation of patient privacy rules.
You know, that's interesting, because I've never even thought about it from that perspective, because oftentimes the way you'd counsel it is demonstrates sympathy, you know, to go on and say, Sorry, you had a bad experience, we'd love to talk to you more about it so we can learn from it. But if there are federal regulations that disallow that, it is that is a
challenge. And so today, one of the frustrations you find with people who manage reputation using search is that Google is continually and Facebook for that matter. They're continually changing their algorithmic approach. And so you have to make sure whoever you're working with, is constantly studying and staying up to up to speed with how those algorithms are changing. What I will tell you is, there are two fundamental tenants to managing reputation
today to marketing today. It is real simple, its content and distribution. For example, the two of you are creating weekly content with podcast. That's an important thing. Because ultimately, as you start to release that, and it gets more distributed, it rises actually, in your search results as you build greater audience and people start searching you out.
So that's a really important thing, because then it starts to, you know, you want that to eclipse other aspects that may be out there, and you don't want it to be out there. But the distribution pieces is, you know, I kind of touched on earlier, very lightly, but that's where you get very strategic and with content as well. Because you want the content to be reflective of what you want to display, you know, the message you're trying to
say. And then the distribution piece, that's actually a highly scientific piece of data science. That is, you know, we have people that spreads- people think our industry and what we do is, you know, fun times and whatever. But it's a lot of staring at spreadsheets, it's a lot of like, it's a lot of poring over reams of data, to try to understand what is the best means of reaching someone?
And then how do you Where do you invest dollars to try to reach an audience, so it's that content piece, creating content that's relevant, and, and frames you in the right way, and then having the appropriate distribution channels, so you're reaching your audience, sometimes those, those channels might not be the sexiest? And that's honestly, that's a really tough challenge for some people to get over like I have. I was in a meeting with an energy
company, maybe a year ago. And they said, What do you think about chick about Tik Tok? And I said, Well, not every social media platform is for every organization. And you know, the, that was sexy to them at the time, they were thinking about Tik tok, because tik tok is the fast, you know, arguably the fastest growing platform out there right now. And you have a lot of not only just kids, but adults are starting to find Tik Tok and discover it and find
great amusement in it. And so you need to think about the channel efficacy. And, and really just what makes sense for you and get away from this is sexy, this is neat, this is the new thing. And, and focus on what matters.
Even within you know, our world of medicine. Instagram, for example, can probably drive a lot of business for plastic surgery practices for the cosmetic kind of procedures, but it's kind of difficult to drive business through it for a hand surgeon, for example. And I think that we have just, you know, we discussed last time, Chuck, that we use social media outlets for probably different reasons than purely to generate patient referrals or, you know, physician referrals.
Yeah, I would, and I'd love Aaron's thoughts. I have a bunch of questions that I have already written in my mind, I'll probably forget half of them, which is good. But when I you know, Chris and I both are relatively active on Twitter, we both have started to use Instagram a bit more. I write a blog and I have a Facebook page really centered around that blog. But it's especially for Instagram, and especially for
Twitter. Those are the way I think about it at least and maybe I'm missing the boat is those are purely for physician to physician interaction physician to therapist interaction. It's not really centered on a patient. So yes, it's probably building my brand, but I don't think it's driving patients. Are we missing the boat?
Yeah, I think so. I will. Okay, it's arguable it's a really subjective thing. But I would just say this. Think about the way that pharmaceutical companies market. Sure they have salespeople that walk in your office every day and want to meet with you and sell you the greatest thing ever, but where they really spend their money on television advertising to consumers, even though they're not selling directly to those consumers. tumors, they have what I call this reach around
effect. Because what they do is they reach around the physicians, they go straight to consumers, and they pull them closer to the physicians who are pulling them, thus pulling closer to themselves. So I think a lot of times, again, I think we're in this data and information has become our ability to get you it is so simple that people are willing to go and search for their own
answers today. And so I think, you know, Instagram, very visual medium, we were talking about, you know, you mentioned, maybe it's not that relevant for hand surgeons, but, you know, with x rays, I think there's still things you can demonstrate before and after. Instagram is, is still a fantastic video platform. And so, interviews you can use on Instagram TV. I just think there's there's really important ways that now Twitter, I think is much more of a b2b
platform. It's more about building thought leadership on a professional level. But, you know, Instagram, I think you can reach both visit your physician audiences, you're going to reach more consumers there. But still consumers will go seek out people they have heard are specialists. I remember when I was getting LASIK surgery more
than 20 years ago. And, and we had my wife had gone and searched out a doctor who had done like more than 1700, because he started doing it for the Navy and the Philippines before it was legal in the US. But I remember my, my mother, the ever present yenta calling and saying oh, you should go to Tiger Woods' doctor, he's here in DC area and have him come up here and He'll do it. And so Oh, we could have gone and googled Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods doctor
did his LASIK. So you know, and gone straight to that specialist. But instead, you know, we had already done our research, but it's just, that's how consumers behave today, they think they can a lot of them, especially ones that have have economic means that can afford higher price surgeries and things like that, like me when I was doing my hand modeling. with George Costanza, it's, uh, you know, people will go search it out. So I do think I do think 80% of your marketing should be
done b2b. But I still think you that 20%, maybe a little less, you should always think about the consumer and reaching direct to consumer. And there are opportunities for you to do that in a relatively low cost way.
