Ep. 188: What Cattle Branding Can Teach Urgent Care About Standing Out

PCMP (00:00)
Hey, what's going on everybody? This is a unique version of Walk-Ins Welcome where we're in podcast or I'm sorry, webinar mode. Just got done launching a webinar. And so if you're watching online, so what's this background? You're not, you guys aren't sitting down at a table. Where's bot? Wait, let me get bought. Yeah, you get bought. And I'll just say, as always, if you look behind us here, when we say that we want to help you get more patients, deliver better care, get repeat visits and scale up, like we actually mean,

we want to do those things and we have it written on our walls. It's kind of huge for us. There's bought the market brought him into the table. He's going to go down below the camera. He'll be all right. He keeps us motivated and in line. He'll smack us around and he makes everybody smile. So today Michael is, is an interesting, I've been digging into brand a lot. Okay. So I've got to name this a scary place to juice brand. Like that's what I've named the podcast episode. ⁓ And here's why. If you own an urgent care clinic,

You at some point have asked the question, especially if you're an independent, hey, why does my competitor get more or less?

patients than I do. What is the driver of that? Like, what's the thought process behind why if all things are equal, we both have amazing locations. We're both spending the same amount on ad spend. We're both, you know, we're delivering excellent care. Like, what's the difference? Brand equity matters. Brand equity matters. Brand equity matters. And so I've been studying this and some as I study, it's funny.

I don't know when you try and buy a car when you figure out the car you want is like the only thing you see on the road is that car. Yeah. Or you're almost afraid to leave the brand because you got used to it. Volkswagen. Why am I still driving like my fifth Volkswagen? Yeah, because you're like, I know what I'm getting. I know what I'm getting. If it's crap, it's crap. At least it's warm in its mind. There's no surprises. Like if I know it's going to do this and I know these mechanics will never touch it. So yeah, I have to find unique mechanics. I've got friends in the industry now that'll do me a solid.

outside of that, they don't want, they don't want to touch my Volkswagen. I don't like Germans. I love my Volkswagen's man. always have. Anyway, your car guy would immediately say that's not the car for you. I always thought, I mean, I know you have Volkswagen's, but you strike me more as the Chevy guy because you always talk about certain Chevys. I do. I get you most excited. I like a good Corvette and Corvette or a Colorado. I love the Colorado. ⁓

All right, let's get back into literally branding. Branding. Here we're talking about brands like a rock. So the first story I want to tell is like hearkening all the way back to where branding actually started in the first place in the Cowboy West. It's a fascinating history, honestly. Yeah. As I'm digging in, one of the guys that I listen to most, Alex Hermosie, I love his podcast. He's a little vulgar, but the guy is just absolutely brilliant. If you want to grow, if you want to just learn how to build your business better, right. He's a good place to go. And so

He's talking about branding. I'm digging in and he comes out and he says, here's how branding started. It used to be that you just had a cow. And like if you walk down the road and you see a cow, you're like, great, there's a cow. Right. But what would happen is a cowboy would brand their emblem, their last name, letter, whatever they would brand it with metal and fire onto this cow. And so you would walk down the road and you would determine based on seeing that

brand on that cow, you would determine some things off of that. Hey, there's Bob's cow. Do I like Bob? Should I take his cow from him? Should I take it to him? Should I keep it? Should I shoot the cow? Should I shoot the cow because Bob pissed me off? Do I love Bob and I should tell everybody about this cow that I found? Yeah, like it. But the regular cow that didn't have a brand on it. Hey, did you see this kind of fired me up a little bit because I'm just so fascinated by this. And the word branding is literally hot metal. Yeah.

into skin. So you have you have cow A. It's still a cow. It's still either beef or milk, right? It does the exact same thing. It moves at you and it chews cud. Right. And then you have second cow cow B that has a brand on it and you have formulated an opinion based on experience with the brand owner. What kind of cow that's going to be. Maybe not the cow. What you want to do with that cow.

And that goes deeper with like cuts to meet where you have Angus. Angus is just a brand. It's a branded grade, right? And our USDA whatever prime like is branding where you have expectations that go along with it. But that's so funny that physical branding is where the phrase came from. So we're just ⁓ it makes me think about makes me think about a commercial of all things, of course.

