Ep. 226: What Urgent Care Owners Need to Know About Voice AI Right Now

PCMP (00:00)
Hey, what's going on Walkins? Welcome family. We're glad to have you back for another episode with Nick and Michael. As always, we are brought to you by Patient Care Marketing Pros. Michael, what's up, buddy? How are you? Thank you for introducing Patient Care Marketing Pros. Yes, I'm working on it. got called out on that. Janie will appreciate us for saying that because she reminds us when we don't say that. But no, glad to be here. This is actually a fun episode because we're going to be talking about summer slump stuff. Yes. How to fight it because it's real. Last year was weird. We can know that last year summer slump was summer slumpish.

And then it became more like a October, September slump. It was really interesting, but we definitely know that summer's coming. It's already starting to warm up here. was in the eighties the other day, which it felt pretty good. It's been cool lately. Been kind of cool. But, but no. So today we have a interview today with Ira Pasternak. So he's a web for doctors. So if you've been around the urgent care space, you've probably seen Ira. He's been in the game a

He's been in the game since 1999, which you could arguably say he's been in the game since almost the beginning of what urgent care is today. So he's been there for a long time. But while he has had web for doctors for almost all of that, also has something called Achmed growth cohort. He's a lead instructor there. He is all in on the Achmed side of things. That's why we're bringing him today because we are not Achmed experts. We wish we could be, but it's a whole different animal. So we actually

We'll recommend Ira when we have clients that say we want something really special for Akhmet. Well, we have Ira. You should go talk to him. But Ira is so glad to have you on today. Thank you for coming. Join the Walk-Ins Welcome. Ira, welcome to the podcast. We're glad to have you. Say hello to the Walk-Ins Welcome audience and tell us one thing about you that you haven't already told us that nobody else knows.

Ira Pasternack (01:37)
All right. Well, thank you guys for having me. So the one thing that nobody or not too many people know about me is that I had a brief experiment with a comedy career, if you could call it that. I got as far as taking one improv comedy class about 15, 16 years ago, probably.

was a fun experience but found out that while maybe incorporating some comedy into my content and the work I do is something that works, being an actual comedian is a whole other level of difficulty.

PCMP (02:21)
I love that. That is so good. You know what's funny? My wife thought I was funny once, but then we got married. She no longer finds me funny. That ended on that day. I'm actually working with a six year old and she's actually funny, but she's funny. And then she tries to repeat the funny like five times. We're like, no, Addie. No, no. The first time was good enough and she hasn't figured that out yet. So do you tell the punchline or not tell the punchline?

Ira Pasternack (02:27)
Perfect.

PCMP (02:48)
in improv.

Ira Pasternack (02:49)
the in improv you just kind of keep it going.

PCMP (02:52)
Yeah. Well, that was fun. I've got a little stint in improv, but not in comedy and jazz performance. But that's a different lifetime. feels like. Well, look, I want to get into the ocmed. Here's the deal. This podcast exists to help our listeners get more patients, deliver better care, get repeat visits to scale up. Everybody is always nervous when we talk to them. And Ira, I know you deal with this as well. Going into the summer, they're always

Ira Pasternack (02:52)
via

PCMP (03:18)
Our clinics are always like, where can we lean things out or where can we maximize dollars or where do we need to shift? And one of the things that we often talk about, which is why we wanted you here in the first place is, Ahmed, I believe what, how about this? I don't care what I believe. What do you believe about Ahmed and how it impacts, especially going into the summer months.

Ira Pasternack (03:39)
Sure, that's a great question. of course, all of this you have to take with a bit of a grain of salt because the summer months vary depending on market and the opportunities vary depending on market. But in general, a lot of ACHMED opportunity is going to occur during the time when you're going to slow down from your normal urgent care rush. as you kind of get into the spring, you're going to have in many markets, you've got people hiring for the summer.

So you've got pre-employment physicals. And then you've got people in outdoor physical roles over the summer. So you've got more injuries maybe coming from those types of companies. And then as you get into the summer, you've got schools hiring for the fall and staffing up and needing and having annual or pre-employment physicals. So there's a variety of employment related services that in many markets are going to bunch up into the spring and the summer months.