So we are, I don't wanna say struggling, but we are trying to better understand the generational differences. I know you live in the world of generational differences, and how do you reach a 70 year old versus how do you reach a 25 year old, and we want to reach the both of those age groups and everything in between. And so clearly, you know, search engine optimization and being good in a search space is going to hit the 25 year old, clearly. How do you hit the older population? Is it the
same? Am I under estimating what the older American does online? Or do you have to target them in different ways?
You do target them in different ways. Segmentation is important, because you also might want to be speaking to them in different ways. And again, this gets back to channel efficacy too. Facebook tend to skew much older, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok tend to skew much younger, but you can also use today, and this is really, really important. So I think a lot of people think that, oh, I can start a Facebook page for my practice. And I can just drop
content on there. And all of a sudden, you know, whoo, I've got it made. So Face- I we talked about algorithms before. Facebook is, since its IPO has done a marvelous job of making money. And the way they do that, is that if you have a branded Facebook page, so let's say for your practice, Chuck, you have a Facebook page, not your personal but your your, your your practice, and you drop a video on there and you think oh, this
is the greatest video ever. Only and let's say you have 1000 followers 3% at most are going to actually see that, and this is because of Facebook's algorithmic changes 3% will see that, that's it of those Facebook followers. Now, you can take a small spend, and by small I mean 25 bucks. And then you can actually target The audiences, you want to see that. And usually what's great about this is, you'll be able to target people who are not already fans of the page. So you're trying to acquire new
eyeballs. And this will bring new eyeballs to the content. And you can do that through a number of metrics. And it's all free and you can go look at all the Facebook data for free, because they want you to be able to see it to start salivating. And so it's an important way to think about segmentation, because then you can also serve up ads for that content on a segmented way. So maybe you design one that is specifically targeted towards boomers. And you design one ad that's specifically targeted
towards millennials. But it's all driving back to the same content. So there are there are ways to throughout DNS goes beyond Facebook, but it's always a great example to use, because of the way they manipulate their algorithms so questionable, but you can really segment your audience.
All I can think of is that scene in I think it's like the social dilemma that that Netflix documentary that came out last year, and people manipulating the algorithms. And one thing that I wanted to ask you is, if we, if you were somebody new starting out in practice, or you wanted to start marketing your practice, you mentioned generating content and
putting it out there. And then you then mentioned potentially, you know, using some of these small spends to help increase eyeballs, what are some other very reasonable and easy to accomplish things that we could do, you know, to help generate, you know, more buzz and more interest and more eyeballs?
So the first thing I would think about if you're a practice, just starting out is Who do you want to be? How do you want to be seen? What's your Think of yourself as a brand? And what's the ethos of that brand? Maybe it's compassion, maybe it's precision. But what is the ethos of that brand, and then think about how you can start to develop simple means of content that demonstrate that
brand. So if it's compassion, let's just say, you start shooting just some short interview videos with clients, with people who have who have used the services who you've treated, that can just speak to that have great compelling stories about your relationship with them and how they helped you. And you want these to be short, people don't pay, you know, you can't pay attention to
anything. We're living in this ADHD economy right now, where nobody pays attention to anything for an extended period of time. So less than 60 seconds. The shorter the better. I would if you can get it down to 30 seconds. Great. And it could simply just be a quick soundbite of you know, my son lost the use of his right hand and he couldn't masturbate anymore. And so Dr. Goldfarb taught him how to great gain greater skill with his left
hand, things like that. It's just truth, not a true story fabricated story-
That was on vitals.com. Actually, I saw that review. Yeah.
