Stop Kissing Doctor's Asses - Market Yourself to Your Community
===
[00:00:00] I know that as an occupational therapist, you might have been told to go market yourself to doctors, but I'm here to tell you, stop kissing doctor's ass and market yourself to your community. All right. My name is Hoang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist. And when I started my clinic 10 years ago trusted therapists that I call friends.
[00:00:28] told me and everyone that I was listening to back then told me just market yourself to doctors. And I still hear that today. Okay. I still hear that today. And though it is fine to collaborate and to, market yourself to doctors that know and trust you or also. Create new relationships with doctors where you can be collaborative.
[00:00:53] I want you to do it in a collaborative way that then is a win situation for the both of you, you don't have to [00:01:00] kiss their ass to get patients. And the reason why I tell you that is because when I first started out, I would go and do all this stuff. To market myself to doctor's offices.
[00:01:13] But sometimes what it does is it lends you to be like, Oh, send me patients. And they are not thinking about you as a therapist, as a certified hand therapist. Everyone told me, Oh once you're a CHT, that's it. You can You can market to them and they'll send you patients.
[00:01:31] No, they won't. Some will, but not all of them. And you don't necessarily want all of them. But the reason why I tell you this, cause I used to find myself kissing this one doctor's ass for whatever reason, cause it was like close by. And I was like, I don't really have a great relationship with him, but, he respects CHTs and I'm going to go and market to him.
[00:01:54] I just found myself like kissing his ass, kissing the ass of his admin. Not [00:02:00] only did they not send patients every time a patient came to us, he actively him at his office actively removed. them from my office. So for example, a patient would come in and they were coming in from a worker's comp claim or whatever and someone else set that up and he, his office would actively remove that person and talk to him.
[00:02:23] My patient would tell me he is talking shit about you and saying that you can. I can only go to this one CHT in the community. Hey, it's fine. If you like and trust that one CHT by all means send it. But if this person is already here and they're telling you that they are having a good experience with us, why are you actively moving them, from my business?
[00:02:48] And so that, that used to piss me off to no end. At the end of the day, what that taught me was that when you are [00:03:00] marketing to those people, when you are marketing to doctors like that, and you're just spending time kissing their ass they are not in it for you and they are not in it for their patients.
[00:03:12] They are not in it for you. They are not thinking of you. They don't give two shits about you Just understand that right now and no one is going to care more about you and your business than you All right. And the whole point of being in business is being in a certain amount of control of what you can do and what you can ascertain, right?
[00:03:35] I'm going to share with you. Really the four things that I do To market myself to my community. I'm going to share with you because I think at the end of the day It's so powerful to help you grow your business so that you have control of what you're doing and the type of patients that you Want to be treating and want to be working with and that really is you know [00:04:00] It is really about Bringing attention to your business.
[00:04:04] The more eyeballs are on your business, the more customers and the more patients and more people you're going to have an opportunity to help. And that's really about marketing to your community. So number one is social media. There's a lot of things that I could talk about social media, but I'm going to bundle it all up.
[00:04:20] And you pick your channels, right? There's a tons of channels or AKA platforms right now that you can pick from. When I first started Facebook was a huge one. LinkedIn was a big one. Snapchat, but I was like, my people aren't necessarily on Snapchat, right? So my people were on Facebook, but now there's even more channels.
[00:04:40] And I think that's really important to be across the board. A pig, one to two major one that you like that you want to be on and that where your customers hang out. And I bring it up because you would think social media is like the easiest thing to do because it's free, but it's a, it's the one thing that holds people back [00:05:00] because they're like, oh, I don't like social media.
[00:05:01] I don't want to use it. You don't have to use it personally for yourself, but for your business, you need to go on social media. And I think the thing that's stopping people from going on social media. is they're scared of being judged, right? They're scared of looking stupid. And that is a level of insecurity that you have to get over that you have to, face the facts that this happens and you're like, okay, I'm going to do it anyway, right?
