The DPC NP
The DPC NP Podcast is a biweekly audio program that offers valuable insights and firsthand experiences pertaining to the management of a Direct Primary Care clinic owned by nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Esteemed guests will articulate and elucidate their individual journeys in navigating the complexities inherent in establishing and operating a Direct Primary Care practice.
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aprice@faithfamilymedical.com
The DPC NP
Your DPC Dream Job Awaits: Insights from a Successful Practice Builder Monica McKitterick, APRN
Monica McKittrick returns to the podcast with a wealth of insights from her remarkable transformation from hands-on nurse practitioner to CEO of a thriving Direct Primary Care practice with seven providers across three locations. Her journey offers a roadmap for anyone considering the entrepreneurial path in healthcare.
When Monica transitioned away from patient care, she worried her 350 patients might leave. Remarkably, she lost only two. This testament to relationship-building reveals how thoughtful transitions can maintain patient trust while allowing provider growth. Now enjoying true freedom—including a recent two-and-a-half week vacation where "no one cared" she was gone—Monica demonstrates that building a self-sufficient practice is achievable but requires intentional systems and leadership.
The challenges of marketing DPC practices cannot be overstated. As Monica explains, "Nurse practitioners are not natural marketers" and the unique nature of healthcare means patients need to both know you exist AND need your services at precisely the right moment. Her experiences expanding to multiple locations reveal critical insights about community integration, geographic challenges, and why having a marketing strategy is essential. The realization that "success to me is not 10 clinics" but rather freedom to enjoy life while making an impact led Monica to create resources for other providers.
Her upcoming book "DPC: Dream Job or Total Disaster" (available August 4th) offers a crucial roadmap for determining whether DPC ownership aligns with your personality and goals. Rather than a technical how-to guide, it helps providers make the fundamental decision about whether to pursue DPC at all. Coupled with her "DPC Launch Kit" course, these resources reflect Monica's mission to help the right providers succeed in this model, ultimately expanding access to patient-centered care.
Connect with Monica at the DPC Launchpad conference in February and explore her resources at DPCformula.com to discover if direct primary care entrepreneurship is your calling or a path better left unexplored.
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Welcome to season two of the DPCNP podcast. I'm Amanda Price and I'm thrilled to be back, bringing you even more insights, strategies and success stories from nurse practitioners and physician assistants leading the way in direct primary care. This season, we'll dive deeper into real-world experiences, innovative practice models and the latest updates in the DPC movement. Whether you're just exploring DPC or already running your own practice, this podcast is here to support and inspire you. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to the DPC NP. I'm Amanda, and we have Monica McKittrick back in the house today. I'm so excited to talk to her because she has a book coming out that you're going to want to hear about. She also has an online course available for getting started in your DPC clinic, and so she's got a lot of tips and tricks that she wants to share with y'all today, so make sure you listen up, monica. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me, Amanda. It's always good to spend time with you.
Speaker 2:Well, I feel the same way, my friend Right. I can't wait to see what you look like in person at the DPC Launchpad in February Boom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll be there for sure. And in case you missed it, I'm a giant. I am over six foot tall and a lot of people don't realize that when they see me on Zoom or something and then they meet me in real life, they're like holy crap, you're a giant and I am, I am, I am as well.
Speaker 2:Wow, that has its benefits.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you know when I walk in a room.
Speaker 2:But then also you could have hunchback because you have to like, look down at the rest of us.
Speaker 3:It's true, but I'm used to it. It's what I've done my whole life. I was five, 10 when I was 10 years old.
Speaker 2:So oh, bless you. So were you an amazing basketball player. Volleyball, what was it?
Speaker 3:I played basketball and softball in high school and then I played rugby in college, so tackle you if I have to.
Speaker 2:So you're six foot and you're like massive strength, so don't ever let me get on your bad side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, don't, don't get on my bad side, I'll take you down. No, I've only got one.
Speaker 2:Surely there's nobody out there that has ever gotten on your bad side.
Speaker 3:No, never, never. All right, we digress, we do.
