Ep. 127: UCA 2024 Conference Recap

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:00)
What's going on everybody. You're listening to a recap episode of Walk -Ins Welcome where we are bringing everything urgent care association related from the past urgent care association expo that we just got back from in Las Vegas. Yeah. And so Vegas is a great time for us. We had a lot of fun. Grace and Hannah went with us as well. They had a lot of fun too, for sure.

They're like best meal ever, first time ever. And I can literally see the bags under my eyes right now. We're now day two removed from the event. Oh yeah, I mean, well, when you go out west and it's like dry and there's no allergies, and you come back here, it's green and there's still pollen. It's a lot. Anyway, but we enjoyed it. We had a blast. We want to talk about it because I know some of the listeners on here have thought about the UCA conference, but they're like, how do...

This is what we do every time we ask a potential person like, yeah, we don't have time to go. Well, here's us saying you might want to reconsider that because there's some great things that we saw over the past couple of days. And generally speaking, I have yet to meet a clinic. So yeah, that was a waste of my time. Right. They all liked it. But so we'll get into it, though. But yeah, talking about I think the best way that trip started was we landed and then the southwest.

attendant person said, welcome to Las Vegas, the city of lost wages, lost wages. And is that true? And yeah, definitely true. I lost all the 20 bucks on a slot machine. You lost all of 50. No, I lost less than I thought because I said, you know what? I don't have enough poker chips here to go cash in without being embarrassed. Yeah. But it turns out one of those was a $25 chip. And the other one was a $10 chip. Oh, they gave you back more money. So I actually got 35 of my 60 back.

So I only lost 25 bucks. That's pretty good. So, uh, I could have played some more and then, um, although arguably I said hit, she didn't. I saw the tap. I was like, come on. Maybe she felt bad for you. And I just really, I really didn't want to get into a fight with a, they'll kick me out. She went to house wins every time. Yeah. Yeah. So Vegas is a great place. If y 'all haven't been to Vegas, we encourage it. Um, it's a lot.

Let's talk about the fun things that we do before we talk about the event itself because we had a blast We didn't have a good if you're gonna go to Vegas take people that you care about man And what I'm talking about is like take the people on your team that need to know that you care about them They can add value to the event and they can bring you know Bring value to the people that you're trying to be around and you don't mind hanging out with yeah, and they don't suck That's the other Michael not have two different approaches You don't mind hanging out with them. No, they don't suck. Yeah, exactly. But and also too I was telling

my wife about this. I said, I want to go back to Vegas, but if we ever go, we have to have a planned show every night. Yes. Because you'll find yourself just walking to death, not knowing what to do. So a big, big shout to Kim, who was unable to go with us, but she planned the trip for us. So we had a very nice PDF itinerary itinerary. But there is one thing about this trip that was better than the last one is there were gaps in.

Yes, and that's actually a plus to the UCA. They rearranged the expo stuff, which gave us more time back, which was nice. But anyway, yeah, so some of the things, fun things to eat, lots of food. We did. Holy cow, the food in Las Vegas is a lot heavier than we're used to. It's weird that you're given all this food. I didn't like much. You start eating like, oh, I can only eat half of this. I don't know why. I know. Man, they have the density levels of their food are different. They are. I'm like.

I was telling you a story like I got this thing called a brookie, which is like a brownie cookie thing. And it looked like the shape of like maybe a little bigger cookie, you know? Yeah, man. I was four by 10 and I was stuffed. I'm like, I can't even fit anymore. I got a lot of y 'all going on. You know what I'm saying? But it was funny because like I got like that same place. I got there like ham cheese croissant things like that. And there was probably about a half a pound of ham on it. Like I'm not joking. Like.