[00:05:28] It was just talking to My brother who's a doctor who wants to get on social media to share what he knows and I was talking to him about this exact same thing and I was just like you have to start a social media channel like just for your thing that you want to share. Now you can share it off of your personal page already if you want, but whatever you want to do, you need to start some some social media channels.
[00:05:52] One of them being YouTube. YouTube. I use it for long form and now they have short form on it. I use [00:06:00] it for a lot of different things where if I do some YouTube videos for my clinic, if it's a really good video, my staff will save it and they'll share it with the people who are calling and asking for something.
[00:06:13] Like for example, we have someone calling our office cause they had a Tendon laceration, right? It's tendon laceration and repair. And they decided not to come to us because we weren't in network. That's okay. Do what you need to do, but you know what? It doesn't matter if you don't decide to come to see us.
[00:06:33] I made this great YouTube video about flexor tendons. Here I'm going to share with you because these are some things that you might need to consider as you're working through your tendon because I've seen too many tenants get stuck and it's because you might not be doing your exercises correctly, or you might not be taking this stuff into consideration.
[00:06:53] So I use it a way of sharing information and sharing my perspective, right? So that leads me to number [00:07:00] two, which is making videos and sharing your perspective. So from a marketing yourself to the community, I don't think that there's any greater power than doing video and sharing your perspective. Now you can share your perspective through podcasting, through blog writing But at the end of the day, it's the sharing of your perspective.
[00:07:17] That's most important. It doesn't matter the format in which you do it, right? But I don't think you can get away with not doing video anymore. I think video is a huge component of how to market yourself and get awareness about what you do. What your business provides to your community. And I think that sometimes when you share your videos, some of your other referral sources can see that as well.
[00:07:43] So I'm not saying don't ever market to doctors. I wholeheartedly market to doctors, but I market in a way that it's a win for them and their patients and it's a win for us. But I no longer kiss their ass. If you don't want to fucking work with me, don't fucking work with me. That's it, [00:08:00] right?
[00:08:00] But I'm not gonna be like, oh, kissing your ass and being like, you're the greatest and you have to, please send me your patients, right? Like I don't, I'm not doing it out of desperation is what I'm trying to say. If you want to work with me, you're going to work with me because I'm, we're the best hand therapy center here in Miami, Florida, right?
[00:08:17] That's it. You send your patients because we are about results and we're going to make your surgeries look great because the results and the outcome of your patients are going to get, they're going to be happy with their outcome results. And That's what I mean about, Not kissing their ass because it's not coming from a desperate place because you're getting your people You're getting the people you want to work with through your efforts Not through their efforts of remembering who you are out of the gazillion people who come after them and they're thinking about the surgeries They're doing right?
[00:08:48] They're thinking about their own ass. They're not thinking about your ass All right. So you got to get out there and share your perspective in terms of what you do. And that goes back to social media. You've [00:09:00] got to, you've got to have some channels and that leads me to three, which is just to distribute your content right everywhere.
[00:09:10] They. They have not yet seen you. They have not yet seen you. Sometimes I hear this, Oh, but they heard it somewhere else, but they didn't hear it from you. Oh, I'm putting it out too much. Maybe they're putting it out too much. Maybe I'm being too repetitive. Sometimes my marketing assistant being like they can get fatigued.
[00:09:31] Yeah, maybe they can get fatigued, but you know what? When I post, maybe that one person hadn't seen it before, right? So I need you to post that shit. If somebody doesn't want to see it, they'll scroll past it. But majority of the time, there's so many people you haven't reached. I don't know how many times.
[00:09:52] We get someone who comes in and they're like, Oh my God, I wish I had found you earlier. I wish I'd, I saw you. I [00:10:00] wish I knew about you before I had lost six weeks in therapy somewhere else. And I said, sometimes you just, you're right where you need to be, finding me at the time you found me.