Speaker 2:We digress let's get let's get really to the real stuff.
Speaker 2:So for those of you that have not listened to Monica's previous podcast interview. Y'all need to go back and listen to that one. I think she was early on when I first started this podcast. She I probably interviewed her like maybe third or fourth person, so you need to go back and listen to her backstory how she started her DPC clinic and everything, because now she does not see patients, she is just the CEO of Impact Family Wellness. So I want to find out how is that going? What has it been like transitioning to a non-provider to overseeing all of your providers? Tell us all the things about that, because that is where I want to be in my future Girl.
Speaker 3:It's been life changing, and if you told me 10 years ago that I would not be seeing patients and would be happy, I would be like no, that's not real life. And I was a little concerned about that, honestly, when I stepped out of the patient care side, because I've been a nurse practitioner for 17 years and so the idea of not taking care of patients was a little frightening. But what I realized is the part of healthcare that I really love is relationships, and I still get to build those. So now I'm just on the other side where I'm doing the marketing and the community development and that sort of thing. So life is much different. My clinic can run without me.
Speaker 3:I left for two and a half weeks last month and I went across the Pacific ocean and no one cared. It was the best thing ever to come back and there were no fires, there were no issues. My staff killed it. It took a lot of work to get there, don't get me wrong, but it's really great to know that I can legitimately go on vacation and not check my email and no one, no one cares. And so I feel like it's every business owner's dream to get to that point, and so I feel like I've accomplished this amazing feat, which is awesome, and now I just get to live it every day.
Speaker 3:So most of my days now are spent, you know, dealing with the stuff on the back end so something breaks or there's a question. But my ops manager and my staff really they manage all of the day-to-day stuff. My job is really just the big decisions, like are we going to raise our prices? How are we going to raise our prices? What are we going to raise our prices? What are we going to do for marketing? Are we going to change our ways? What are we going to do? And it's awesome, I love it, and it's great, and you're going to be there soon, amanda.
Speaker 2:Yes, not soon enough, I'm afraid. How many nurse practitioners, then, do you have working for you, and how many patients do they have? And what did it look like to turn over your patients to another provider?
Speaker 3:Yeah, those are all great questions. So I currently have seven full-time nurse practitioners that work for me. They have patient numbers that range from a hundred up to a little over 400, depending on where they are. Most of them are in the like mid 300 range, but we're building them. Our goal is to get them all to around 400.
Speaker 3:I cannot wait for the day that the only way to get to become a patient at my office is if somebody dies. I'm waiting for it, Like I'm ready for that day. But you know we've. We've got capacity to grow a bit more. So we have three clinic locations and if you're thinking about opening in a second, talk to me before you do it, Just saying like it's not as easy as you think. It is, Um, and it's because of the marketing side of it, but that's another story. The other question you asked was how it was to get rid of my patients. I had 350 patients when I stepped out of patient care and I was a little concerned that some of them would leave because they didn't get me anymore and I lost two, two patients.
Speaker 2:What made them not pissed at you and what made, what gave them the confidence that the next provider was gonna be just as good as you.
Speaker 3:Sure, that's that was my biggest concern. Right, like what if half these people are like, well, if Monica's not here, I'm out. And the thing is, we have such ingrained values in our clinic and most of my patients knew at least some of the other providers, cause they'd either talk to them when I was on vacation or when I was out, but they knew that they were still going to get the same level of care. And so, yes, were they sad that I left. Of course I got lots of notes of I don't want you to leave, and I was like I understand you don't want me to leave, but this is a service that people want and need and I cannot continue to give you exceptional care and grow this practice, so I have to give up one or the other and I'm not willing to not continue to offer this service to more and more people in our community that need it.
Speaker 3:And so they understood, they all got an email and then they all basically got assigned to a new provider. There were a couple that I knew were going to be sticklers and so I gave them a choice, but for the most part they all just got transitioned and it went seamlessly. We let them know in January and then I officially stepped out in March and there was no, no kickback. No, like I'm angry. So it actually went much better than I thought. So just keep in mind, your patients like you as much as you like them, and so I had great relationships with them and they were willing. They saw my passion and they knew what I was going to do and they weren't going to try to stop me.