It better be if they're going to charge you like $17, $18 for a croissant. But some of the cool things that we did at the Sphere was super cool. It was just the giant LED globe that sits in the middle of the city. Very cool on the inside. It had a robot interaction thing, an avatar thing. The actual video movie that we watched was crazy. There's actually a really fun thing where Hannah was like, there's like, it's like a.

giraffe coming on top of you. She'll put it out on. She'll put it out there. So that was a blast recommending that for sure. And they do like a show every night. So it's super easy to get into. Hell's Kitchen. Well, let me get to the sphere for a second. I remember walking into the sphere where you actually watched the video, right? Yeah. And I remember thinking, it's been a long time since I've thought this. I'm about to see something for the first, like I'm about to see, experience something new. Yeah. Like if it felt like something I was walking into another plant.

Yeah, because like for those who have done like an IMAX. So take IMAX. But like five. But put like five or like it comes above you, right? Like over the over your head. It's so large that your vision almost cuts out the almost the entire vision that you have is the screen. So it's very like almost wearing like virtual goggles type of thing. Right. VR headset stuff. Not wearing them. Yeah. But it was cool. Like super cool. Enjoyed that. Definitely recommend it.

Hell's Kitchen we were marking as one of the best mills we've ever had. Yeah, it was outstanding. No doubt. Beef Wellington is legit. Yep. Recommend that. Other things though. So let's see, what was the other? There was one other thing we did. Well, they went to the RuPaul's. Oh, yeah, we did. Drag show. It was a RuPaul. We're like, they're like, you want to go? It's like, no, we'll take our wives next time. Yeah. I think that was a good decision. I think I made the right choice. But I said it was a blast. Yeah.

And then for the Donnie Osmond people there, so our hotel is in Harris Hotel, which has Donnie Osmond. And we spent like half time, where is this place inside this hotel? We found it. And then if you are a Masked Singer fan, they actually had the whole outfit out there to look at. So it was pretty cool. But overall, absolute blast. The Wax Museum was super cool. Enjoyed that. I was hoping for more. Yeah, it was very fast. It was a lot faster. Expensive and fast. Yeah.

But it was cool. Like the level details amazing. Anyway, Vegas is not shall we always note on that everybody short. Shekeel O 'Neill everybody in the rock. Shekeel O 'Neill in the rock. They're tall, but like everybody is short. I felt so huge compared to somebody, especially the female ones. Like I was like, I mean, they're tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. But and then also the side note for the pond stars out there. We went to the gold and silver pond shop, which was super cool. Had fun with that. Even bought something, which was cool.

I did. Okay, cool. I'll leave it at that. Yeah. All right. So Vegas as a whole, please go check it out anytime you like. It sounds like we enjoyed that present way more than she did. Correct. Correct. Did you get the wrong one? No. Okay. It's a whole story. We'll leave it at that. All right. She hasn't listened to this podcast, so that's okay, but it's a whole story. You know, the intention was like...

very good. Oh man, we laid it up too. Like anyway, yeah, let's keep going before it gets awkward and dark. Anyway, so if you haven't been to Vegas, please go high. Recommend it. Just be prepared for cigarette smoke and weed smells the whole time. Yes. Second and high second high stuff and, um, snakes on the road on the streets. Like that was nowhere and tons of just over like overstimulation, but recommend it. It's a blast. Um, let's talk with the UCA.

So the UCA event usually is at Vegas and it was this time next year is actually in Dallas, which we're excited to see what that's all about. Cause I never really been to Dallas. Have you? Yes. Been to Dallas. Okay. But like forever ago. Yeah. I know it's changed. It's now like the new California. Right. But anyway, so, but UCA what's the point of the event? So it is the urgent care associations annual conference and it is there to not only teach clinics new things and expose them to opportunities.

But as they phrase it, it is their recharge event. And it's part of the recharge piece, which I know we're kind of going out of order here, but just the recharge side of it is they're wanting to kind of get you guys out of your clinic. Yes. I mean, you need to. Because the reality is every day you're just sitting there going through patients, dealing with some employee drama. Coding. Yeah, medical. Actually, HealthCon was there right next door, which was pretty cool, which is the massive medical coding event. It was huge.

