Ep. 146: The Dangers of Digital Dependency

WIW (00:00)
Hey, what's up walk -ins welcome family. Welcome back to another episode of walk -ins. Welcome. We are excited to help you triple your revenue, triple your patient volume, and I guess triple your like big gulp volume. What do you got drinking some sweet tea? had a meeting today actually, or just an hour ago with a potential interview coming up on the podcast or local. it's kind of fun, but for those in Birmingham, we went to Jim and Nick's today. Yeah. Got some cheese biscuits, all the good stuff.

Big ol' brought a whole bunch of cheese business back. They're already gone. Are they really? There's two left. They tore them up. They're gone. Anyway, so in breaking news this week, our Google business profile got suspended and I made a little video about it. It may have already come out by now. I don't know. It was a very quick one, but I wanted to go into a little bit more depth on this episode. Not so much of the Google business profile being suspended.

but understanding that you don't build your house on someone else's property. Yeah, annoyingly, I would say in the world, in the Google world, that's how we operate. Yes. We're on Google's property. I mean, it's kind of funny whether I was thinking about this in general. Very, very, very few businesses out there have their own supply. Yeah. Like in our party data. Yeah. First party everything. Right. So like for us, we we play in other people's background.

Backyards where we're in Facebook's backyard, Google's backyard, all the social profiles we interact with, web host backyards. Like we play in bunch of backyards and play nice. Sometimes they kick us out and we got to ask them back in. Well, so I mean, I personally have a theory about that that I don't want to get into too much detail on our personal side. But like, just imagine for a second as an urgent care, you're dependent on Google, your Google business profile. We're not.

dependent on our Google business profile. it's nice to have. I put a, I and the team have put a lot of work in a ranking our business on Google and Google just said, bye. Well, it was so funny because we've been fighting them about moving offices now for six months and seven now, seven, eight months now, I guess. And, you know, we finally got, we did the stupid video verification like four times.

I don't know why they finally I did on my phone on Android and it like I think it liked it. Honestly, I don't know. Can't tell now. Doesn't matter now. And then I went into my personal profile because I'm a contri like elite contributor and we did all the right things and everything was approved. Everything's good. Like we were rocking and rolling. Right. Two weeks ago. And finally after months. Yeah. And then this week, ban. Just like straight up for.

don't even know what deceptive content practices or deceptive content or practices, which then you look into like, there's nothing like we're not selling marijuana. We're not what we post is what we do. So it's not like we're just making up junk. And so but at the end of the day, we're at the mercy of somebody on support at Google that's going to manually review our request. And they can just say, I don't care and just hit deny.

Well, there's been a couple of things that have happened over the past, I don't know, decade, right? And it was one of the reasons that kind of was the catalyst of this episode of them, you know, doing a ban on our profile, which I'm sure it will be back up. I don't know, whenever they feel like reviewing. And they won't even tell us half time. It'll just pop back up. Congratulations. You're back on Google. We're sorry. But there's been some things that have happened over the years that, you know, that I am a victim of Google deciding they didn't want my platform.

me on their platform for whatever reason. We have seen the first thing that happened was what was called the Google slap. Is it the slap snap? No, the slap came first and the snap came to Facebook. Right. That's right. Right. Because then Thanos, right? But anyway, that's true. Thanos. Yeah. So the Google slap was all of these companies were advertising on Google at the time called Adware.

And they were killing it. And they were making a fortune. Anybody that you heard in early 2000s running AdWords, they were ahead of the curve that you were printing money at that point because nobody knew. I've even seen Shark Tank episodes of where did how did you grow? Well, we just ran AdWords for the first couple of years and then it finally quit working or whatever. Well, they got slapped. They got slapped. And now we're to figure things out. Yeah. So the slap, they basically

I mean, they basically 10x the cost per click. So if it was a dollar per click, all of a sudden it was $10 per click. If it was $10 per click and it was $100 per conversion, it all of a sudden became $1 ,000 per conversion. So everything just kind of like 10x. Google wanted to make more money. Google just said, hey, we're taking a price increase. And here's the thing.

