Ep. 142: Proximity Principle: Navigating Networking in Urgent Care

Participant (00:00)
What is up Walk -Ins? Welcome, fam. Nick and Michael here for another episode of Walk -Ins Welcome, where we help you triple your patient volume. We're all about helping you get more patients, better care, repeat visits, and scale. What's up, Michael? I don't think I could ever fully say that phrase. I say it different every single time. Do you? Yeah. It sounds like it's perfect every time. I mean, I try. Yeah. You know, I never dismayed. I've got the intro down point. So we're here with you on another Wednesday. We're excited to be here.

The first thing that I want to do though, right out of the gate is we are trying to grow this podcast. Our only ask ever on this podcast is to share it. So we wanted to incentivize you a little bit today to do it. First of all, before I tell you what we're doing, why don't you talk about this guy right here for a second. Yeah. So for our fellow YouTubers that are watching on YouTube or maybe watching Spotify on your phone, I'm holding up here what's called a Zappi card. Zappi card. Zappi card. So what is a Zappi card?

we don't actually sell this. just simply buy them and then redistribute them to our clients. And it is an NFC chip. Doesn't mean anything to you, but allows you to get more Google reviews at the checkout desk. one of the best ways that you can grow your urgent care clinic online is to get found in the map three pack. One of the best ways to get found in the Google map three pack is to generate lots and lots of relevant reviews. Relevant, real, real time. Yes. Right. So when you do

What you want to do is have something like this right next to your checkout counter or check -in counter, depending on how you do it. All you got to do is literally just hold your phone near it and it'll pull open your Google review. So I'm not here to pitch Zappi card. I want to give one of those away is the reason I bring it up. Okay. If you want to get more reviews, we want to help you do that. So we've got three of them that we want to give away. All right. One of them is a, a, is a desktop stand and then I've premium one. Yeah. And I've got two cards here and I want to give those away to help you get more reviews. Here's all I'm asking you

to help us grow our podcast. Leave us a review on whatever platform you're watching this on. Share it on a social media account and then email us at hello at patientcaremarketingpros .com and let us know that you did those two things. That's it. And we will send this to you. Now we'll probably send an email back saying, where do we need to send this guy to you? Right? But that's it. That's all we want you to do is just leave us a review, share it on social media and let us know that you did those two things and we'll send

And here's a secret. I can get more of these. So if a bunch of you go and do it, I'll just get more and send them to you anyway. I'll just happen to have three with me. Yeah, but I say we just have three here because we typically will like in a video call say this is what we mean by Zappi card. So it's kind like our demo card. I guess for you non techie people, I know you can't hardly see this, but right here on the back, what I did is I put a QR code with a, with a card that Hannah made up for us where you can scan

And we literally walk you through step by step how to set this up. By the way, there's only like two steps. Yeah, it's super easy. Android or iPhone can do it. That's right. And it works. So like we've had feedback from clients that do use it and like, yeah, it's super easy because now, you know, we've all talked about the front desk advantage and we've all talked about the importance of asking for reviews. Well, now we just help eliminate some barriers for you because now you can literally just have a little sign that says, leave us a review, tap your phone. They don't have to open up an

They don't do anything. They just tap and their phone says, would you want to go here? And they hit yes. And it takes them straight to your profile to give that review. Right. It's pretty straightforward. Well, we want to give you one. So leave us a review, share it on your social media, send us an email. Hello at Patient Care Marketing Pros and we'll send you one. All right. Let's get into our episode today. Michael, there's a concept out there called the proximity principle. Okay. All right. The proximity principle is the network and the people that you hang around most will open doors to

true. Right. I wouldn't know you. That's a good point. We met through B and I briefly. Yeah, very briefly and somehow managed to get into the same building. I don't even know how that happened. I'm trying to like I sold you on the idea of the building I was in and the building's great, by the way. We're not there anymore. We're not there anymore, but that's because of them, not because of us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They didn't kick us out, by the way. course, technically, I met you at another networking group when you were in radio.

and I found that business card years later. You have a much better memory than I do. I'm just 36. Now we're doing this. Now we're doing this. I just turned 45. I'm only about a month over 45. I'm two days over 36. Anyway, happy birthday. Anyway, back at it. So the proximity principle is that you are the average of the people that you hang around most. That goes for friends and everything.