How to get your doctors paid. Yeah, exactly. I think that was a good little side by side event there. But anyway, but like, and we've talked to some of our clinics, like we actually met a couple of clients down there and we met some people that or we saw some people that we typically talk to and they're all like, yeah, this actually is an opportunity for us to kind of step away, take a breather, learn what's on the horizon, get new ideas, all the things. So I really encourage you guys, if you've thought about going, you're like, I don't have time, make time.

because we can go and tell you right now just from our own personal experiences, you get a lot more out of something when you step away. So like when you step away from your clinic and then you start thinking about stuff, because now your mind's a little clearer. And when you come back, like, Oh, I know how to fix this. Or I have a brand new idea that's going to help us. Well, I will tell you this. Like when I take, when, when we take the team, our marketing team outside of this office to do something, everybody gets excited. Relationships are built.

Even though it can be a work related event. Yep. Like everybody grows closer as a team. At least for us. I don't know what it's like for everybody. But some people don't like each other, I guess. I don't know. But like we don't. We like each other. Yeah. But it's going to get you out. It's going to get you out of the norm. And, you know, I've always said this thing, the best things happen outside of your comfort zone. Yes. And your office, your clinic is your comfort zone. Like I get that. And that's where you need to be most of the time is in that area.

but you don't stretch and grow there you stretch and grow when you're around other people I wrote down proximity principle like you're going to get around what is the proximity principle like I can't define it I'd have to go look it up real quick but the proximity principle kind of paraphrased says that you're going to grow and change when you get and more doors are going to open to you more opportunities are going to come to you when you get around.

people that are either further along or in a different place than you are. When you get into proximity of those people, new things are going to happen for you. And as a clinic, you're getting around, let's just say that you're listening right now and you have a five location clinic, and then you're sitting down next to, what is it? Osher? That may have 200 locations or fast paces there, or maybe it's a new clinic that's doing something completely different.

And they all of a sudden you get the spark of an idea, hey, we should add that into our clinic. We had a conversation with one of our clients while we were there and we talked about adding weight loss because of how quickly that can make them more money. And that was stemmed from another conversation that they had just trying to be more profitable in their clinics. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is really one of those things because if you surround yourself, let's say you're a five location urgent care and the only circle of influence you have are.

five location or smaller urgent cares, right? So your mindset goes, I'm the best one in this group. And yet you're not pushed anymore. Right. Right. So now you're surrounding yourself with all these like high number of multi locations or ones that have sold out and they come back and start a new set. Oh yeah. Like that's the whole thing because now you're like, Oh, I can get bigger. I'm not that big anymore. I mean, it's even ourselves. Like when we go do our seven FAA Miami event, we get surrounded. Like we're small.

in comparison to our other mastermind people. And so like we get to hear the challenges and the opportunities there because sometimes you think, well, I've done as much as I can. This is about as far as I can go with it. I'm going to just, you know, that's it. I'm going to mail it in at that point. And if that's how you feel you're in the wrong room. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or if you're not getting into more rooms, or as I always say, if you're the smartest room and if you're a smart person in the room, you need to go find a new room. That's right.

And that's always going to be the case. Because I mean, you take like a Steve Jobs situation, like he brought on people that were smart in him so they could tell him he was wrong. Right. But anyway, I've done good at that. That's funny. I hear that often. Be quiet. I may have heard that today. Maybe. All right. So but for us, though, so like we're not you know, we're not urgent care owners. We're not doctors. We're the part of vendors. So we're part of the.

expo itself. And so here's the thing, just to kind of give the layout of what the UCA event's all about. So this time around it's at Caesar's Forum, which is a giant event center, and they have sessions all day. So the sessions are there to educate you on new opportunities, new processes, reminders of leadership. Our friend April Gilmotsal did a whole talk about cash flow and how to increase cash flow. And I think one of the things I saw in there on her little PDF was,

She had mentioned the idea of get out of your Google Sheets and get into the actual work and do it. Right. Because you can sit there and analyze stuff all day. But if you don't make an effort to change it, it's not going to change. And I can see that being a problem for people where they just look at, why isn't it better? These numbers never get better. What have you done to make a difference? That's right. So that type of stuff is going on. And so those are opportunities for you to learn, to grow yourself from that side. And then there's the expo side. So the expo side is where we live.