Yeah, I know, I actually read that on Tinder. But anyhow, but you know, it's, it's creating compassionate content that reflects the ethos of your brand. And even if you're not putting paid spend behind that yet, because you're just kind of dipping your toe in the water, and you're figuring out who you're going to be and how you're going to represent yourself. And you want to just build up kind of a cauldron and have some content on your pages.
That's okay. Just, you know, start slow, start inexpensive, kind of lean into it, until you kind of feel like, Alright, I get this, I get what we are who we are. And now we were ready to kind of do this and replicate it on a ongoing level.
That resonates let me make sure I have this correct. So I'm going to just kind of talk and then tell me if this is exactly what you mean. So I'm starting out. I'm a hand surgeon. All hand surgeons treat wrist and hand fractures, we treat carpal tunnel syndrome, it would seem to be an uphill battle to say hi, I'm Chuck Goldfarb, I'm new in town, I'm really good at taking care of
carpal tunnel and fractures. And I think what you're saying is that that stuff may be fine and it may be true, but position yourself differently. And if you're going to focus on compassion, if you're going to focus on technical, you know, excellence, then make that the centerpiece because patients don't know whether to believe that you're the best carpal tunnel doctor ever and is there
a difference? But if you focus on the compassion piece that will resonate with some patients, am I Am I understanding That correctly.
Yeah. And I also think you want to take the focus, this is gonna sound counterintuitive, but take the focus away from you and focus on the patient. So let's use a real life example Chuck. We can, I know you can't speak this, but I can because it won't violate anything. So you treated my son. And, you know, you, you help my son with a broken bone in his
hand. So it might be 30 to 60 second clip, just my son speaking about, you know, I broke this bone in my hand, Dr. Goldfarb helped me, you know, with an effective surgery and process for healing, that allowed me to get back on the ice because I was beforehand and after I was a high level hockey player. And so it was important to me, that that kind of thing, where you're really just showing it from the perspective of the patient and what you did for
them. And you don't even need to interject, I always hate when- when brands unnecessarily have someone who needs to interject themselves into them. Because it's purely based on ego. I mean, I I hate to get political, but we're seeing that right now with Michael Lindell from my pillow. He's been banned. And his company's been banned from Twitter. And he's trying to tell this story. But he's using this
brand to get in the way. What he needs it, and he can tell whatever political story he wants to but get away from your brand. If you want to go tell a story to great go tell a story. But don't do it on the back of your brand, where you're selling your brand. And, and unfortunately, he is because now the brand itself is being taken off of certain purchasing platforms. And so you don't and that's a really extreme example.
But I do find sometimes that certain founders, executives, they, they kind of get in the way of the brand and demonstrating really what the brand does, because they lose sight of really what's important.
I think that that resonates with Chris and I unfortunately, you know, we are fortunate to work for Washington University, which has a very, at least I think, I hope, a very positive reputation, both locally and regionally and even nationally. And yet, we both seek to not distance ourselves
And that's an important thing. I mean, even from that brand, but have our own brand that lives within the within there are certain organizations, I've worked for washu. And so that's that's what we try to do.
certain companies that frowned upon creating individual brands, personal brands, but what they didn't realize was that if you create a strong personal brand within the umbrella of a larger corporate brand, it actually reflects well, ultimately on the corporate brand, because they're seeing as someone that thought leaders want to go work for them. That's, that's an important message that you're
sending. And so larger brands that frown upon creating, you know, having their employees create personal brands, I find, it's very silly on GoDaddy, who I've worked with, for many years, as a client of ours, they actually have someone on their team that helps employees better position, their personal brand, because they recognize that, if it is demonstrated that their employees are smart, and enjoy what they do that reflects well upon GoDaddy, and so they become
an employer of choice. And you have smarter minds that want to go work there, we try to do that at our agency, at Elasticity I mean, we have people in four different cities. And typically, you know, the relationship begins with an individual, not with the organization, and you want people to like the individual, and then you're more likely to do business with them. So yeah, building your personal brand is a valuable commodity. And it's great when you have an employer that allows you to do so
Well then one thing that, you know, that really matches well, with what you described is the the old school way for somebody, for example, in academic medicine, to build their brand, was to publish a bunch of papers, and become known for research and then get up on stage at national meetings and give talks. And that was the way to establish an individual
brand. And I think that, you know, one thing that has made being here really special is that for a long time, there has been this legacy of hand surgeons in this group that have had really strong individual brands, which have made the collective brand that much stronger. Is there a way that you would encourage younger physicians or somebody who is just starting to establish their brand, to, you know, adapt that
to the 21st century? Because I think there's still you know, the currency of the realm is still the paper. But there are probably new ways to explore that.