And so we want to talk about different events that are coming up in the urgent care space. Now I'll give a little backstory. We are better as an agency because of the different agencies that we hang around. There are other agencies, digital marketing agencies, that we get around three times a year, right? So we'll go out to Miami. We just

I say get back from when we were virtual this time, we'll be there in person. Which was actually fantastic. Yeah, we did that. We had our whole team involved, which by the way, I realize you can't do this with an urgent care. can't just, well, you could. You could technically. It's an investment. But I do think what we've learned from this recently, while it's really great for the owner and a key person to go to these events, if you can get your team more involved, the amazing part is that they now double down on whatever cool ideas came

Yes. Because the reality of it is that you may see all these cool ideas, you want to bring them back, get the implement it. But if the team doesn't understand it or believes in it, it's either never going to get implemented or a lot of resistance will go against it. And then it just slows way down. I'll also say when it's not my idea and it's the team's ideas, it's exponentially more likely to get put into action. And better. And better.

better done because they're doing it because they want to and they're excited about it. Not because I told them they had to. And now there's a slushy machine involved. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that in just a second. But I do do want to talk about that proximity a little bit. to say like we're a better agent. We've we've gotten better at delivering results. We've gotten better at keeping our clients. We've gotten better at reaching new people. Let me just tell you, this podcast would never exist without the encouragement

the network in the agency. That idea was brought to us through that networking and we were like, that's interesting. We didn't think about it and we're like, okay, we'll try it. And here we are 140 episodes later still doing it. And to be clear, the proximity piece of that isn't that somebody came to me and told me about it. I was around a group of people who were doing it successfully. Yes.

doing it. And that's the thing too, like when you are okay, like if you're an urgent care and you're in a group of people that you're the biggest urgent care, guess what you're probably have no and there's no incentive to make you grow more. No, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Yeah, you're the biggest urgent care in the room, you're in the wrong room, like all day long. And so that's why we're be talking about these events and stuff because we're about to put you in events that are lots of different size urgent cares there.

And that's exactly what we wanted to talk about on this episode today with the proximity principle is to put you in and around environments that are going to stretch you. They're going to grow you. They're going to frustrate you. They're going to encourage you. The frustrating part for us is we do a lot of things right. And that's not an arrogant statement. We were there trying to fix broken things and they're like, we're all dealing with the same problem. That's most frustrating and encouraging. We should curve some of that, right?

You may or may not get an aha moment when you go to an event. Trust us. We've been to lots of events and we were waiting for an aha moment. We're like, crap, we already do that or whatever. But it also is that encouragement, hey, we already do that. Yeah. Yeah. So when you feel frustrated that you may not be as far as you want to be in business, there's other people that are further along that can pull you forward. And there's other people behind to encourage you that you're not where you used to be. Yeah. Sometimes we forget about that so quickly.

Because you think about where we are now as we come in, we're approaching, we'll have our number 13 employees starting up next week, which is cool. I remember when it was like me, you, a couple of other people against the world. Yeah, and we didn't know what doing. And here we are.

I mean, some people would still say we don't know what we're doing. I feel way more confident now. I feel way more confident. So what are the upcoming events? We're going to talk about each one of them. these are urgent care focused. This is all urgent care. We're not inviting you into the agency world. We're trying to put you in into your own world. We you to hang out with fellow urgent cares. I think like you're already very familiar with the urgent care association and the big event that they do in like April, May or is it May, June, something like