All of these businesses that probably put more businesses out of business than it helped. Yeah. yeah. With that Google with that Google slap. Right. So Google at any time can raise their prices on you. OK. Next thing. Without reason. Yeah. Next thing you have Facebook and Facebook several years ago. I remember when I first got into digital marketing, you could make a fortune.

in Facebook. they were just Facebook only agencies out there popping. Yeah, you started that way. how I started. You had a neighbor in the first office building that was a Facebook guys or like it was. yeah, yeah. Apex. Apex. And like it was just one of those things that you can make some serious cash on Facebook and put him completely out of business. Yeah, because he I remember because he was unique. He did a million dollars worth of ad spend the first year. Yeah. With his clients. He only had a handful of clients. He like eight. Yeah.

He was pushing like over a hundred thousand a month in ad spend and he, you know, he pushed out doing so well, then a year and a half later have closed my business. Yeah. It literally, it was like almost overnight. And I very quickly in my business, right. I knew how to run ads when I first started this company, but I very quickly realized all of my eggs were in one basket. And at that time there was no sign of an issue. Yeah. When I, when I first started, I went ahead and started doing SEO and Google ads and social media posting and

whatever I could get my hands on to diversify and do it well. I didn't want to just do it. I want to do it well. So I brought people on that could do that. But he didn't. And he's gone. And he's gone. And I'll never forget when they had what was called the Facebook Snap. Again, Thanos, right? They did the exact same thing, right? They either reduced your impressions significantly for the same amount of money or they just increased the price 10x. They did the same thing that Google did.

and all of these businesses that were running their ads on these platforms, they got a price increase or they were gone. Right. You know, look, I don't blame the platforms on why they would do this. Like, obviously, they got to make more money. I don't know. I think it's a bait and switch, but whatever. So I view it as at the end of the day, there's only an extra is a supply. And if you make it super accessible for everybody, the supply gets worn out really fast. Right. Because at the end of the day, like.

you're paying for people that do searches on Google, there's only so many searches a month that actually happen. And if you're sharing it with everyone next to nothing on cost, it dilutes its value over time. So I get it. It's not fun at the moment, but now we're used to it. this is now new standards. But at the same time, I mean, it's something that's still relatively economical if it's done correctly. But yeah, it's not like stupid cheap.

Well, it's still the best way on the plan is to get in front of the right person at the right time in the right way. Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's reason why we push Google ads so hard. If you're going to do anything right for an urgent care, please do Google ads like because we could, it's almost not instant results with pretty darn close. But why am I bringing this up? Cause it sounds like I'm having a super negative conversation about Google. That's not my point. is Google. Facebook is Facebook. Tik Tok when

in TikTok a couple of years back when everybody was rushing to that platform and they didn't really know who they were. You can make a fortune on TikTok. And then they changed their platform to be more T -Map. Everything's product. You're not kidding. right. Cause I came, I think I mentioned on the previous episode, but I came across like a video that talked about TikTok has just ruined itself. Right. Where it's now some, but some creator, you know, pushing some random product on TikTok shop.

That's one video you'll get. The next video is a creator that's sponsored. And then the next video is something that's old, like two years old. Why am I getting this now? She'll get 2021 or what is this? And then one of five videos is something new, relevant and not paid for. Right. Exactly. So they've gone that way as well. But it's incredibly important to understand that those platforms are owned by whatever company owns them. Right. they to make a profit. Right.

there. Yeah. If you're not going to pay to be a member of that platform, then by default, you're going to pay with it. Like you are the commodity. Yeah. Right. I am the commodity. If I'm consuming content, then I am the, I am being bought and sold. Yep. I am. Right. You are. Right. I will do in full disclosure, I am paying Google right now to talk to you, the urgent care owner. paying them. And I'm really hoping that you click on my ad.

Yeah, please click it. costs us, we want you to And I've given you a lot of incredible value in that click. Like you're going to learn how to market your company and you're going to come to a conclusion that it's not as easy as you think it is. And with that conclusion, you're going be like, I bet these guys with a team that knows what the crap they're doing can give me a better ROI if I paid them than if I paid that one person that had to do 27 different marketing ideas a day. Yeah. Right. So that's not even a shameless plug.