Yeah, that's a great point, Chris. So I'm actually doing this with my wife right now my wife has a highly specialized practice of in physical therapy where she, she does early intervention working with children age zero to three. And she's a physical therapist. And she is trying to build a very telehealth focused practice, in spite of contracting with state governments, which you know struggle with that, struggle with this adaptation to the kind
of new media and treatment. But she's actually has proven out case studies where the the, the efficacy of the treatment is more effective. Through means like zoom, or what have you Skype, because it forces parents to actually be more fit more regularly involved with the treatment, and so the kids are getting more treatment. So I'm trying to help her build a brand around the efficacy of telehealth and which is not an
easy thing to do. And so what we're doing is we're just starting very small, using Twitter to to periodically post articles and thoughts on the effectiveness of telehealth, usually third party articles, and just being more of a cheerleader. And I think that's what you find a good means for people that are starting off in the industry, because it doesn't necessarily position you as someone who has to kind of plant a flag and start writing, you know, 10,000 word white papers
about it. But you can start slowly being a cheerleader, and positioning what you're supportive of kind of you, you know, you're building your personal brand, by simply sharing your, your thoughts, and your support for something.
Yeah, so interesting. So this morning, I do what a lot of hand surgeons do, which I think is what a lot of, you know, people do is that they want to tackle a new project, they, you know, they start with Google, and they do a search. And so I searched for, you know, medical practice, marketing. And Aaron knows exactly what popped up, Chris, and half the listeners probably know what popped up. But I bring this up because you address it
in your book. And so basically, you get seven secrets to medical marketing success, five key tips to marketing genius in medicine. And what you say in your book is that, you know, basically after your formula, because there's no secret sauce. But yeah, what I've heard you say this morning is there are some basic principles that we have to abide by or not have to abide by. But
that makes sense. But yeah, there is no formula that's going to work because the formulas may not make you rise to the top if you follow the quote unquote, formulas, often they bring you right into the middle. I loved how that was stated in the book.
Yeah, lot of it is total horseshit, basically. Here's the thing, everybody, the point of the book is this, if we all follow the same formulas, we'd be stuck in mediocrity, there would be no winners and losers. And the reality is that it's an argument for customization more than anything else. And that's what the three of us have been really talking about, since the very beginning of this conversation is, it
starts with that, why? And then customizing your ethos that reflects who you are, and then reaching a very targeted audience. So yeah, you're right, there are some foundational things you need to do. But ultimately, on a strategic level, you need to create something that is customized to you, for your needs, for your
culture, for your audience. And, and not worry about the noise, because you know, ultimately what, who you are and what you want to do and what you want to be and who you want to reach. And that's you think of it from that perspective, and not, you know, these Tony Robbins clones that are screaming at the top of your lungs at the top of their lungs. If you just do this, you'll win. And there's just so
much more. Yeah, maybe there's a framework or a process they can give you to follow like, Okay, if I follow these steps, but you really need to customize what you do to meet your individual needs.
Chris, you're gonna have to jump out and we're gonna run out of time here shortly, but I can keep going all day. So, you know, you live in a very different world than Chris and I were Chris and I don't have time set aside to think or to strategize. We really spend our days doing whether that's operating or writing or teaching. And I hate that right and maybe it's on me,
maybe it's my fault. And I know you said you spent a lot of time in front of spreadsheets but part of your job I think and probably part of the most enjoy you know, maybe the most enjoyable part of your job is brainstorming, and just thinking in groups and individually, how important is that to your success? And how do you think about someone like me or Chris, that doesn't have enough time to think freely? I mean, it's very frustrating.
Yeah, what I think about more than anything is, and it's probably just based on my personal interests. What's the creative narrative? that's gonna help? So whatever it is, we're trying to so what is that creative narrative? What's that thread that you can weave throughout something. And sometimes it might be very counterintuitive. Sometimes it might be extremely different.