Yeah, it's been in Vegas. Yeah, it was been in Vegas the past couple years or going to Texas next year. And that's gonna be fun. That's a cool change. Yeah, I'm tired of Vegas. Vegas is cool, but I've had my share of it. Yeah, but now that I've been there twice, I'm like, I could see how he hits me with a whip again. That was funny. The world we live in. But I would say so. Yeah, UCA is like I would say the Golden Child, the go to area for urgent care

they've been around the longest. I mean, they they kind of square off in terms of like, they have the biggest membership, all these things, which is the good thing. We're members. But they but they really truly only have one event per year. The rest are like webinars and stuff. And we understand like webinars have importance. But ultimately, like, there's a difference between watching something from a screen and being there in person and involved. So I'm just want to push this out there. We're about to show you guys nothing to

with the big UCA. These are the other opportunities you have throughout the year. And you have to give some edification to the Urgent Care Association. You know, I grew up going to my dad's events. was in office supply products and we would just go with him when we were kids. They were so boring. But they gave away a bunch of stuff and that was cool. Well, and like I grew up where my dad went to a bunch of ICBA, which is Independent Community Bankers Association.

Well, mean, like they brought some cool they try to bring this banking like, know. But I just think I remember when I was 17, they was down in Florida area. It was just my dad and I and Mr. Forbes from Forbes magazine was the main speaker. That was cool. That is pretty cool. That was pretty cool. I really enjoyed that because I was like, this is amazing. And this was like right after 2008. So he had a lot to say. Right. And it was just fast. But at end of the day,

At the end of the day, that was a cool speaker with cool stuff, but that's not what mattered. Like my dad, he wanted to interact with the other bankers and kind of say, what are you guys up to? Because at the end of the day, there's a lot of you guys just don't know. There are things that we don't know in our digital marketing world, and there's things in urgent care you just don't know. You may assume, like, while we're checking all the boxes, like, there's a box out there you maybe haven't even heard of yet.

Well, first thing I want to mention is the it's we call it Narukka. I don't know what it's normally called in the urgent care space. That would be the Northeastern Regional Urgent Care Association event. That's going to be on September 22nd through the 24th in Leadeard, Connecticut. I think I said that correctly. If you're from Leadeard, Connecticut, we're from the South. So give us some leeway. You know, I've gone back and listened to a couple of our episodes. I don't think anybody is confused about us being from the South.

We definitely have a bit of that draw. You're welcome. Come on, y 'all. Anyway, so the Neruka event is in September. So that is the only September event that I see that's coming up. And again, it's an urgent care association, kind of like a franchise. It's same thing. It's technically part of UCA. So if you have a UCA membership, you're already in this. You're already in Neruka. you're also in the other ookas out there, when you want to call them. That's right.

But so this event for an already a member, like it's not going to cost you much money other than travel at the end of the day. And it's going to be hanging out with your neck of the woods. So if you're in the Northeast United States and you need something to go to next month or September, this is a great event. like all those events, it's a good way to kind of step away. Because every time you step away from a business for a couple of days, your mind starts to shift. You start thinking about things a little differently. And this is a great chance to do

Love it. All right. So that's an Arruca. The next one that's coming up. I'm, I'm actually excited about it. just reached out to April Gillum with Solve Health just to say, Hey, listen, like what do I need to know about this event? So I can, so I can get involved in it. And that's the merchant merchant medicine symposium. That's on October 16th through the 18th and it's in New Orleans. And I'm just telling you, New Orleans is freaking

Yeah, we've been invited a couple of times to it. It's sometimes just a challenge for us to get these things. But like it's a more swanky, but it's kind of like higher end. Yeah, it feels a little bit more suit and tie to me now. I'm not saying people are showing up in suit and ties, but they last year, like they had these little round tables set up for networking with drinks and people were looking nice. Yeah, a little fancy. Yeah. Yeah. And this one is co -hosted by Solve Health. That's the reason I had mentioned April in

they're the ones putting this on with another company and tell of is it, believe is the one that they're that they're co -hosting it with. And I highly recommend this because if I knew nothing else, I know April. Yeah. She doesn't do anything that isn't awesome. Yeah. mean, for, you're an urgent care specialist, you probably heard of it. Yeah. Y know who she is. She's over at solid health and she has the best video. just

watch her videos and just laugh like from the Barbie mobile and all these other things. All the fun things. She has a black and she has a cool history with the urgent care space like she was with a pediatric urgent care for a long time and so she under she was a mascot or whatever so like she knows what you guys are going through. This episode brought to you by April Gillum. right. So the next event that's coming up is also in October. So at end of October is the Seruka.