That's what I'm counting on. That's why I'm giving Google my money. Yeah. though they show them my Google business profile, I'm still paying them. And that's why they're charging what they charge. Exactly. We always make the jokes. If we ever bring on somebody that's not in the medical space, we talk to them about like, you know, there are industries that are very expensive in the Google ad space. Medically speaking, it's relatively cost effective. You know, it's not astronomical numbers. It's not too seasonal. But one of the hardest

industries for Google Ads like it's attorneys. Attorneys. like a thousand dollars. It is. So like if you haven't if you have an attorney that you just despise in your area, go find your Google ad and click it because you probably cost them between three hundred and eight hundred dollars for that one little click you just made. Yeah, it's an absurd amount of money that they're getting. It is like their budgets are incredible. The thought process behind the ads are bad, but they spend huge, huge dollars.

And Google loves it. Yeah, I was like, they're making a fortune. So anyway, point is you're building your house on their property. You're building your business on their property. You're building your property on their property. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to say. I it's slightly. It's not yours. Yeah. It's like that building that you're leasing is not your building. Hey, I have spent money on this recording studio. I have filled it full of desks. Yeah. Right. I have.

Put signage. everywhere. We have colored our walls. There's a really cool looking walk -ins welcome sign right here with stuff that we've painted. it feels like ours. I got a bill the other day that quickly reminded me this is not my building. Yeah. Right. yeah. They decided to do a building upgrade and pass it on to me for absolutely no reason. Everything looks like it's mine. I spend money like it's mine, but it's not mine. have to do what I'm Yeah, exactly. And that's the world we live in. And if they decide they don't want me in this building anymore.

I'm out. Okay. Why do I say that? Every dollar, every effort that you spend on any platform other than email, other than email, even your EHR. yeah. Right. Everything that you're paying a fee to. If there's a recurring fee involved.

Google, I guess, doesn't have a recurring field or profile. don't. I'm just saying that like you you're on their platform. Well, you know, it's funny. It feels like the world has also just gone to that. Yeah, it's to the point now you don't buy DVDs. don't buy you don't buy software anymore. You just the subscription model has you got a blockbuster. Yeah, exactly. The subscription model has just taken over our entire thought process, which

Truth behold, a subscription model is no different than an installment plan on that car you bought, because you don't own that car either until you've paid for it. That's right. But it's funny, because I talking about software. But you have all the responsibility of that car. Yeah, and then if you do something stupid in that car, it's still your problem. It's not the person that technically owns your car. But no, talking about software for like half a second. I remember Adobe. So Adobe Photoshop has been around for 30 years now.

But it used to be a one time purchase plan where it would cost you 1200, 1500 bucks for a subscription. A license to Adobe. And then like that's a big chunk of money. And then for creatives, like that's a lot of money to spend on something that you have to have. I forget that we'll just charge you 10 bucks a month forever. And they're making a fortune. They're making a fortune. It's less to deal with per se. And then updates are always coming.

For us, it's a win. It was only $10. But I've been paying $10 a month now. Like my wife still does occasional photography. I've been paying $10 .79 a month now for eight years. It is what it is. So we spent almost $1 ,000 on software, which is fine over eight years. We don't care. But that's how we all operate now. We don't own that software. We just subscribe to it. Well, so what's the solution? Well, first of all, the problem is you don't own it.

Yeah. Right. And that doesn't mean that I'm telling you not to use those platforms. What I'm telling you to do is to make sure that you have something that you own as well. And gathering what we call first party data is the best way to do it. OK. Now, there are platforms like your EHR.

That is a rented system for HIPAA compliance for you to keep up with your records of your clients. But I would make the argument that you need to get somewhere their name and their email and their phone number, just so that you can talk to them outside of your EMR. occasionally do a .CSV download. Yeah. Save it. Just their name, email and phone number. You don't have to have all the HIPAA stuff.