PCMP (04:35)
Yeah, I mean, I think what the biggest thing we can say about Achmed, doesn't have to be seasonal. It can happen any time of the year. But the best time, in my opinion, to get started is when things slow down. One, you're going to get the impact and it's going to carry you. And then two, it's something that you can build and sustain. Well, because I think a lot of urgent cares miss that Achmed is not just, let me just start doing some physicals. And that's Achmed. It's so much like you just mentioned, so much more than that.

It takes a whole process for it. It's not just, I'm just going to add a service. It'll be fine. It doesn't work out. And then as we know in this industry, because we talked to lot of urgent cares, summer is the time to take on that new project you've been kind of back burning for a while because you do have a little more capacity to do so. While you may say, I'm getting as much patient or volume, true, but you can also improve things and adding Achmed effectively, not just for the heck of it.

will actually make an impact. like I said, I think summer is that opportunity. And that's why we're bringing the episode right now, because right before summer hits, if they've been thinking about it, this might be the reason to go do it.

Ira Pasternack (05:40)
Yep, well, you just set me up as perfectly as you could there to talk a little bit about the Achmed Growth Cohort, which is our training program. It's an eight week program and the next cohort we specifically designed for the summer months. It starts on June 3rd. And again, that's specifically because we know that a lot of urgent care practices do have some slowdown during that time.

Whether you're talking about the people on the operations or management side or on the clinical side, that's a good time for upskilling and adding future opportunities. so learning about Achmed on the growth side, the business side, the cohort is designed perfectly to, again, get you up to speed during those summer months.

At the same time, give you, it's not just a theoretical course, it's a practical course where throughout it we're giving you leads for local employers. You identify the employer, we'll give you the contact information for likely decision makers so that you've got literal leads coming as part of the course to practice what you're learning and to get better at the outreach that we're teaching you, which, now I'm getting a little ahead of myself, I haven't really...

It's really tells you about the course, but that's one of the nice things about it is it is a very practical.

way to learn new skills.

PCMP (07:04)
Well, you call it a cohort. And typically speaking, when I hear something like that, there's webinars, there's classes, but a cohort is both we're going to learn and do, right? You almost could call it a workshop, right? I think a workshop is putting things into practice. I think a cohort is let's learn it and then let's do it. And everything is happening at the same time. So I think I wrote from an expectation setting level, if it's an eight week course,

Ira Pasternack (07:06)
Mm-hmm.

PCMP (07:31)
Is it at the end of eight weeks where we're going to start seeing progress here?

Ira Pasternack (07:35)
No, there's going to be actionable things you're going to see after the first week, in fact. Basically, there's the flow of each week is that we'll start in the one exception on week one is that we don't have a there isn't exactly a week zero that everyone's going to be on track with. So you won't have had homework necessarily leading up to the first week. But

Every week there's essentially going to be a homework assignment and we'll start the following week with a discussion of that assignment. So that that will involve researching opportunities but also reaching out to those opportunities in your community and then reporting back to the group and learning from that experience, learning from everyone else. From there, after that recap, we go into the new week's lesson and teach about a specific industry.

and how to communicate with and sell Achmed services to that industry. After an overview, we get into some messaging, and that's a very interactive part of the course, where each week, everyone will kind of have a chance to practice their version of the questions and the kind of way that you want to communicate with people in that niche, whether it's general construction contractors or

subcontractors like electricians, transportation companies, manufacturing companies, schools, other municipalities. We cover essentially a different industry or group of industries each week and teach you kind of the ins and outs of communicating with that. And again, at the end, you get an opportunity to identify accounts you'd like to go after and we'll help you get a jumpstart by handing you contact information for some of those.