Southeast Regional Urgent Care Association. The next UKA in our list. Yep, that's right. And that's on October 24th through the 26th. And unless I don't know something or something's changed, we plan to be there. So I hope to see you there. Come by our booth, come say hi to us. We'll give you one of our books that we put together that is our playbook on digital marketing, which needs to be updated with all the AI that we incorporate now. But that's story. But we're going to have great resources for you. I'm sure we'll have some kind of a cool offer. I don't

at the very least we want to meet you. so if, if you've listened to this podcast, you know that we are very like unimposing. We just want to be a resource for you. we would love to meet you there. And that's part of the reason for this particular episode, we want to like forget what we have to say. Here's some things you should try out locally with the, so, but yeah, so out in Atlanta, so not too far for those. So if you're out in the South from, I mean, Texas is a stretch, right? But if you're in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi,

That's a short drive. Yeah. mean, but if you could make it to Las Vegas, you could probably make it to Texas. Just don't have a plane issue like everybody else is having right now. Yeah. All right. So the Soroka Advent is in Atlanta, Georgia, though. This is going to be super regional and super easy to get to. All right. Cal Yuka. I'm assuming that's California Urgent Care Association. That's on November 7th and 8th, and that's in Irvine, California.

We are not going to be at that one, but I want to go next year. think that would be just, even if we just go to California, I've always wanted to go and spend time in Southern California. We go hang out with a client that we have out there. Yes, absolutely. Shout out to our friend at Lonnie City Medical. Yep. All right. So the, this one that I'm going to mention is actually next year, but it's worth putting on your calendar. It's Xperity's event. So Xperity does the expedite urgent care connect.

I'm sorry, the Xperity Urgent Care Connect. That's March 3rd through the 5th in Louisville, Kentucky. And fun fact, I did apply to be a speaker at that event. And so if you're from Xperity and you're listening, pull my application and approve it. they haven't approved it yet. I promise you, I'm going to bring it. I feel like they would find this as a little bit of a competition. I don't think they do marketing.

I thought they had a brand for it. mean, if they do, I don't know what it is. So, Xperity... Must not be good marketing. There went my speaker application. Thank you for that, Michael. would be very proud if they heard that in this episode. As far as I know about Xperity, they do the EHR and EMR and all that kind of stuff. It's funny right here as we talk, our doorbell is ringing. my awesome son is going to go. Thank you, Samuel.

All right. So back to the Xperity Urgent Care Conference. We have mad respect for Xperity and that's a conference that I'm looking forward to learning more about and going to. All of these conferences though are an opportunity for that proximity principle to get around people several different kinds, right? People that are ahead of you, people that are behind you, people that are leaders in the space, people that are vendors. Let me tell you what, we're a vendor to the Urgent Care Association. Okay?

We are here to serve the urgent care clinics, right? We genuinely care about this space. And I wanted to mention that because the other vendors that I've met, that I've run into, they genuinely care about it as well. Web for Doctors, Ira is awesome. I think Ira genuinely cares. April, Gillum, Solve, she cares. I could name tons of people in the urgent care space that we've met over the past several years.

And every time I meet a vendor, they are looking for ways to serve you better. We're included. would throw us at, if we're not at the top of the list, we're up there with the top. Well, and I was, so, know, I'll say this too. So we're in the marketing world and the marketing industry kind of has not necessarily a negative view, like negative connotation around it, but most people are trained like marketing doesn't work or it doesn't do what's supposed to, or it's just smoke and mirrors. Right. But period.