Well, we were even talking to, so at our lunch today with a potential podcast coming on, they were even talking about that they love working with startups. And there was a person where she said, I am a primary care doctor. It's gotten really boring. I have all these patients, but I want to do something else. And so they're in the process of helping to do a startup. But she even said, but because she has such a good following, just not really a

pure startup because she has a couple hundred patients are coming right over with. yeah. I mean, that's and so like that average is what that is. Right. And, you know, obviously there's contracts that help define some of this. But at the end of the day, if she did, she has to collect all the information, right? Like she's got to go into the EHR software that she currently has and pull that information so she can contact her new or existing list and say, hey, I'm now doing this now. Please come over here. Please stop going there. And that's real because

She could just walk away and have to redo everything. And why would you want to do that? There's reasons you want to keep your data. I even had that personal experience. have a personal mistake. My previous company, I had saved every contact to my phone, which is an Android phone, via my business email, not my personal. So when I left, they deleted my email address, right? That deleted all my contacts out of my phone, basically.

And all of sudden, I would be getting texts and calls from people, where are you? Or what happened to you? And I'm I don't know who you are. I have no clue. I remember one time a guy called me, loved the guy, Mike Vest, super awesome dude. And he called me and he was just like, can you believe it? I'm like, yeah. He's like, you know who you're talking to? Hey, well, hey, Mike. And I went through a whole conversation. But yeah, that's a real thing when you.

Like that data can be instantly pulled from you and you're not having a way to hang on to it anyway. It's a problem. Well, I mean, you're like my my EHR will never do that to me. yeah. OK, well, let's talk about that. Your credit card denies. No, it's not even that. I used to work and I don't even mind. I don't want to throw them under the bus at the same time. I don't mind if I throw them under the bus a little bit because I'm still a little frustrated with them. But this was five years ago, six years ago. OK, I used to work with a company called Drip.

of my marketing, all of my contacts, all of the work that I had done sat in that platform. And we wound up taking on a client that did loans. violated a policy. And for whatever reason, I didn't think after I'd been working with them for all this time that I needed to go look at their best practices to know that they didn't allow loans to be a lead thing through their platform. I didn't get a slap on the wrist y 'all. They shut me down and said, go away. We don't want you. Yeah.

No, they weren't even nice to me, man. No questions. Get drip .com. Don't use them. I'll throw it out straight up because of that, because they mistreated me. And by the way, I built my house on their property and they kicked me out. Yeah. And I didn't get a vote and they didn't give me anything. They locked me out and said, go. They literally said, we don't want your business. Yeah. And they have the right. given them a lot of money. Yeah. And they have the right to do what they want. Right. Yeah.

Also in our world, Stripe is one of those other platforms. so, and you as a medical practice, you probably heard of Stripe too. It's a credit card processing essentially, but it's very online heavy, almost exclusive online. And Stripe is one of those, it's beyond easy to set up. Like I can set up as a personal person, I can set up a Stripe account in like five minutes. I can take your credit card in about five minutes. I wanted to like, that's how amazing it is. I can put it on my website. It's great.

But they are just like, Drip, we didn't like what you did. somebody did a chargeback. We're just going to cancel your account. $50 ,000 that's sitting in that's trying to append, you're not going to get You're not going to get it. It's ours now. It's ours or we're sending it back. Right. And so because we've seen agencies say, we love Stripes the best. And then six months later, hey, have you ever dealt with this before? then.

Like there's a reason why Stripe is wonderful one way and not so wonderful another way. And I think you could say that about anything, because there's always two sides to a coin. There are. I mean, it would be fascinating to me if there was like a anti -Stripe or like, you know, the anti -hero type situation. yeah. Where there was a Stripe that was business friendly first. Yeah. Instead of consumer friendly first. it Dash. Dash is the same as Stripe. There you go.

Anyway, that doesn't mean that I think businesses should be screwing over people. No. But here's one thing I learned by working at Costco. It's always my fault no matter what. yeah. Right. So like, that's not fair. The customer isn't always right. They're just not always right. Sometimes they're liars and thieves. You know what mean?