PCMP (09:17)
That's good. Very practical, very hands on. But I could imagine if I were a clinic owner, I'm thinking that's a time investment. I want to make sure that if I'm going to commit to eight weeks, I'm going to get the most value extracted out of this as I possibly can. But maybe it's not the clinician that you're looking for. Who is the ideal person? Is it the marketing director? Is it the front desk? Is it

a dedicated salesperson that they're going to have to hire? it the physician themselves? Who are we looking at to bring into this course?

Ira Pasternack (09:48)
The great question there, we have not necessarily had physicians in this course, although it certainly could be relevant to them, especially if they're an owner physician that's taking on more of a growth role. we've had everyone from dedicated sales reps to sales managers to the owner of a 35 location.

Urgent Care brand along with his sales team, where it was in our first course. so it really, and then it can also be someone, anyone who's just taking an active role in growing the practice. So that could be an operations or office manager, or in some practices we've seen even there's a medical assistant or an x-ray tech who's

wants to take on more responsibility and kind of likes Achmed and they end up in that kind of growth role. So it's not, it doesn't have to be someone spending 40 hours a week selling Achmed, but it's got to be someone spending at least a half a day a week focused on outreach beyond just kind of existing account management, which is likely going to be kind of a balance to that outreach for some of those smaller practices.

PCMP (11:04)
think one of the things that people would like to know is what are, what are the wins? What, does winning look like in this course? Is it, is it landing a company and a contract? it, is it having an SOP outlined that you can put into practice? Help us to find that and be awesome if you can share a success story.

Ira Pasternack (11:23)
Sure. So a win is going to depend on the exact practice, because we're going to help assess where you are to start and then help you get where you want to go. So a win is defining where you want to go and taking definitive steps to getting there in a very general sense.

the I guess more specifically a win will be and I have to give a caveat this in that the the first time around this is our second public cohort. We had one initial group we then tried to kind of cram in a second group this winter with that out enough time to

to promote it, but we ended up with one particular group that we kind of did a private version of this for. And so this is our second public group. And it's the first time where we're including those leads. So the first time around did stay a little bit too theoretical.

The wins, I would say, are that everyone in the class felt like they got something out of it and had kind good things to say at exit interviews. We weren't necessarily measuring things as much as we should have been and therefore are this coming time around. So the wins this time around are more likely are going to be starting with building a pipeline.

having a definitive list of opportunities that you didn't have at the beginning of the eight weeks. Eight weeks is a fairly short time for a typical occupational medicine sales cycle. So you may not necessarily get, if you're starting, the more you're starting from scratch, the harder it will be to make progress. But if you have existing clients, we're gonna give you ways to further conversations with them.

and to uncover new opportunities that you might not have known to go after with some of those existing clients or people who are in your pipeline or people who have come into your urgent care for a couple injury care visits and you haven't followed up with because you didn't know how to follow up with them. So again.

Building that pipeline, potentially getting new customers or growing existing accounts. But really, we're going to work. Part of the course is that you get two one-on-one sessions per organization so that we early on can figure out where you do want to go on a one-on-one basis. And then towards the end of the course, we have a recap to make sure you've gotten there and help make sure that you have a plan in place to take what you've learned and build on it going forward.

PCMP (13:52)
You know, you mentioned a little bit about filling the funnel and all those different things. which speaks our language. We all understand the sales process, the sales cycle in the world. And I think that's something mindset wise, an urgent care clinic will struggle with when it comes to Achmed because, know, in urgent care world, we put out ads, we have a patient show up and then they leave and it's all happening within an hour. know, that's like the speed of a patient. But in Achmed,

It's much different. As you said, like you got to have to like build out your system a little bit. What is like the true expectation of a cell cycle with a potential Ocmid customer for an urgent care? Like if I started May 1st pursuing this potential Ocmid employer or whatever, how, what's the realistic expectation? Is it going to take a month, two months, three months, six months or whatever to get them to become that repeat patient or set of patients?

client? What's the reality? Because I know for some, because like, as we know, in way we all operate, if it doesn't happen within a month or two, I'm getting tired, and I don't want to do this anymore. I spent all this time, it's not working. It may be working, but you haven't given enough time to cook. what is that? What kind of mindset does an urgent care clinic need to really have? Because even if they take your course and do all the right things,

not necessarily meaning like even giving them leads and everything. It may not mean they're closing those deals in eight weeks. It may take more time and they can't be discouraged and say, well, I'll get back to it whenever they decide to respond to me. You know, like there's because you even talked about spending that half hour, hour a week can make an impact. We even tell people like spending one hour a day on sales activities can make all the difference in your business. But I just what is the true expectation that urgent care really should have?