Do you remember the commercial that Dodge or Ram put out for Super Bowl years ago that had Paul Harvey voice on it? Yes, the American God made a farmer. Yeah. So God made such a good, such a good one. But it's just got a little bit of a yeah, I did too because I because it's such a deep commercial. Go watch it. Yeah. God made a God made a farmer. It's Paul Harvey doing his God made the farmer story. But they show the truck and the farmers out doing their thing. And it's like

It's gut wrenching. One could make the argument that that relaunched Yeah, Because RAM was riding the struggle bus. They have new struggles now, but it did relaunch. trucks are awesome. They're not one of the struggles. They're not the ones like Tundra being recalled every five seconds. OK, well, but that's thing number one. And I was just fascinated by just a simple metal stamp on a cow would bring all of these thoughts to the front of your mind of that is Bob's cow. Bob made me mad.

I didn't have a good experience with Bob. And when I see Bob's stuff, I don't want anything to do with it creates a feeling or Bob is my neighbor. Just think old west right now. Right. Okay. Bob is my neighbor. When I was sick, he brought me food. When he needed something, I was there for him to like, Bob has shown up. Bob has delivered. Bob is awesome. I buy from Bob all the time. I want Bob's cow, not Cal a that has nothing on it. Yeah, I'm going to go. So I'm going to drive the extra minute.

or spend the extra dollar and get Bob's cow. Absolutely fascinated because I had no idea that that's where branding came from. But it makes total sense. It's literally called a brand. So think of cows next time you start your logo. Yeah. But that's the foundation. It's like where in the world did a brand even come from? Like who thought of this? Cowboys, cowboys and cows. Right. Thing number two, ⁓ Michael, you and I were at an event.

Y'all heard me say seven figure agency what feels like a million times. Josh Nelson, you need to come on the podcast mastermind for agencies. That's right. And if you're not part of a mastermind, talk to us. If you're an urgent care, you need to be part of a mastermind for urgent with us. So so ⁓ the urgent the origin of orange juice. All right. This is taking a brand and manipulating it in a way to cause you to be able to do more business when something is wrong. This is taking a brand and leveraging it.

Yeah, this is space to it is a great story because people just assume orange juice was a common thing. Yeah, but it actually was not. Yeah, nobody. Drink juice for breakfast of any kind. Not just that. They just didn't drink it. It was water or wine. Yeah, exactly. Or just a fruit you ate. Technically speaking. That's right. That people would just eat an orange with their breakfast. Yeah. Not not drink it. So what happened in Florida, of all places back? I don't know. I to say either late 1800s or early 19th. I California. I thought it was Florida.

Could be California. could be California. Well, one of those two states. That's your relative. I'll say it's the only two that really produce them. Well, here do a Google. SunKist. SunKist is the one who did this marketing campaign. So wherever SunKist is from is where we're talking about. But wherever they're from, they had overgrown their crops significantly in oranges and they were about to lose money because the oranges were rotting. So their great marketing team and their brilliant minds came up with

juice is orange juice is healthy for you for breakfast. Orange juice is healthy for you. Part of a complete breakfast. Yep. So drinking orange was their slogan. Yeah. If you think back, because you've seen Sunkist's logo where they have, I think it was a Sunkist that has a straw in the orange. so like that was the mind's... ⁓ It's so fascinating to me because all they did was repackage what they had. ⁓ now it's part of our culture where we have an expectation. should drink some orange juice. I'll feel better.

I should do my breakfast with my Cheerios cereal and my piece of you ever stared those part of a complete breakfast and have a picture and it's like five things sitting on the breakfast table. There's only one thing that you absolutely cannot drink juice. That is after you brush your teeth. I don't know. And oranges do not. I do like a good chocolate orange. Okay. Yeah. Chocolate covered.

So that's a new brand. How can we sell more orange candy? Yeah. Let's put chocolate on it. You can do that for anything. Yeah. But the whole point of that is the demand was completely gone and it blew the demand for oranges through the roof just by shifting just a little bit how people consumed your product. Now think about that from an urgent care. How are people consuming your product today and how can you shift it just enough to create demand? I don't have an answer for you, by the

Like, you need to think about that. They're like, waiting. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, from our perspective, there's already a demand for digital marketing. But how can we shift it just enough to where people want to do business with us? And we have done that. And I'm not going to go into it on this podcast, but we have done it. And now I'm not trying to be arrogant. not trying to be, I'm not blowing up any other agencies out there. But we have become the definitive go-to urgent care marketing agents. Yeah. Right. ⁓

And that's just simply because we're running podcasts, webinars, running ads, all these different avenues that just nobody else is doing it this way. Right. Exactly. And we're glad you're here. Yeah. Thinking about the ⁓ repackaging, how Urgent Care sells things. So I feel like Urgent Care has done this in at least one phase. Right. So in my mind, Urgent Care has introduced convenience to health care. That's right.