Now I'm very grateful that we have not run into that, into the marketing space. No. Right. Well, let me, ask you, care owners, how many times have you gotten a negative review that was super unfair that you have no control over and you can't get that review off of your Google business listing and you know, it's that person's problem and you know, they didn't pay their bills.

And you know they came in belligerent. Or you know that they're just not listening. Or you know they really just wanted you to give a prescription to something that would make them feel better that they didn't need. Yeah. yeah. That's a real thing. painkiller. Yeah. Do see what I'm saying? Because when when I did. Is friendly to business? Is that fair to business? Yeah. When I went into an urgent care for my back pain, they had me go through a bunch of questions before they would do it because they want to know if they were going to get sued first. Because they're like, we're not just if you're coming in for pain.

and you're asking for a steroid shot, we're going to resist you. And I get it like more power to you because I'd resist me too if I'm going and asking specifically to help with my pain. Yeah, absolutely. So all of these platforms, if you were building your house on someone else's property, it's OK. You're just vulnerable and you need to know that. think like.

Ignorance and burying your head in the sand about some of these situations isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to be aware of that. So am I telling you not to use these platforms? Absolutely not. What I'm telling you is if your only platform to get leads for your urgent care is Google, you need to really start thinking once I get Google optimized, what's the next thing that I need to do to make sure that I have patients coming through the door? Because let me just tell you what, Google just lost in federal court and they're about to be split up.

I don't even read their in appeals, but they lost their antitrust and they've considered now a monopoly. yeah. OK. And so, yes, they're in appeals, but they still lost. So what's going to happen? Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah. Well, it's weird because Google is so funny to me because Google is a man ultimately is a monopoly of search data. When you're 96 percent of the search volume. Yeah, you're a monopoly. But I think the frustrating side of it, they didn't just do it.

maliciously. Like I think everyone else is kind of sucked at it. I don't disagree with that. Yahoo was not very good. Yahoo spent, look, go to Google's homepage. There's nothing there other than I feel lucky maybe. Yeah, you have the image button, you know, just five buttons. Google a search bar, enter, and then I think it says I feel lucky. And then about

bottom of the bottom. Beautiful. Yeah. That's page. Bare bones. I remember, I don't even think it's a search engine anymore. I haven't been in years, but when I went to Yahoo, it was like a freaking newsroom. It was, I couldn't even concentrate. Yeah. It was your homepage. You know, like it was the worst. Yeah. And MSN was bad about it. still isn't great at it. Right. But it's so funny. If you do a search on Yahoo, the search pages look identical. Actually, Yahoo and Bing, when you get to a search page, like am I on Google?

They've done the right thing and copied what works. anyway, going back to it in these different platforms that you utilize, download a dot CSV file of your customer list. Make sure that you have a way to talk to the people who want to do business with you. Get your first daddy first, first daddy, first, first party data. First daddy. Make sure that you have access to your first party data so that if you're, if, your EMR says, Hey, listen, we, don't like you anymore.

Or they get bored. The MR software gets bought and now and now they're changing models or Google goes through an antitrust lawsuit with the federal court and loses. And now they're in appeals and we don't know what's going to happen. Facebook loses all of its trust. Yeah, these things are real and you have to take you have to take precautions in your own business so that if everything went away, you have your.

$2 to $5 ,000 or $2 $5 ,000 person contact list that you can just send an email letting you know, Hey, we're open. Yeah. Hey, we're here to serve you. Hey, we're here to take care of you. Hey, sports physicals are on a discount right now. Hey, it's flu season. This is what we're offering right now. That's right. Opportunities just to communicate because I mean, yes, you're in urgent care. So there's not like tons of really super cool, fun things happening in an urgent care, but you want to make sure you're in the back of their minds. Like there's a reason why billboards exists.

with very few call to actions. They want you to say, I recognize that and I remember it for the moment I need it. So like the same kind of, like you said, with email and stuff like that is, that is pretty much your first party day because you can take that list and go to any platform and email from it. You can just do it from your Outlook. Don't recommend that. You will blacklist your domain, but you can do it from anywhere and then you can keep it. Like we have a first party list of email addresses that we use to reach out to you guys. Like over the years we've developed.