Ira Pasternack (15:41)
Sure. So I think it's kind of in proportion with the size of the opportunity, that the bigger the opportunity, the longer it can take to get a foot in the door and to turn it into something. That said, once you do get a foot in the door, you're not going to get the full opportunity either. So it may take weeks or months to kind of get that first meeting. And when you get that first meeting, if it's with a

25 person electrical contractor, maybe it will close that deal right away. If it's with a general contractor on a billion dollar commercial construction project, you are not going to get by any means the entire deal right away, but you may be able to get added to their list of after hours injury care options. Maybe they use the local

a pure Ocmend department that's open more business hours, nine to five, and they need someone for weekends and evenings that is not the emergency room. So being that backup, getting a foot in the door, providing great service, and then building the account over time is kind of part of the game there. But to answer that in a different way, we had one of those large construction projects that we were kind of going, that we were

pursuing for a client where we had a telemarketing project going on. Now that's something that goes way beyond the cohort, but on a limited basis, we'll actually do outreach for clients. And we had a situation where we started calling someone in September and it took two or three calls to get to the first person who basically had it. We had a conversation with it's all documented in the CRM. They gave us the name of the decision maker.

It then took from late September until mid-January to actually get that person to pick up the phone. It was something like 17 dials, or maybe it was a combination of voicemails and emails sent without any response before finally the phone got picked up. In that interim, someone else from the practice, one of the owners, had reached out to that original person.

coincidentally, and we're not sure if that had anything to do with the fact that the second time we reached that original person, but from a different medium, the contact they had given us actually picked up the phone. But anyway, what was that? Four months later, four and a half months after the first call, we actually got them to pick up a phone, and it was probably a month later when a meeting happened. And that now is still in discussions. think, again, they're in a panel state where I think they got added to the

injury panel, so they're one of the four providers that gets recommended. And now the trick is, is becoming the primary provider and or becoming the person that does all the respirator fit physicals or some of the other pre-employment needs. And again, it comes down to starting that relationship and building it over time.

PCMP (18:40)
B2B is a completely different animal. We're used to our listeners, us doing this kind of work, you through Web4Doctors, marketing and urgent care. We're gonna run ads, we're gonna do SEO. There may be some meta ads in there too to augment. But, Ahmed marketing is not the same as urgent care marketing, even though the service is being delivered through the urgent care.

Give me some of the separators there. What is the what is it? You don't have to give me all of the key strategies, but what is a key strategy?

Ira Pasternack (19:10)
Well, one of the differentiators for going to get to the strategy is that you really have multiple customers or patient, you've got the patient, but you've got the decision maker at the company. So you've got two different people to communicate with and you've got various nuance of that communication.

I kind of got off topic there because you sparked that idea that then your question was about strategy. you ask me that question again about the

PCMP (19:33)
It's okay.

So

there's a difference in urgent care marketing versus AACMED marketing. And I know B2B marketing, which is what AACMED marketing is, business to business, is a different strategy. You don't have to give me all the strategies, but what is one strategy that you'll put into place that is successful?

Ira Pasternack (19:55)
Sure. So being there where your customers are, and again, the customers are rarely the end patient. mean, sometimes in an employee choice state, you want to be advertising to the employees because that's going to help get the injury care, although that's really not necessarily a difference between worker injury and regular advertising for injury cares.

The with Ahmed though, it's not just about people searching Google. It's about being literally in the rooms where they are. So going to Chamber of Commerce events, going to local shirms, society, human resource management or local safety organizations, local chapters, especially in big cities of the various construction associations have local chapters that can be great rooms to be in.