Because up until urgent care, to me, healthcare has gone through the convenience was a doctor would come to your house. Well, the loss of convenience that would take forever. It couldn't just happen. If they got busy, it might be a day or two. And then we move into like traditional primary care and hospitals and the convenience was I can go somewhere, but you may wait a while or may take an appointment for a while or who knows. As we all know, go to ER and sit for hours and get a big bill.

And so then urgent care brought in convenience and affordability ⁓ and time. like now, as we know, I can get right now I can walk outside, get in my car and drive toward an urgent care. And within 15 minutes, I'm probably seeing a doctor. Like that's what urgent care has solved so far. They created a convenience model for health care. So that's phase one. You guys got that figured out. Now what's going to happen, right?

It's the commonplace. So like that's expected. Where's the next phase of this? Like how do you repackage what you're already doing and make it like, it was also answers this question or frustration that your population has. Yeah, it's going to, I think leveraging AI to deliver better personalized care is going to be the next iteration of that. ⁓ But really there's another iteration that I don't know of yet. I'm fascinated. I want.

I want I don't know why someone that's listening solved this for me. Why can't I go to one doctor and they plug in my social security number and they see my entire health history and I don't have to like get requests everywhere? Like when is that going to happen? Money bud or a body scanner? Just pull airport data. Yeah, full body scans. a full body scanner where they like we can see everything in 30 seconds. Cool.

That's funny. So Michael, what actually is branding? You know, so and then we'll go into it. But when you when you were asking this question earlier before we start an episode, branding to me is the feeling that someone gets when they see, smell, experience, whatever that business is given. Right. It's the feeling because there are certain feeling right now. If if I named off, I'll do it Do it. Go.

Think of the feelings, the initial feelings you get when I say this McDonald's. Settling. Chick-fil-A. It's my pleasure. Taco Bell. No, there's a toilet close by. There's a feeling. There's definitely a feeling there. Jimmy John's. Freaking fast. Exactly. Here's a local one, Nukes. Oh, Nukes. Nukes Q, baby. Let's go. This could be the best white barbecue sauce ever. There you go. And.

Chipotle. I don't have any thoughts on Chipotle. Exactly, because they feel overpriced for what you get. I just don't go. And there's this indifference toward it. Sorry, Chipotle fans. That's how we are around here. no, so you had to do another brand. Let me do one with you. Walmart. Frustration. Shell. Good gas. Charmin. The bear tushy.

Yeah, it's like soft and comfortable. Yeah, like quality. Scott's. That's going to hurt. It's going to Scott's. No, think Scott's I think of Scott's. Well, you could think Scott's Tots off of. But I was thinking every public bathroom. I think it's Scott's 1000, which is the single ply giant thing.

I think there's every your money, but you're just going to slap that dude for as much as a single fly. Well, I just got four times as much as I normally would. So now it's a quad fly. Well, this is the grossest podcast we've ever done. Sorry. but but there's a feeling that goes with it, right? Because even when you were giving your answers, I'll give you my answers. There was a body language feeling happening. Yeah. It's because that's what the brand has done to us. Good or bad. Like the most famous well worth brand is Ocola.

Yeah, they're they're they are the highest brand equity ever in the history of the world. And they're right here in Atlanta, actually just three hours from here. That's right. I used to work for Coca Cola. Yeah. And so you know all that. But I should wear their brand. I've heard that their brand is worth more than the product they have. There's probably no doubt about it. And then they invented Santa Claus. You know, literally. Yeah. You know, one thing that's branding superfasting to me and we'll move past this on.

just picking out random companies is Red Bull. yeah. Red Bull is so fascinating because it's kind of one of the original energy drinks. It does not taste good. It does give you energy, but you know, but everybody thinks to Red Bull, they think of extreme sports or crazy sports or competitions. And they've just, it's almost fascinating because like they're dumping billions into that.