[00:10:10] Because maybe at that time you weren't going to be ready to work with me anyway, and that's okay. You just got to keep distributing and distributing your content. So set up your platforms, stop talking shit and being like, I don't like social media.
[00:10:23] There's no better way to do any kind of marketing than to get on a social media platform right now. I don't think There's anything better and then on top of that shit is free, right? That shit is free the capital that you're putting to is your time, right or someone else's time But social media get on a fucking platform Make some videos to share your perspective If you want to go on video, then do a podcast and share that shit.
[00:10:53] Blogs are there, yes, but blogs are great from an SEO standpoint. And I think writing is important, but there's [00:11:00] ways in which you could do it that just gonna speed you up. So I'll share with you my formula. I do a video. I transcribe it and then I distribute it. That's it. I put it on podcast. So you see this on YouTube, you're going to hear it in a podcast and you're going to see it written down somewhere, right?
[00:11:17] So I, I spend the time doing one thing and I turn it into three things. And that's how, and then I distribute it. I distribute it everywhere. So I am on Facebook, I am on Instagram. I am I'm now on TikTok . I have a LinkedIn account. You haven't connected me on LinkedIn. Feel free to look me up on Tron.
[00:11:38] You can look up hand therapy secrets. You can look hands, look up, hands on Therapy services. You'll find me on LinkedIn. And then you'll find me on YouTube. So my two biggest platform that I get majority of eyeballs on me is really YouTube and Instagram. Those are my two biggest things. From a clinic standpoint, I [00:12:00] think it's still the same.
[00:12:01] From a clinic standpoint, it's still the same. Some people come from Facebook, but, and we still share a lot of stuff on Facebook, but I would say that I'm most active on YouTube and I'm most active from a social media platform between those I'm most active on Instagram. So I share a lot of stories on Instagram.
[00:12:17] So if you haven't followed me at hands, have therapy secrets on Instagram is where I spend majority of my time. And I put out a lot of my ideas and stuff like that in video format. And then I will share them as posts or I will turn them into other written content. You got to stop kissing people's ass and, feeling that desperate that comes from a sense of desperation and put yourself into a position of control and and market yourself, your company.
[00:12:47] So you first, when you're starting out, especially as a therapist, you're marketing yourself to your community. And then after you start marketing yourself, now that once you grow your team, you market your team, you market your, [00:13:00] like all of us were together. And then number four, when you're creating those social media channels and you're making those videos and you're distributing your content everywhere, I can tell you right now that strangers will support you before your friends and family do.
[00:13:15] Strangers will support you and share your stuff before your friends and family do. Don't rely on them to share your content. And also, when you're first starting out don't share it with them. Don't tell them to follow because what happens is you fear judgment from your friends and family before you fear judgment from strangers.
[00:13:37] And so you might be holding yourself back from sharing your perspective showing up on social media in a certain way because you fear your family thinking about you in a certain way, right? Or saying, Oh we don't want to see this. We don't want to see that, and so that's the thing that's going to stop you.
[00:13:57] My brother wants to start [00:14:00] sharing his perspective and he's what do I do? What if I sound stupid? I'm like, who fucking cares? If you sound stupid, nobody's watching you. Nobody knows about you. Nobody like what happens is when you start sharing on a new channel, you've created for your business, but not for yourself is that nobody's following you.
[00:14:20] Nobody knows who you are. So when you share something and it's dumb, nobody has seen it. Who fucking cares? So you gotta let that shit go. And also I told them, I was like, if you are on Instagram, you can do Instagram stories, and those stories go away in 24 hours. So if you look dumb, who fucking cares?
[00:14:47] If you like it, you can share that out. If you don't like it, poof, gone. And that's how you practice. Because you've got to practice showing up for yourself, showing up for the [00:15:00] community that you say you want to build, right? Show up and do the shit you need to do and it's great because nobody's fucking watching and if somebody watches and they like it They'll stick around and if they don't like it, they'll go away.