And so when you walk in, there's probably 100, 200 vendors, give or take, somewhere in between. And we're trying, yes, we're there to help sell. Like that's why we're there. Like we want to connect. We want more urgent cares doing business with us. So we invest in the Urgent Care Association because it gives us the best proximity. Yes.

to people who are likely to do business with us. Exactly. And we're also like one of two marketing companies in that entire thing. And shout out to Ira and his team because he did a great talk on occupational medicine. And that's a huge thing. And we've even talked about that on this podcast. And he has a dedicated program toward Ochmed, getting more patients to be Ochmed. So all that being said, so you walk in, you're an Urgicar owner or you work for an Urgicar or whatever, and you go in this expo and it's...

all these vendors all set up these 10 by 10 booths. Some had larger booths but most 10 by 10s. And you're looking for opportunities to make changes to your business. Because what we saw a lot of, so like I said, we were one of two marketing companies there. So we're in a lot of marketing. There was a print marketing guy too as well. So I guess three. Everyone else was about how to increase revenue or how to decrease your cost or increase your efficiency. That's right. It's about 90 % of it. So.

And that came into shape of get better equipment, get better software, or completely change your process. And this is how you do it. Get better marketing. Yeah, exactly. Get better marketing. So at the end of the day, answer your phone. There was a really cool one there that I can't wait to meet with next week that I'm working on a joint venture with. Yeah. Yeah. Where they have AI answering service that'll start booking them into your calendars and everything. You know, if you have a, if you have trouble getting to your phone and your urgent care, I don't remember the full name. It's flip something or other.

flip AI, something like that. And they can flip that phone call into a booked appointment if you're having a hard time getting your so that's the kind of stuff that we were exposed to that we would have never been exposed to otherwise. Yeah, and I would so even that's I would say this, if you find that your clinic has two or more rings before somebody picks up, you should consider a solution like that. Anyway, another small thing to on the side I forgot to mention. So the keynote speaker was Dr.

Glycoma fleckin. Yeah, he was a hoot. He was. So and it was so funny because we had no idea. Like we we're not doctors, so we don't get doctor comedy sometimes, right? Or we don't we're not exposed to it through the algorithms. And so we're like, who is this guy? And he comes on. Of course, we look him up on TikTok. He has like two point three million followers. Like he's a big deal in the medical industry. And he's an actual doctor. And he knows what's funny to doctors. And he was killing it. Right.

He spoke for about 45 minutes and one, it's amazing the man was even alive, like heart attack, the testicular cancer twice, like all these things like he should have, he shouldn't have. You only get it twice really. Yeah. Right. He ran on it. No more have to worry about now. But, um, all that being said, so like, but his, his stuff was great. Like it was fantastic. Like that is the, that is the caliber that UCA is bringing to the table. Right. These are high end people.

that are very relevant. So it was super cool to see that. I like the fact from a pure marketing perspective that he talked about leveraging social media to advocate for change in the healthcare space. Yes, and because he used comedy to wrap this all into one big bow to say you can exact change in your market or in your industry just by entertaining, educating, and executing. Yep. And his live example, real life example was Etna.

where he had basically done a TikTok video of they've required pre approvals on something random. It was very dumb what it was. And then basically he was the Etna boss. He's, well, it makes us more money. Well, what about this? Well, that can make us more money too. And like that was the whole thing. So he actually received not necessarily a cease and desist from Etna, but a we're now the CEO is very mad at you type of message. It was kind of fantastic. But on the flip side of that, people are like,

we've never seen anybody care so much what you're doing makes a difference. And this is internal there. Yeah. Cause even people at those companies, they know crap is going on. They know it's shady business. They understand the healthcare system. Well, it's funny. He's like, well in the past five minutes, that has already made a billion dollars or they said United and everybody's like chuckling about United. So as a consumer to has to pay these things as well, not at the doctor, like we get it too. Like it's for sure. It's a joke sometimes on the insurance side.