Speaker 2:Did you have to hire a new nurse practitioner to cover all those patients, or did you already have enough nurse practitioners to spread them out?
Speaker 3:I did hire another. But it kind of worked out because I had a student who worked with me for nine months while she was doing her clinical rotations and she's one of the most phenomenal people I've ever met. Like I've had a lot of students and she was the best student I've ever had because she came from family medicine as a nurse, and so I told her from day one I was like I am going to give you a job when I can. And then she was graduating and I was like, well, crap, I don't have a job for her. And so it kind of just worked out the timing where I could transition to the new role and then bring her on. And so a lot of my patients went to her and they'd been working with her for nine months so they knew who she was. So it was kind of the perfect storm, honestly, where I had the right person and it was the right timing. And so, yes, I did hire someone else to take my spot.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, but it was somebody that they knew. So if somebody is out there thinking about doing the same thing and passing their patient panel on to a new person that the patients don't know anything about that provider, that could be a little bit more of a challenging situation than what you went through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say you definitely need to give them some transition time, and my transition time was built in because she had been there for so long, and so, yes, I think, if you're going to do that transition, you give them a chance to meet said person before just sending them an email like, hey, so here's your new person. I do think that that was very helpful, and so I would definitely recommend that, do you?
Speaker 2:find that turning over a brand new nurse practitioner to a full panel of patients that are used to a very seasoned nurse practitioner is a little challenging, because she has to come to you and ask what should I do about this? What should I do about that? Or did she just naturally have this gift of knowing how to treat everything?
Speaker 3:So it was definitely a transition. She was a new grad. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met, honestly, and she's still my employee to this day and she's phenomenal and I adore her. But she definitely had some questions. But we I also was putting her in a clinic that had three other nurse practitioners in it who also had experience, so she had somebody who was still there boots on the ground with her so she wasn't just thrown to the wolves by herself and she has my cell phone number and I know all of her patients really well, and so we had weekly meetings for the first few months just to be like hey, what questions do you have? How can you do this?
Speaker 3:And also, I think patients really appreciate it when a provider admits their limit, right. So when Bethany would see a patient and she would be like you know I'm not really sure I'm going to go over this with Monica they find that to be very helpful and respectful and then they they earn her, she earns their respect as well. And so I think it's just a transition time. I think it does have to be the right person. Obviously, being a new grad, you don't just want to be in a clinic by themselves. So if you're going to take your 400 patients and throw it over to a new person and you're going to leave the office, it should not be a new grad by themselves at least not in my opinion. But you know the right person the right time, I guess. But yeah, there definitely was a bit of a barrier there, but we got through it and she did great and the patients still love her to this day. Oh that's great.
Speaker 2:So you're doing most of the marketing. Oh, actually, I want to go back to. You said talk to me if you're thinking about opening up a second practice. Well, I am thinking about opening up a second practice in Arkansas. So not only is it a second practice, it's in a whole nother state where I have to get licensed in. So what were you going to say about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when I first decided to open my second clinic, I was like, oh, this is easy, right, it's not hard to find a space and fill it right. And I found a provider to fill it, and so we had this bright idea we were going to open a new clinic every year for the next 10 years, and then we were gonna have 10 clinics, and then we were going to be done. Well, the second one did not grow nearly as quickly as the first, and what you'll find is that nurse practitioners are not natural marketers. And that is one of the biggest struggles with direct primary care is, you have to market yourself. You have to throw yourself in front of people or you're not going to get anywhere. The only way that I would open another clinic at this point is if the provider that was going to work there either was coming with 400 patients ready to go or they were a natural marketer and could do it themselves.