We can buy lists too. Like when we work at UCA, they give us a list that we can use that one time. Like they're very specific about that. I wish I knew how they track that table. Yeah, right. Exactly. But at the end of the day, keep up with your list because let's say your urgent care decides to change. Well, it's a whole lot easier to hit up 10 ,000 people that know who you are and say, here's the change than brand new people that never heard of you before. That's right. Fun story and then we'll wrap up.

We talked about Facebook Snap. I remember when that happened. I want to say it was like maybe three years ago. this point. whatever that was. No, no, no. This was Facebook. That's right. This was Facebook. Facebook had the issue. But this isn't regarding the Snap, but it happened around the same time. The largest Facebook ad agency in the world is Ad Zombie. was. But they're probably still, I don't know what they're doing now, but I remember what happened is they banned their account.

All ad zombie was spending over a million dollars a day on their platform a day on their platform across all of their accounts that they were working with. And they just said, we're shutting down your business manager. They didn't give a reason. They wouldn't take a phone call with them. Nothing. Their algorithm shut them down. Yeah. But that's not the point. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, I say, I remember because they would put out an update from the CEO. Yeah. Like, this is what's happening now. This is what's happening now. And then it became

We're making a change. That CEO put out a video on YouTube blasting Facebook and saying, we are never going to put our clients in this position again because they were an exclusive Facebook ads agency. And I'm just thinking like that's three hundred sixty five million dollars if you're doing a million dollars a day. Right. Like over years, that's in the billions of dollars. Right. And Facebook didn't care and they didn't even care.

They didn't even care. They didn't even they didn't issue an apology. It took them well over a month to get all the accounts restored because you're talking about hundreds of accounts. But this if they don't if they don't care about ad zombie, they don't care about you. No. OK. And I'm listen. Here we are. Our Google business profile is suspended. Still, it's been like that for almost a check this morning. Still not up.

Okay, good to know. response. So in real time, like they haven't even given us the courtesy to acknowledge that we petitioned for it to be restored. Yeah, we really just submitted the please fix this email. Yeah. And no response. I am in a very fortunate position that I do not rely on Google to build my business. B2B isn't built really on Google. No, it's not. There are certain opportunities there, but at the end of the day, B2B isn't Google heavy. Exactly. So you, though,

You are. You are Google dependent. You have got to download these CSV files and make sure that you hedge against this this kind of random shutdown. I don't think they're being malicious. I just don't think they care. Yeah. Well, because I think they would that couple thousand dollars you spend a month with your software is a drop in a bucket for these big software guys. Right. Like they don't care. And you know, and by the way, when you installed it and you click the I agree to terms and conditions. Right.

There are lots of things in that end user license agreement that basically just says, this is our data, not yours. We can do what we want. And you can't sue us, or you can attempt to at least. It's actually really funny if you ever go read through some of those. Sometimes software companies are funny, and they'll insert little pieces into it to see if you're actually reading it, because nobody does. But yeah, that's real. That's whole thing. We're experiencing currently, this is a push to you guys. Yeah, we're here to help you. Take care of your data first.

Because at end of the day, it is the most important piece to you. That's right. Not to the vendors themselves. Well, listen, don't get scared about it. Just make sure that you do something about it. Put a little insurance in there and download your your customer list and save it to a HIPAA compliant drive. Yes. You know, I do agree. If you save it to Google Drive, Google Drive, you can sign a BAA and make it HIPAA compliant. I do not want you to violate HIPAA. Yeah. OK, do that. But if you just download a name, email and phone number, you're not going to violate.

It shows no elements. doesn't have any history. It is no different than somebody that bought an email list. That's right. So not a big deal if you download a CSV file and just get their name, email, and phone number. That's all you want anyway. Yeah. All right. For the purposes of marketing and having conversations with them. Listen, we hope you have a great week. We need you to leave us a review and we need you to hit that subscribe button. And you guys are hitting subscribe. And you are. We appreciate it. So if you did it, thank you. If you haven't, what's wrong with you?

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