[00:15:16] It's that simple. And you start to build you start to build your skills doing that you start to build your voice doing it You start to I think to a certain extent you start to develop thicker skin If you're sensitive about it I created some videos on my clinic side that I mean some of the like you just get one bad comment and then everyone feels like they have the fucking, which they don't to say shit about it.
[00:15:51] So there's one video there. Talking about PIP fractures and what to do whatever and I shared more about the why than I shared about the how. I think I [00:16:00] shared the how two seconds. People gave me shit for it and You know what? I was offended at first. I was like these fucker, don't they know about PIP fractures?
[00:16:13] They don't! They don't. That's why they're so frustrated. So I was like, Oh, it's because they're frustrated because they were hoping this one video is going to help them and it didn't. So it gave me the, the mindset to be like, okay, get thicker skin around it. I deleted some comments cause I thought there were.
[00:16:34] Fucking rude. You could say some stuff, but y'all don't need to be rude. You know what I mean? Shit. So I deleted some of them. And then some of them, I responded and I'm just leaving the bad comments. Cause to me, I'm like, I need to hear what they're saying. And now I'm trying to make better content, right?
[00:16:53] But when you're starting out, I did this three or four years ago. And people are talking shit today and I was [00:17:00] like, that was three or four years ago. Like I've learned I'm making better content. I think I'm making better content. I don't know. Y'all people tell me, leave me a comment. You can leave me a comment, but you don't have to be rude.
[00:17:10] But, but strangers will support you before your friends and family do. So you want to start to share those perspective. You want to get on social media, you want to market yourself doing videos, distributing your content. And then over time, people will start to listen. People will start to share. Yourself and people will start to comment.
[00:17:27] People will find it useful or not useful and the things that are useful All you can make more of and some of the things that are not useful sometimes Those things seem to be out there because people need to know about whether they like it or not Or you can make it a little bit more useful for them Depending on what you're looking to do And how you want to serve your community but yeah Strangers will support you before other people, I think people in both my businesses, strangers supported me before friends and families did.
[00:17:58] Strangers are willing to pay my prices [00:18:00] before any friends or family are willing to. I can tell you that 100%. I have more people buying my programs and stuff like that outside of Miami. Then I have people in Miami who tell me they need to use or, want to improve their skills and still don't buy the programs and, cause it's like they know you.
[00:18:20] So maybe they think they could just get it, by asking you certain questions here and there which is fine. That's no, that's not a big deal but if you're looking to grow your business. You're gonna need strangers and believe it or not those strangers someday sometimes if they can be your friends, but that's how you build it I think those strangers support you in your business more than your friends and family Might support you especially in a therapy business I find You know, it was cakes and cookies.
[00:18:46] Maybe it might be different, but I don't do cakes and cookies. I don't sell them things. I sell therapy. So that's essentially what's worked for me. And I hope that if you implement any of [00:19:00] those things, any of those four things that I just shared about marketing yourself, getting on social media and making those videos and sharing, it's not about making, just making videos, but it's really about sharing your perspective on the thing that you want to share with them and distributing that content.
[00:19:15] You just put it, you just got to sprinkle that shit everywhere and then make sure you're sprinkling it in the right places not just to your friends and family. And then when you market yourself like that to your community, to the people who eventually, you know, will. No and trust you and want to get those services that you offer.
[00:19:37] You no longer have to feel desperate because seeing other people's asses to get referrals and clients and patients and stuff like that. you will go more into those relationships in a more abundant thinking and a more collaborative way versus in a desperate way. And it just feels [00:20:00] fucking good. I hope this video helps you again.
[00:20:02] My name is Hoang Tran. I'm an occupational therapist, certified hand therapist. And if you like videos like this, hit the like button, subscribe. And if you want to get more tips and Things that I'm going to share in my OT business corner. There's a link below to get on my email list. I'd love to see you on the inside and chat with you more.
[00:20:22] All right. Peace out until next time. Thanks for watching.