Speaker 3:Because I can only be in so many places. So I live in Cedar park, texas. I'm very well known in Cedar park now because my face has been everywhere. We're in community events. I'm on multiple nonprofit boards, I show up all the time. People know who I am, but I have a clinic in Liberty Hill. People don't know who I am in Liberty Hill. People still don't know we exist in Liberty Hill because I can't be in multiple places. By the way, those offices are only 12 miles apart and just getting into that community has been so much more difficult because I don't live there, I'm not and I'm not the provider there and my provider, who's up there, she's fine to go do marketing, but she also has to take care of 300 patients and so she doesn't necessarily have the time to do it. So I do have a full-time marketing, a community liaison now who goes to networking meetings, sets up tables for us at things and helps get our name out there.
Speaker 3:But I will tell you I couldn't have afforded her before this year and so, like our third clinic is out in Thorndale, texas, which is about an hour from where I am. No one out there knows my name. In fact, they don't like me because I took their clinic that's. That's where we actually transitioned a clinic from an insurance-based practice over to us. It was going out of business, it was not going well. We saved the provider that owned it. She's still there, but people, you know, called me nasty names, that I was money hungry and all these things, and I was like, wait, you clearly don't understand this.
Speaker 3:But that location, the demographics are significantly older, and so things like social media does not work there. They don't use email, they don't use text messages. They don't want email and text messages, they want a phone call, and so marketing out there is so hard. It's also a population of 1200 people and there's there's a larger town near it, but it has been a struggle, and so before you open that second clinic, you really have to know what your patient base looks like there to see if you can grow it.
Speaker 3:Because if you're not going to grow it, who is? And so you have to figure that out before you're just like oh, I can open 15 clinics because we? Because if you've been anywhere in the DPC space, you know the biggest struggle is education. People don't know what DPC means. No one's Googling that, and until we get just well-known knowledge, as soon as DPC is as popular as Walmart, then it won't matter right, then you can open a clinic wherever you want, but until then, marketing takes education, marketing takes talking wherever you want, but until then, marketing takes education, marketing takes talking, and you have to get in front of those people and it can be exhausting.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is one of the biggest issues that I think I deal with is I'm the one that has 450 patients and my other provider, after a year, has about 110, I think, when we're trying to get her to 400. But she's not a marketer like you said, she's a nurse practitioner. So I am the one trying to market, which I don't get on Facebook that much. I never get on Instagram. I only look at TikTok. I wouldn't even.
Speaker 2:I think I've made like five TikTok videos, not that I think that would be a good marketing ploy, but I am the one going to the BNI meetings trying to make it work while also balancing 450 patients. So I just don't have the energy and time to devote to the true marketing that is needed in order to get her business to grow. So I love the idea that you hired a marketing liaison that can do these things for you, but not every nurse practitioner can afford that, like you said. I mean you've got seven nurse practitioners working for you, so your income is being generated by other people so that you can go out there and do these things.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well, and I'll tell you, even with hiring the outside marketing person, she's still not a healthcare provider, right? And so there are still times where she's going out and trying to market us, but she can't necessarily answer everyone's questions, right. When they're like, oh well, do you prescribe this medicine, she can't answer that question, she doesn't know. And so she's doing her best and she does a really great job of meeting people. She'll set up one-to-ones with them and then decide which ones are important enough to talk to me. So it saves me a lot of time and she's just doing a lot of brand awareness, getting our name out there, which is awesome. But it took a lot of training and there was a time when I actually required my nurse practitioners to attend one networking meeting a week or a month. Have, like, they had KPIs set of, like they had to set up meetings and bring in so many people, and they were awful at it and they hated it.
Speaker 3:And then I read a really great book that said don't focus on things people are bad at. You need to focus on the things that people are good at. And I was like, okay, I'm going to let you people be nurse practitioners, I'm going to be the marketer because I'm good at it, and and I did, and. So that was one of the big reasons that I did transition over, and so my piece of advice to you right now, amanda, is you need to ditch at least a hundred of those patients over to her so that you can continue to grow it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that. I just haven't been willing to give them up.