And on the digital side, it's actually, Google is finally catching up and you're more likely than ever to have someone just Googling an Achmed service that they might need. But more importantly, having a strong presence on LinkedIn is really the place where someone's gonna go to check up on you once you've opened the door and they're considering you, having a strong LinkedIn presence is gonna be really important in the Achmed.

PCMP (21:11)
Well, I mean, what you're describing is like where you're doing like your job interview, I got to make sure if they're going to look me up, I look good in all facets and LinkedIn is the professional way to look good on social media. But you know what you were touching on though, being in the room with the people where it's networking, right? Like it's just networking 101. I know for some like I don't network, I don't have time for that. If you have intentional time you do.

Uh, because a couple of meetings and that's the other part too, repeating yourself to those meetings, showing up one time to a chamber lunch once a month won't do a thing for you. I've been in the chain. I was in the chain world for like a decade and I saw those people and guess what? I never saw them again because they didn't get anything out of it. It's like, yeah, you got to commit. Um, and I think some people miss that. Some people may think, if I just sponsored this one event and this had my logo showing up in the background, it'll be enough. No.

People want to have that relationship side. Are you a real person? Do you care about what we're doing and kind of build off of that? But no, it's true. there's so much, there's layers to it. And there's a reason why we've told other people, probably need a salesperson dedicated to this if you're really committed because their entire job will be shaking hands, talking to people, building relationships. And when the moment's right, opportunity shows up because you've been doing all the right things. But yeah, I totally get that because that's...

I mean, that's how we built this business was showing up in all the right places. You know, Ira, a unique differentiator here, maybe even a thought process that I think about is as an an urgent care, the patient is your customer. As an urgent care providing Ocmid, the patient is your consumer. The business is your customer. It's like Coca-Cola. You can't go to Coca-Cola, maybe in Atlanta if you're on a tour. But outside of that, you can't go to Coca-Cola and buy a Coke.

They don't sell you a Coke. They sell grocery stores. They sell supermarkets. sell distributors. Yeah. They're, yeah. They sell to distributors. They don't sell to us, the consumer. They, we're not their customer. We're their consumer. And I think that's a unique thought process break because if you treat urgent care and Ocmid the same, you're going to fail.

Ira Pasternack (23:09)
Mm-hmm.

Now, at the same time, the patient is, they think they're not paying necessarily, but they feel like the customer, they can still give you a review. So you have to still treat them as the customer in that respect. And then just to complicate things more, again, depending on the state you're in, you may have the insurance broker having a much more active role in the process than you would on the private insurance side. I mean, obviously the private insurance,

PCMP (23:28)
Yeah.

Ira Pasternack (23:46)
is still the payer in many cases, but they're not necessarily part of the decision-making process, at least as proactively as you see on the workers' comps.

PCMP (23:57)
Well, Coca-Cola still has to deliver the same great tasting experience 100 % of the time, no matter who that person buys that Coca-Cola from. So I agree with you in the fact that if you're going to deliver, you have to treat them like a million bucks, no matter if they're your consumer or your customer. do agree with that. Yeah. The patient care itself can't change. How the patient showed up at your door and paid you, that's a different animal.

And there's a, I know you go through this through your cohort because you're billing differently. There's a, there's a whole different world into this. You made a point, Michael, and I want to tie all this together before we start talking about how people can get involved in it. Okay. You talked about the chamber of commerce. All right. And this is, this is for the listener, but I'm bringing everybody in. Right. So at the chamber of commerce, you have the people that show up, give it a, give it a try and then disappear.