You know, we, a couple years ago, we were approached by St. Louis County to do to, to help with a campaign that was an STD campaign STD awareness campaign. And we've actually done a lot of work for the State Department of Health and Senior Services. But they already had the creative developed. And so they said, Hey, will you guys help do the
execution of this campaign. And it's not that I had a, some type of moral imperative against that, or there was an ego involved, but I looked at the creative that they had developed. And I said, you know, what, there's nothing here that would make me not want to have sex. And, and so I was like, we're gonna take a pass, because I just I knew was gonna be a failure, it would just be one of those other endeavors that just, that just was an, a remarkable
waste of money. And so I think about the creative thread, and I think about like the reality of the media environment, the information environment that we're living in, and how, how can you create a message, and in a narrative that's going to bust through that, um, there was a, there was a campaign, an anti obese and obesity campaign, developed by a nonprofit in Atlanta, I forget the name of the nonprofit years ago. And the the impetus of it was fat kids have fat parents. It was brutal,
absolutely brutal. And it got talked about, from coast to coast from sea to shining sea. And it got heavily critiqued. But you know, what, a lot of people paid attention, and there was data supporting it. It wasn't some joke. It was there was good solid, hard data demonstrated that obese children tend to have obese parents. And at some point, you need to stop the vicious cycle. And it showed the bullying that obese children received at school. It was brutal, but it made people pay
attention. And that's the hardest thing to do today, is to pay, how do you get people to pay attention, and then actually take action. And that's, you know, ultimately what you're trying to do. You're trying to elicit someone to change their behavior to purchase something to inquire about something that's really, really hard to do. So I spend a lot of time thinking about what's the
narrative? What's the message that we can develop and build something around to help people pay attention, which is so difficult to do today?
I think that there are a couple of really good points in everything that you've said. But in particular, in the last few comments. I mean, I think that what changes people's behavior are the stories and the narrative, as opposed to using data to try to change people's minds. And I think that resonates throughout, you know, various domains of our lives, but particularly in medicine.
And when you're trying to, for example, describe how your research has changed things, for example, or how it has the potential to change practice, that kind of thing. People pay attention to stories, and then if you can back it up with data, all the better. So I think, you know, that thinking about the narrative thinking about you know, how to use that is important. And the other thing is that, you know, honestly, as Chuck mentioned, we just don't
take the time to think. And you mentioned earlier, you know, trying to understand what you want to be as a doctor, as a therapist, you know, what your personal brand is, what your ethos is. That's something that, you know, even I, when I give talks to residents about work life balance, I tell them to take some time and do some goal setting and, you know, go through that process so you can gain some insight. And I don't
even do that enough. You know, I did it this week with our fellows and I realized I haven't done this in seven years, like really sitting down and saying, like, Where do I want to go? What do I What do I want to be known for? So I think that's one thing that I have to constantly try to improve on is just doing that more regularly and taking the time to, you know, Understand what do I want to be known for? What's my personal brand and my ethos.
And honestly, that's not only a great message for your customers who you're trying to sell your services to. It's also a great message for the people you want to hire, you know that the people that you wanted that most of us aren't on an island on and to ourselves, it's, we're on an island with, you know, a lot of other people that are helping us make, do what we do. You know, we have 30 people in our agency, and our end product is worth, you know,
a reflection of all of us. And we're only as good as those people. And so we've worked very hard, as a firm to kind of build a culture that attracts the kind of people we want there the kind of people that reflect our values, and what we're trying to achieve when we think and yet have a a real diverse mindset as well. Because I don't want to, from from day one, our practice is 12 years old. From day one, we have not wanted to have a practice that was based on the
thinking of old white cats. You know, the diversity of, of thinking, comes from diverse perspectives diverse upbringings diverse people diverse genders, race, what have you. And so that's really important. And I think, to your point, Chris, you know, as you're trying to build a good practice, and surround yourself with really good people and a great team, being able to have people think, and lend their own perspective is a really essential leadership tool.
Aaron, thank you. This has been super fun, educational, I'm sure I will be thinking about your messages. You know, well past the end of this podcast, I really did like the book f your formula, so it is a an easy to read, very straightforward book, which will, you know, we all read based on our own, you know, context. And so I was reading, thinking about medical marketing, and really, a lot of the points really hit home. And Anyways, thank you for joining
us. And, yeah, thanks for all the all the tips and pearls and wisdom.
Well, Chuck, Chris, really appreciate your time. And hopefully, I've disappointed just about everyone. That's all all 14 people listening to this. I hope I've disappointed them all.
You did, you did tell the first masturbation story on the podcast. So that is a win. So thank you for that.
Bring me back. And I promise more. Okay.
Thanks, Aaron.
Take care, guys. Thank you.
Hey, Chris, that was fun. Let's do it again real soon.
Sounds good. Well, be sure to check us out on Twitter @handpodcast. Hey, Chuck, what's your Twitter handle?
Mine is @congenitalhand. What about you?
Mine is @ChrisDyMD spelled d y. And if you'd like to email us, you can reach us at hand podcast@gmail.com.
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