Speaker 3:I know it's hard. I have another friend and she has something like 700 patients and she's still running her clinic and I was like you're insane, how can you even provide great care for these people? She's like, well, I don't want them to leave. And I was like they're going to leave because you can't give them care. There's no way that you can keep up with that. So I'm hoping I'm talking some sense into her. But who knows, I mean, I don't like to work that much. Maybe that's my problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't either. I want to make more money than what I'm making right now, and I want to work less than I'm working right now. So, like that's where I'm at, I'm thinking, if I become CEO of my business, I won't be doing anything when that's not good, that's not working on either. Well, okay, so as the CEO, and you're not seeing patients, but you have this marketing liaison. So what are your roles now as the CEO? What are you doing?
Speaker 3:Sure. So my marketing liaison is really good at making connections, but she doesn't close the sales. That's my job. So I'm still meeting with business owners to explain to them what we do, how it works. Sometimes I'll go and do the employee front facing like, hey, this is what we do. So I do a lot of those meetings. I just don't have to do as many because she can do them for me. I'm also doing a lot more community involvement. I run two small business groups with the local chambers. I'm just my face is everywhere in the community.
Speaker 3:I also meet with my staff every one of them once a month. We do one-to-one meetings with them and that takes, you know, a day and a half every month. Plus I have to travel to the other places, and then a lot of it is just the day-to-day stuff, right, like I had to get a new bookkeeper because my bookkeeper wasn't keeping up to par, and so that takes time, making sure that our numbers are going where they're supposed to go. I meet with my marketing people once a week, and so it's just a lot of meetings and a lot of occasional fires. Thankfully, my staff does most of the fires, but right now we're doing some construction on one of my offices. So I spent all day moving furniture right, because that's what a CEO does. But when you're bootstrapping the world, that is what a CEO does. So now my garage is full of furniture. My husband's really happy, but we're getting our clinic so that way we can stay there for eternity.
Speaker 3:So well when the CEO is a six foot tall rugby player, like she can move furniture Furniture today. It's true. Oh that's awesome Austin heat. It's been great.
Speaker 2:How did it transition, then, from marketing your clinic to writing this book that we're going to talk about? That's coming out soon? How?
Speaker 3:did you get into that whole thing? Yeah, to be honest, I had a bit of a come to Jesus moment. So I told you we had this plan to have 10 clinics and I was on a reality TV show about a year ago it's coming out in a couple of weeks but I came home from it and I like went balls to the wall, like I have to be the best person ever it was a business competition and so I started to burn myself out and I got really sick, actually like physically ill, and I was like what is going on? And I talked to my therapist and she was like you need to slow that down. And I was like what I can't. She's like what do you really want in life, right?
Speaker 3:So I did a lot of like self-reflection on what success means and turns out, success to me is not 10 clinics. Success to me is traveling with my family, spending time with my family, being able to go to my kids' soccer games, not being completely exhausted at the end of the day. And you know what 10 clinics was going to bring me exhaustion. People are hard to manage, turns out. And so the more people you have, the more personalities you have to deal with, and the idea of having 10 of those clinics now granted, they don't necessarily all have to work together, but they kind of do it was just daunting. And so I finally admitted to myself that I did not want to open 10 clinics, told my husband and he said okay, cool, because, monica, when you wanted to open this, your whole goal was to have more control of your time, not less. It's like you know what You're right. So then I realized well, I can't change the world with three clinics. I can only do that with 10, right? No, not true. I was like, how can I have a bigger impact? And so, as much as I don't want to build any more clinics, I want all the amazing nurse practitioners and PAs and even the good doctors out there to open clinics. I want them to do it and I can help them do it.
Speaker 3:And so what I really find my passion now is helping other people sitting on a zoom call and be like all right, you've got these ideas, let's talk about it. I get off that call and I feel like a million bucks because I have just used all of the knowledge that I've gained from the last six years, all the mistakes I made, and I made sure that person on the other end of phone doesn't do it Right, and I've either encouraged them to open a DPC or I've discouraged them. And so how do I get that to more people? How, how can I spread my knowledge, my wisdom, to the world Right? Obviously, the DPC at the launch pad is a great place to do it. So if you haven't registered for the conference, you're missing out. But on a bigger scale, how can I do that?