And you know, the energy drink cells aren't supporting all that. They're getting it from everything else, too, that's coming from it. So it's just it's so. my monster energy drink in the same way like they do motocross. yeah. That kind of stuff where you see Red Bull is doing a different extreme. They're doing airplanes flying through or landing on buildings, flying through tunnels and crazy stuff. Oh, and what's what's the energy drink for gamers? Monster, but it's another.

Can't think of it. but like it's, it, no, that's the workout one. That's like the general. prime. Yeah. Prime actually maybe. Prime is, and then you have this other part where it's a terrible product, but the sales go up because the brand didn't bind. So let me ask you a different question, Michael. AFC. Okay. Fast pace. Yeah. Brands. Yep.

Like where where I'm pulling out these big brands for a very specific reason is that even in the urgent care space, I can walk into a fast pace and that fast pace is going to look exactly the same no matter which one I go into. It's part of that brand is is the way you look, feel, taste, touch all the things. Right. Same with an AFC. I know that they have those red colors with the brick buildings. Like you just know what you're going to get. And there's been times on other episodes where I've talked talked about

Part of the brand, I haven't said it this way, but I've said it this way. ⁓ Consistent, predictable, stable, profitable. So this is brand. Are you consistent? Are you predictable? Are you stable? And are you profitable? These four areas are the definition of what people think about when they think of your brand. I'm not mad at McDonald's. I actually like McDonald's. I just don't like their service. So when I say settling,

I mean, like I'm going there because I know I'm going to number one is going to be a number one no matter where I go. It's going to be a Big Mac fries and a Coke. I know that. And so at least if I can't count on anything else, that number one is going to be a number one. Yeah. So they but also know predictably the surface is going to be mediocre at best. Yeah. Right. Chick-fil-A used to be known for their chicken. They made a shift a long, long time ago away from the flavor of their food to their service. Yeah. It's noticeable. Their food is OK. And you know, and some people know that Chick-fil-A invented the food court.

Like so there I didn't know they invented the food court. I that's where they lived. But yeah, so they came up with a restaurant in a mall. OK, that was them. OK. And somebody was a convenience service side of it because I'm shopping. I can get some food. Yes, right. Things that may let me tell you back in the 80s. Chick-fil-A in the mall. Magical. Yeah, right. Magical. It was not go to the skating rink. Ice skating rink. I would then go to the arcade and baby when mama said, let's go to Chick-fil-A. There were no other restaurants I cared about.

So good. All about the feelings. But I can I can taste that memory. Anyway, are you hungry? I don't know. But listeners are hungry. But this is what we're trying to get to. It's like the history of branding a little bit and how when an urgent care you're looking across the street and you may be ⁓ I'll just say Nick's urgent care and then you have an AFC across the street and you wonder why maybe they're getting more traffic.

Well, you have to work diligently, not on just your digital. Yes, you have to pay Google for ads to get foot traffic through the door, but you use your brand to create an experience that's going to keep people coming back and allow you to scale. What is that? yeah. Scale up. Like this is how you scale. Branding is what allows you to scale your clinic. And we work with a handful of AFCs and we always see it in the metrics where they have a slightly easier time getting or

order conversion costs are slightly better because that AFC branding carries it. It makes an actual impact. And it's so funny because the urgent care space is just completely covered. We recognize branding in the urgent care space is extremely hard. ⁓ We joked about on a previous episode, we've joked about it many times where the branding as it sits right now is mostly the red sign or the white sign that says urgent care.

And trying to build that experience beyond that is a challenge for you guys. It really is. But it's coming though, because at some point there will be a moment where your brand has to start standing on its own feet a little bit and it makes everything a little easier. So takeaways. One, the brand matters. It does. There is a time and a place for you to throw money at your clinic. And we want you to do that. And we want to be a part of that, obviously.

You know what? ⁓ Bad branding is going to cause more damage. Like you have to make sure that you're giving people consistent, ⁓ predictable, stable service so that you can be profitable. Yeah. And I think you're right, though, because ⁓ branding, while powerful, can be powerful in a negative way, too, where if you build a reputation in the wrong path, it's super hard to recover. mean, actually, here's a great one. So this actually I saw this news article pop up. I forgot this happened.

But do you remember LL flooring?

Exactly. ⁓ But you know Lumber Liquidators? Yeah. Same thing. Same thing. I didn't know that. So Lumber Liquidator, for those who don't know, Lumber Liquidators is a, I put quotes, post-sale flooring company, but they're just a flooring company. They sell floors. so their big thing is that you get discount floors because they don't have all this giant room ⁓ overhead and all these things. Obviously, I bought stuff from them. It's been fine.