But anyway, but that's what you're getting at this event. There are these big names are coming to talk, relevant information that you can learn from it in the expo, which is the solutions to some of your problems right there in front of you. Well, the name of the event was called Recharge. Yep. OK. And what was interesting about that is that for a moment, it sounded kind of gimmicky to me, like Recharge Your Batteries and stuff like that, until we heard from not only our clients, but people that visit our booth.

that said, we actually feel like rejuvenated by coming here. Like this is, this is a burst of energy for us. It's out of our clinic. It's out of our norm. We're excited. It feels a little new to us because we're, we're, we're getting around one friends that maybe we made last year or we're making new friends this year. I like the fact that it gets you the continuing education. We call it continuing education.

credits, is that what it's called? Or CME credits? Yeah, something like that. Continuing medical education, something like that. So you can get your credits through that. But the relationships that you build while you're there, it was really nice last year when we went was the first time that we had ever went. We didn't know a soul, right? This year, we have friends that we've made over over the course of a year now just being exposed to them last year, they're coming across to the room, they're high fiving us and giving us hugs and

Shout out to John, right? He goes, Hey, I was subscriber number five to your podcast. Yes. It was awesome. And I'm like, that's because I came from a joke, but yeah. So John met him with mercy urgent care. We know you're listening. Hey brother. Hello. Thank you for being our fifth subscriber. Yes. But anyway, but no, it's really, it's really weird and it's weird and cool at the same time. And if they come up and say, Hey, I've been listening to your podcast for two years. Got a few of those and that was exciting for us. Yeah. And also it's one of those opportunities like.

Sometimes you need the confirmation, right? You need to be confirmed that people do care in some, cause yeah, we're speaking into this microphone, these microphones right now. We see numbers, but sometimes we don't know. But the fact that like we, one of our clients was giving us a live testimonial in front of somebody else asking us about our service. That was pretty cool, man. Cause that was not solicited. I'm over here talking to somebody about our services and then our client who's awesome, just David and Sharice walk up and.

David's over there like, man, these guys have done this, this and this, and we love them and that kind of stuff. And he's got a great relationship with David. He's even like the biggest problem you're gonna have these guys are gonna be waiting on you. Yeah, that's actually very true. But anyway, but so like, it's just at the end of the day, what we're trying to tell you, if you've thought about it, but you pushed off, I'm too busy. You're not, you're not busy. Like you're too.

This is going to help with your busy. You have the wrong kind of busyness. Yes, exactly. You filled your jar with the wrong things and there's some big rocks in there that you just kind of left out that one of them being UCA event. Here's another thing that I think happens whenever you go to these urgent care events is it confirms when you feel like you're not doing things right and you start hearing people talk from stage and you start having conversations with other urgent cares and they're like, yeah, we're struggling with that too. Yes. And they may be a massive urgent care. Like they may have 150 locations.

and they may be struggling with the exact same thing that you're struggling with. And it makes you feel like you're not doing something wrong. Like there's a solution, but I'm not really doing it wrong. It's just what it is. And we don't have to solve for the problem, not fix that we're broken. Does that make sense? And I will tell you this, when we go to conferences just for marketing agencies, I feel this all the time. I leave with both encouraged and frustrated because I'm like,

I went there to solve that problem. It turns out everybody's got that same problem. So I'm not crazy. Yeah. And that's, and that's such an encouraging feeling. It is. Well, it's encouraging and discouraging. It's like, everybody's like, well, what are you doing? How did you fix it? I'm like, well, I have it. I was asking you the same thing, but, but as an urgent care, I mean, if you're having coding issues and then you realize, yeah, that's not you. The system's broken. Yeah. Or.