Speaker 3:And so the best thing I can come up with is writing a book, and so I did. So I wrote a book. It will be available for the world August 4th. So if you're listening to this after August 4th, go check it on Amazon. It's called DPC, dream job or total disaster.
Speaker 3:It is not a how to book. Let me repeat that. It is not a how to open a clinic book. It is a should you open a clinic book? It is written for healthcare providers of all shapes and sizes to see if this is the right place for you, because, as you know, amanda, it takes a special person to open a DPC practice, and a lot of it has to do with that marketing stuff, and business can be a very lonely place, and so that book answers all the questions that I wish I knew the answer to before I opened. Fine, right, what is being a solo provider look like? Am I a slave to my office? How do I not become a slave to my office? And so it's all my tips and tricks. It's a short book, it's about 100 pages. Should take you maybe 3045 minutes to read, but at the end of it my goal is that you have the answer to the question of should I open a DPC?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that Because there are probably some people that think about it but they don't really know. It's a very difficult decision to think about going out on your own, first of all, being an entrepreneur, and second of all, like, can I manage taking care of patients who say they have insurance, and why would they pay more than their insurance? And do I know how to get their needs met by not having anybody else in the clinic by myself? I mean, there's so many things. Is my personality right? I think that is a big main hang up for some people is do you have the people, skills and the personality to be willing to let patients text you throughout the day into the evening? Do you set appropriate boundaries to be able to not burn out or get mad at your patients but to tell them in a respectful way that, hey, I'll address this on Monday when I'm back in the office? Like, do you have that ability? Are you so non confrontational that you're a doormat and you would just be absolutely miserable? So I had the blessing of being able to be one of your chosen support editors. I don't know what you want to call that, but I got to be an advanced reader and I super appreciated that because reading through that book, I could hear your the way you talk. I could just hear that in the book. So I know you wrote it and chat GPT did not write this book, but but it's so.
Speaker 2:It impressed me with the information that was in it, because there are people out there that need to know am I good for it, am I not good for it? And then once they read this book and determine that hey, I meet all the check marks here, then they can move forward and not necessarily still be sitting there in their head spinning about should I, shouldn't? I mean, this book pretty much tells you if it's right for you or if it's not right for you. Should you just be an employee or should you actually be an entrepreneur?
Speaker 3:And you're exactly right, it takes a certain person to do this, and I need the best people to do DPC, because when crappy providers go into the DPC space, it makes us all look bad, and I'm not here for that, and so I'm not. Everyone is set out to be a DPC provider, and that's okay. Right, we need some employed people out there, right, those people have to exist, because I am not taking care of the Medicare population the rest of my life. Anyway, no, I'm just kidding. But yeah, it's a big decision and I think it's also frightening, and so my whole purpose of this is to give that support and let them know like someone has gone before them and has done it successfully and is willing to share their secrets.
Speaker 3:And what I found is that when I was meeting with other people who were considering it, I just kept repeating the same things over and over, like, well, here's some thoughts about your name and here's some thoughts about your website, and so I didn't want to write a how-to book because there's tons of checklists out there. Right, hint has a checklist. Atlas MD has a checklist. There's all sorts of checklists out there. If you need a telecommunication app, well, which one do I use, right. And so the book is to get you to the question of should you do it? And then I created an online e-course so I don't have to repeat myself 45 times.
Speaker 3:That is the idea to launch, right. So it's all of the legalities, all the things you have to do. It's eight modules. That's really just me saying this is what I did, these are the mistakes I made, and here's how I suggest you do it. And so, for those that read the book decide, yep, this is what I want to do. Then there's another resource for them. And then I also offer consulting after that. Yeah, I'm just trying to get the right people in the DPC space, amanda.
Speaker 2:That is my goal here. Hey, that's a good goal right there, because, just like you said, we do not need nurse practitioners coming into this section of the world and mucking it up and making us all look bad. Because the doctors already the doctors already think we're idiots, so we just need to have all the smart ones over here doing what we're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah absolutely For sure.