But for us, so like we get the most excited when we get feedback from our clients. Absolutely. And we've had some like just this week, we've had some really cool feedback. While you stall. Stall, right? So the reason why I'm stalling is that we've had a couple of urgent cares like actually say back, hey, this actually made a difference. I'm kind of surprised type of thing. Like they were expecting this. But this is what we care about. This is what makes us do what we do, because we're helping honestly some urgent cares go from

surviving the thriving very, quickly. And so Nick's pulling up some actual email. I'm to at least some actual emails from a couple of clients this just this week was really cool. We even said is this client feedback day because they came at the same time. So this is an email that was sent to another urgent care of ours that referred us. Yeah, so this is just two urgent cares chatting about us. So this this isn't an email sent to us. This is an email sent to our client by another client. Yeah. All

This new marketing company is head and shoulders above. I'm not going to name the other marketing agency. I'm so happy you introduced me to them.

It's like they, it's like they figured out the secret to getting your clinic on the top of everyone's search results, right? That's one of the multiple that we've gotten this. don't know what's, we don't always get these just to be clear, but we got a bunch this week. It's been a great week. Yeah. It was kind of weird for us because we're like, I don't know what do with this information. We got four or five. Yeah. Like why is this happening right now? And we're kind of, but either way, it was really cool to see because we don't know sometimes like when we talk, I'll be honest, there are a lot of clients that we talked to

They just won't talk about their problems. don't really. And I understand. here for it. We get it. That's part of the mix. Man, we really like it when you say, hey, this is actually what's happening right now. We've had feedback where, I was on the verge of closing my doors. Now I'm hiring. We were doing this. And now we're so high up that I'm looking at adding more people to the game. I was about to reduce my staff just to keep things moving. Like, that type of feedback is amazing.

I believe sincerely that the reason we're getting this feedback now is because we chose to associate instead of being for ourselves, not for you, but for ourselves, arrogant about who we are and what we do. said, I bet there's areas that other people are doing it better than us. Let's go learn from them.

And so we went and got around other digital marketing agencies that were in completely different niches than medical. Like, how can we apply that to urgent care? We did it. And now we're getting these kinds of emails. And we continue to do it. We didn't stop. And we keep benchmarking ourselves and all the fun stuff. Not here to talk about us. But it's just cool to hear the feedback. Just like how we're asking for feedback, essentially, hey, we're going to give you something. But we like to hear feedback too, right?

I don't care if you leave a one star review and share it. I'll still give it to you. I just want to know what you think about what we're doing here. Yeah, exactly. And also too, just as a push push out there, if you're an urgent care and you're OK with talking on a call with us, we'd love to have you on as a guest and what's going on in your world. Every time we put out an urgent care episode that has an urgent care on it, lots of feedback come from it. Lots of positive feedback. Positive feedback. Hey, that's really cool. Didn't think about that. I love these guys.

If you want to feel good a little bit, that's a pretty good way of doing it, honestly. And then our views typically go up higher in those scenarios with those type of interviews. So if you're looking for an opportunity to shine on an employee that did an amazing thing, this is a great way to do it. Put them in a public space, honestly. So anyway, just pushing that out there as well. This has just been an episode. Our goal is just how can we help you, essentially.

This week we've tried to help you by letting you know all the events that are coming up. You can go back and in the show notes, I'm pretty sure we'll have a list of the events that we just named. You could do a Google search on any one of those and get the information that you need. You're probably already dialed in if you're an urgent care owner anyway, cause I know the emails that come out. But again, one last time, leave us a review, share it on your social media, send us an email. Hello at patientcaremarketingpros .com. We'll send you one of these and it will help you get more reviews. And people just like to hold their phone up to

but just because it's fun. until then, Sam, come up here. Samuel is my youngest son. Yeah, come on. You're not in the camera. There he is. There he is. There he is. All right. right. So stand up. OK, don't fall. This is all not scripted. I tell you what, talk into the microphone. Hello. Tell them your name. My name is Samuel. And where are from? I am from.

Come on, dad. is your favorite thing about daddy's company?

helping people. that was good. All right. Somebody hand him a microphone so he can drop it. There you go. Very good. Thank you, Sam. Here's what we want you to say. Say thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time. All right. Have a great week. See you guys.