And then you also have the same eight people that show up to every single freaking thing and you can't get away from them. Yeah. Who's winning. Neither. no, think the people that show up to everything, every ribbon cutting, every like they're at everything are the ones typically, unless they're a real estate agent. ⁓

Ira Pasternack (25:08)
anything

PCMP (25:10)
The reason why I said neither, because the ones that show up every single time, they've lost their intentionality. It's more like a breakfast club to them. Well, you totally destroyed my point. It was going to be It's Ira, we're done here. Michael cooked it. ⁓

Ira Pasternack (25:23)
The well it's the it really you have to find

the right group and and and you do want to find a group and stick with it. But not but you don't want to stick with it just to stick with it just because it's your buddies you want to make sure you're finding something where you're being productive and it doesn't necessarily have to be that weekly just kind of general networking meeting it might be the quarterly barbeque it might be like a quarter I know like

One group that one of my clients was looking at, they've got a talk every month, but then once a quarter, they have more of kind of like a happy hour social event. And so some people, their style might be to go to the one that the talks, other people might want to go to the social events and kind of showing up with someone on your team is also helpful there too. finding the right fit and then being a part of the community, getting involved, being a volunteer and.

and actually getting involved in some of those groups. One other trick there is that if you've got a great customer, ask them what groups they go to. ⁓ if they're active, then you've got an introduction automatically to the other people in that group that might be your customers.

PCMP (26:22)
Yep. that's good.

Just to clarify my response on the chamber stuff that's right here. All right. So like I was one of those people that showed up all the time where I was going to a chamber event two or three times a week doing all the things. And that became like a group of friends per se that went to events. What I learned though, after about one to two years of doing this, you start seeing the same faces. You see new faces in January and they disappear and all the things. But what it became, I think, is that everybody kind of knew who I was and knew what I did.

So then my goal became I need to meet three to four new people at each event. Because if I just sit there and talk to the same people that know what I do, that's been established and that will pay off later. But if I'm not introducing myself and putting myself out there to find these new people, it starts to hurt because what happens, this is what I learned, you have all those established relationships, you go find that new person in the event and then the established relationship will also introduce you and say how cool you are, great you are. And it's like,

instant rapport being built with this new stranger. And so it's just, it's a, it's a combination, but I just, but I do recognize some people to just show up. They are like, do you have a job? But at the end of the day, the, the, the whole point I was attempting at anyway, that was totally crushed. And my dreams with it was simply that if you think as an urgent care, maybe an independent location that you're not going to be able to compete with a hundred other urgent cares in the location.

that you market in, that's just not accurate because most of them are going to start but never finish. Yes. And so if you stick to it, we're talking about an eight week course, Ira, which I want you to start talking about now, but we're talking about an eight week course to stick through that entire course and to put those things into practice, setting you up for long-term success while everybody else is just kind of dabbling in it. Yeah.

Ira Pasternack (28:15)
Yeah. I'll get to the course there. Just one other second point about what other people are doing. There can be three other urgent cares in your market doing Ahmed in a hospital department and a big national brand. And there's still a corner for you to carve out, whether it's geographically or a certain service or type of business you're good at. We recently talked to one of the larger, relatively larger multi-state urgent care brands.

And what they're really going after is a very thin slice of the opportunity based on what they know they can get good at and they can scale. And it may not even be the exact same because they're in different states. There may be slightly different flavors from state to state. But they have their very specific goal within Achmed, which leaves a whole...

of opportunity available for not just the pueroc meds but for smaller independent urgent cares that can be more nimble and flexible than they can be as a larger national brand or regional.

PCMP (29:18)
Good. All right. So the cohort starts in June, and you've put together a landing page just for the patient care marketing pros and, and walk-ins welcome audience. Thank you for that. We're going to drop that in the show notes so that you can get $500 off the cohort. So that's a special discount that Ira and his team is offering to you.

Ira Pasternack (29:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

PCMP (29:41)
And we want to encourage you, if you're exploring OkMed as part of your clinic strategy, especially going into the summer months, take advantage of the $500 discount, find an opportunity to put the right person in this and let's get this built for your clinic. Yes. Anything else I need to add there or you want to add there Ira?

Ira Pasternack (29:57)
Well, I don't know exactly what day this is going to come out, but if it's before the 20th of May, we're doing an overview of the cohort on a LinkedIn Live and or you can just register from that landing page that you just shared. If you're watching this after the 20th, can get the recording will be available there of that overview. And then we also have a sample lesson.

which is again a recording, you don't get the interactive nature of the course, but you get the general flow of the kind of material that we teach using healthcare as an audience. And that ranges from skilled nursing facilities, dentists, a few other subsets within healthcare that we cover there.