Speaker 2:DPC Launch Kit. You said it was an online course and it's eight weeks.
Speaker 3:I believe you told me. So it's got eight modules. You can go as fast as you want. I'm going to tell you, if you watch all eight modules back to back and you get to the end, you're going to be so overwhelmed You're not going to know what to do. So it has eight video modules.
Speaker 3:It also comes with a workbook and multiple resources, right. So there's a patient contract in there, there's an ROI, there's a consent form, there's a physician contract, there's all sorts of all the things I have. I've laid them out. Here you go. Here's what I used, here's all the stuff for you. And then that will launch about a week after the book, so probably early August, mid August, and for a limited time. We're actually gonna offer free 30 minutes of consulting with me if you buy the course. I don't know the limit on that. Obviously, I have to protect my time, so we'll see. That might last two days, we'll see how many people buy it. But yeah, I'm just. I want the world to know what DPC is, and the more amazing providers that we have that are creating clinics and making it known that DPC is the fix for healthcare, the better off we are.
Speaker 2:So, and how do they buy the? How do they buy the launch?
Speaker 3:kit. Yeah, so it all lives on my website, which is dpcformulacom so the DPC formula is my brand for that. And then there's a book, there's an online course and the consulting all on DPC formulacom. You can also find it on the Amazon, that's where it is. So it's the at least the book is DPC green job or total disaster, and we can put a link, I'm sure, in these notes.
Speaker 2:Don't forget the good, the bad and everything they forgot to mention.
Speaker 3:That's right. Lots of subtitle in there, who knew I like the subtitle I do too, I do too.
Speaker 2:I think it's catchy. It makes me like think I'm about to watch some sort of documentary about you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very for anybody who's ever met me or talked to me or probably even listened to this. When you read the book, it really does. It's got my sass to it. It really does. It's got my sass to it. It's got my sarcasm. So just be prepared, I'm very real in this book and it's not sugarcoating anything so well that's what I love about it.
Speaker 2:It wasn't stoic, it wasn't just black and white. I could. I could hear your personality in it and it made me keep reading it. I told you I read it in like two days or something because I just kept going. It was so interesting. Yeah, I like it. And really I wanted to know am I in my right space? Like should I have done this? It's too late now for me, like it's way too late, I already did it.
Speaker 2:But you're in the right place, amanda, but reading the book I'm like, I feel, I feel validated, Like I really I really hit the highs where the highs needed to be.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I like it yes.
Speaker 2:I do too. Okay, so are you writing any other books?
Speaker 3:You know, maybe I don't know. The thing is, I feel like we all have this idea of where our life is going and it's a complete lie. If 10 years ago, even five years ago, you would have been like, oh yeah, this is where you're going to be, I would have laughed at you 10 years ago if you told me I'd own my own business. I would have absolutely laughed at you. And so I don't know. I do think a second course will probably happen that is launched to growth, right, like how to get from solo provider to CEO. That doesn't have to work anymore, and that's going to be more like retention and marketing strategies and onboarding and all those other things that come after the launch, right, how do you keep patients in your front door? How do you hire people? And so I do think a second course will probably happen. But yeah, I wouldn't put it past me to write another book. It was actually kind of fun and now that I know the process, right, it's, it's, it's not too terrible. So but yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker 2:It'll be good for those of us who have been in practice running our DPC clinics, for you know, somewhere five years or more and we're at that kind of stalemate phase where we're trying to grow but it's not growing or it's growing so slowly. I personally think 100 patients in a year is pretty slow. I was really kind of hoping that she would have 300 patients by now, but maybe that's unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure you know, man, I think so much goes into growth, right? I've been in business six years and we've had years where we had three providers and got 400 new patients, and then now I have 700 providers and growth has been slow. I'm sorry, I have seven providers now and growth has been slow this year, and I think there's more than just your marketing that goes into it. Right, and this is the key to marketing with DPC is not only do people have to know you exist, but they have to need you. We aren't like health insurance where they're like, oh yeah, you're cool, let me just start paying for you. They typically come to you when they need something, right, they're sick, they need a refill, they need something done, and they want it done today, right, and so not only do you have to be top of mind with those patients, but they also have to have a reason to call you, and so that makes marketing and growth of DPCs so unknown, right, like you don't know when somebody is going to get a splinter and need a tetanus shot, and that's why they're going to call you.