Five, 10 years ago, they're like, we don't want to be known as the cheap people. We want to be known as like premium flooring. So they switched to LL flooring and that didn't work. And now they're bankrupt. They fall from bankruptcy this year. And so it all fell apart because they were trying to shift from a, I'm going to be cheap, I'm going to be premium, but you're still cheap. Like there's a disconnect there. So I started working backwards. like, this is luxury, but I'm walking into

just a bunch of flooring and there's no luxury piece tied to it. The branding wasn't matching. Well, so let's go back to Chick-fil-A for just a second. When they made that shift, if they had lowered the quality standards of their food, flavor and all that, but didn't radically increase their quality of service, they'd be dead. Yeah. Right. They'd just be another McDonald's. Yeah. And I think like in lumber liquidators, they didn't like raise the quality of their product. They just changed the name just to hopefully attract a different

person, but then they alienated their other people. And because I remember I went to get some flooring after Lumberliqua. was like, what's LL flooring? And I go in there like, oh, same people. Okay, is it still cheap here? am I getting a deal anymore? Am I just paying a premium price for the same thing? So yeah, exactly. So I mean, there you go. So brand matters, making sure that you have a plan for your brand. How do you plan for your brand? I think

best way to do this, I think I'm not a brand. We're not a branding agency. We've never pretended to be one. We send that over to people that we think are really good at that kind of stuff. And they're very creative people. Think about how you want your patient to feel when they leave. Yeah. Think about how you want them to experience your business because people will remember that experience and that feeling way longer than they will what you actually did.

Yeah, I can tell you the magic of Chick-fil-A in the 80s, but I can't even tell you what I ordered. No, I have no idea what I ordered. No, I don't even know if chicken nuggets were there yet. You know, I have no idea. You know, it's true, though, because as a patient of an urgent care in the past, I can't tell you why I went to the urgent care, but I can tell you if I would ever want to go back to that certain urgent care. But I couldn't tell you what I what my symptoms were. I could tell you the experience and how I felt going through it, because I even had a scenario where

My wife went to an urgent care and she's a heart patient. it's a challenge to go to an urgent care because they get scared when they look at her, especially when they run heart stuff. Like, you should be dead right now. She's like, no, I'm fine. But we've had some experiences where I will never get like, went there. She may have just been sick with something and we wanted to knock it out. I honestly don't know the details, but the experience was so poor.

Don't want deal with that. I don't want to ever go back. so and but I remember that piece. I don't remember the details. I just remember the feeling I had and I don't want to relive it. ⁓ no, I get that. Absolutely. Well, there you go. Think about the feeling you want them to feel and frame your operation and your brand around that feeling. And I think I think you need to go get ⁓ a branding expert. But I think that's going to make a difference in how you position yourself in the market.

Yeah. Do you want to do you to be a public or you want to be an Aldi? Or do you want to be a Kroger and just deliver to your house and not have any brick and mortar? There you go. Like, know what I mean? There's different different different things for everybody. I want to be Amazon. Just go be Amazon. Go make me a 10,000 year clock in the middle of a hole in the desert. All right. We're way off base now. But anyway, one last question. When you think of Amazon versus Wal-Mart. Yeah. There again. Brand Amazon. Amazon. Cheap.

But not as cheap as it used to be. No, it's not. The convenience is cool. honestly, I have a weird thoughts toward Amazon. I used to love Amazon. And I still go there to find things. But now I'm going there to find things. And I go somewhere else to buy things. It's fascinating. Because we still have a Prime membership. But it gets more more expensive every year. And then I really look at, I need something tomorrow. Amazon Prime it. Right.

If I need something, but I want something nice, I do not go to Amazon to get nice things. I go to Amazon to get things that I know I'm probably going to have to return. There you go. what I get the fact now that Amazon has that little ticker that says this item is returned frequently. Yes. And they're trying to reduce that. All right. Look, brand work on your brand, work on how you want people to feel. And then leave us a review. We want to know how you feel.

How do you feel about us? Yeah, leave us a review. we good brand? Yeah. Like us on our ⁓ YouTube page. That stuff really helps the algorithm. allows us to serve other urgent care clinics, which is what we want to do. And as always, you're making a big impact. Keep making that big impact in your community. We appreciate you listening to us today. And we'll catch you on the next one. See you. See you.