But the bottom line is that we kind of use that healthcare as an example to teach, to show the type of teaching we do in the class. And yeah, you can get to that simple lesson from the link which will be in those show notes.

PCMP (31:00)
I love it. All right. Well, let's have some fun real quick before we take us out. We'll drop all the links in the show notes for you to get to, but let's go through our, our fire around. Michael, I'll take one. You take one. I'll take one. And remember Ira, just whatever's off the top of your head. Okay. Here we go. What's one habit that has made the biggest impact on your success?

Ira Pasternack (31:14)
All

listening to audiobooks and educational stuff on YouTube.

PCMP (31:24)
Favorite one.

Ira Pasternack (31:25)
Favorite one lately is the marketing against the grain podcast from HubSpot, which I don't actually use their products, but that's the best AI slash business podcast out there.

PCMP (31:35)
The only correct answer to that was walk-ins. Welcome. We'll move on. We'll move on. Michael. That's funny. The setup was there. All right. What's a book that every entrepreneur should be reading or should have read?

Ira Pasternack (31:38)
haha.

who not how?

PCMP (31:49)
That's so good. I do agree with that. That is a good one. All right. What's one thing they should start doing this week?

Ira Pasternack (31:55)
One thing they should start doing this week is learning more about how they can grow their Achmed revenue for their urgent care practice.

PCMP (32:03)
See now he laid himself up. There you go. All right. All right.

What's the best business advice you've ever received?

Ira Pasternack (32:10)
The best business advice I've ever received is...

Don't be afraid of lawyers and a contract just has to be something that makes it that both people agree to.

PCMP (32:22)
that. Yeah, I really did. had a recess. say, we're tired of lawyers. Yeah, we're tired of lawyers right now. sorry, attorneys, but you're making us itch right now. But there have been some things that have come up in the past eight months or so where kind of appreciated the attorney step in because it made things a lot smoother and cleaner on the other side for everybody. And there was no questions, which was good. But I agree with that. All right. So what's when it comes to building a business, what's the number one thing that people tend to underestimate?

that's not a one word answer. Yeah, I do agree with that. You rise to the level of your systems or you die by them. right, coffee or any energy drinks? Coffee. Are you a you like the mornings or evenings?

Ira Pasternack (32:51)
how important systems are.

coffee.

I've changed. I used to be a night owl. I now have become a wake up at 5 a.m. kind of guy.

PCMP (33:10)
You're an early bird now. All right, last one. If you could give every urgent care owner one sentence of advice, what would it be?

Ira Pasternack (33:16)
Get creative and keep at it.

PCMP (33:19)
I love that. That's good. You know, Ira, I recently, came back from a Savannah bananas game and it is the way they have approached baseball, from a, I hate to say a boring game. That's not really what I mean by it, but, but a very, very traditional way of doing things and flipping it completely on its head and what it's turned into because of that. I mean, you want to talk about an industry, right? For doing that urgent care. Yeah.

Ira Pasternack (33:40)
Mm-hmm.

PCMP (33:45)
You know, you could take it and you could flip the model on its head. And we've seen some of that. Yeah. And we've seen it. I like that you said creativity. It's immediately what brought to my mind. Ira, thank you for coming on the podcast today. Man, we love having you on here. This is the second time you've been on with us. We've been friends for years now. like to actually bring you and Webb for Doctors up on teaching moments on how your competitor is not your competitor. No. You can be friends with people that are in the same industry with you. You can learn from each other.

You can refer to each other and you've been a good friend to us. I hope you feel the same way. Ira, thanks for coming on the podcast, brother. We appreciate you,

Ira Pasternack (34:17)
Absolutely.

Thanks guys for having me and I'd love to come back anytime.

PCMP (34:23)
We'll do it again soon, Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.