Here's something I hear a lot and even heard it at the Urgent Care Association, man, summers fall apart for the urgent care. Well, guess what? That's not you. That's everybody there except for like, if you're at the coast, the keynote speaker even talked about it from stage. Yeah. Right. I was like, and he was making jokes about how it's slow during the summer. Yeah. And it's, it's one of those things like, cause when we talk about that, when we talk about, we know you have slow summer hours, go ahead and tell us what your summer hours are going to be.

when we talked to potential say which clinics do you tend to almost shut down during the summer? And then like some of the conversations that you had with some of the attendees was, hey, you're at this level, but I want to get you to 3 million. They're like, yes, the number I want to get to. Like, how did you know? Like, because that's what urgent cares want out of a single location. We get those numbers because we've seen them. But yeah, I mean, it.

Once again, great event. We enjoyed it. We have lots of follow up with our 60 potential leads that we talked to. So we're excited to kind of see what we can do with them. Lots of podcast guests. Yes. That this time, like last year we had to be like, Hey, do you want to come on our podcast? And this year it's like, Hey, can we be on your podcast? And I'm like, wow, that's different. I'm not used to that. There were a couple of those which are super cool. It's like, okay. All right. Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't know. Are you any good at what you do? Cause I don't want to put you on there and mess up our, uh,

extravagant reputation that we have. It's so stellar. But but no, it's true. So just a pre warning here in the next two to three months, we're gonna have quite a few guests on that were at the UCA event. Some of them are urgent cares. Yep. Right. And we want to talk about how they're growing their urgent care, what they're doing so that we can serve you from that perspective. I need to get the guts. There was one urgent care. He has some interest in working with this but

It was impressive. I've never seen an urgent care with 2 ,500 reviews with a 4 .9 average rating. That's a good point. Like he was very good at getting his review. And he had a really cool looking office too. So I was like, well, one of them, one of them, one looked amazing. The other two were in strip centers. It didn't look amazing. It's just, there's only so much you can do to one. Like a log cabin, which was pretty cool. But anyway, so like,

those type of people want to bring on because there's something they're doing that people don't realize. And we want to see like, can you kind of tell us? Cause that's the best part of the urgent care world. Cause I know if you're like, Oh, I don't like competitors. Well, your competitors only five miles. Like if they're not within five to 10 miles of you, they're not really a competitor anymore. So like we get that. And so that's the encouragement. Learn from your friends. And I would also argue like a rising tide raises all ships. Yes. So if somebody over here is doing well and willing to help you and you give that back to them as well and something that's working for you.

That's better for everybody. Everybody wins. I just did a shout out for Ira over at Web for Doctors because the dude's doing good work on the Okmed stuff. And why would I hold him back? Because we have competitive services. That would be stupid. You guys win when you get a full breadth of what's working out there. Yeah. And it's now he's like a friend to us because even when we're in the, you come and talk to us and back and forth.

And he actually gave us some tidbits on like expectations on the speaking stuff in the future. Like, oh, that makes more sense. Good to know. Yeah. Good. Yeah. So there was a lot of good stuff because I was a little bit hurt to be honest with you because I wanted to go there and give a good presentation and I didn't get that opportunity. And he's like, gave one last year. Well, and he was saying it's like, you don't really repeat every year. Oh, okay. So anyway, all right, guys, I wasn't that butthurt. Well, maybe a little bit.

All right. Anyway, so thank you all for taking a listen to this episode. This is our final push. Please go visit the Urge Care Association annual event. If you can, it'll be in Dallas in May of next year, not April. I saw that push back again. Okay, good. I get to go to a sudden fund this year next year then. Yeah, you do and not be worn out from travel. That's right. That's right. All right, guys, we'll catch you guys on the next one. Have a great week.