Speaker 3:I also think the economy has a lot to do with it, and this year our economy has been a little rough in terms of it's unstable. We just aren't sure which way people are going. Some people are losing their jobs, other, like inflation, is really high, and so people are a little concerned about spending money, especially if it's not something they absolutely need, and so I think that that's part of it. All you can do is be you and be there as much as you can, but I'll tell you, your growth has also slowed because you spend a lot of time doing patient care and you can't do that marketing side. So toss some don't.
Speaker 3:I hope your patients don't listen to this, because they're going to hunt me down and be like why did you tell Amanda to leave me, but telling you, if you want to see some growth, amanda, I think you need to offload some of those patients to that provider and make yourself more available.
Speaker 2:And so you're saying offload the patients so that I have room to take on more new ones.
Speaker 3:Absolutely not. No, ma'am.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're just saying so that I have time to be out there and I am the face and the marketer and I'm the one that's doing all the. I mean I am going to the BNI meetings. But I'm going to be honest with you right here. I've gotten two referrals that were closed deals from BNI and that cost me $1,300 to join it, and then it's $75 every quarter of dues that I have to pay. So that's an extra $300 that I pay annually and I don't think I'm going to renew come January because I haven't even gotten enough memberships to just pay for what I've put into BNI, hoping that all these small business owners were just going to sign up their company or their employees, or that they knew other employers that had small businesses and they weren't offering insurance. So I had this grandiose idea that all of these employees were going to get signed up by their employer and that just didn't happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's hard right. So I've been parts of all different types of networking groups. I've never done BNI, because that whole like stand up with your right hand in the air and pledge that you will refer people within your group I'm sorry, it's a little cultish to me so I can't do it. And I think there's a lot of time required with BNI, like the weekly meetings that you have to be at and the required one-to-ones. And I'm also going to tell you any I get a little worried about any networking group that requires a certain number of referrals every month, because when you require referrals you're going to get crappy ones. When it's like well, I have to give a referral, so I'm going to tell Johnny to call my grandma Well, grandma's been dead for 20 years so she's not going to answer her phone, but I'm going to tell him to call her, because then I did my job and gave you the referral right, and so I'm a little leery about that type of networking group.
Speaker 3:I tend to find the most success with female networking groups. So if you can find one that is female oriented and that's because women make more healthcare decisions I think those are helpful. The Chamber of Commerce has been really great for me in the local area, but we also have a decent size city, so not all chambers are created equally. But yeah, you got to find those times, but I'm going to tell you you need more time, and whether that's even just creating social media stuff. Right, I create at least eight to 10 social media videos every month, and it's not to sell, it's to be front of mind, and so it's really just having the time to do that and being the face of your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember what I was going to ask you earlier. You had mentioned about something about employers or something, and it made me wonder are most of your patient panels employees of employers that are paying, or are they mostly private payers?
Speaker 3:I wish that I could say that was the truth, but it's not. We have about a 70-30 split where 70% of our patients are just retail families, individuals, and then about 30% actually come from employers. We work with about a hundred different employers that range from two employees up to like 35. I wish I could make it closer to 50-50. There's a little bit of a, I guess, risk when you have too many employers, because they could take away 25 people at a time. Right, so you don't. I wouldn't want it to be the other way, necessarily, and part of that is I don't make my employers sign contracts. I think if I had a big enough group then maybe I would, but that's a whole nother barrier to entry. But no, we're at about a 70, 30 split. But I love bringing in employers because it's like here's 12 new patients and it's it's just so much faster than the like. Oh, we got mom to sign up today.
Speaker 2:Here we go, right. So I don't have any employers that have signed up yet, so I wouldn't know what that's like, but we've tried to offer discounts. I normally charge $79 a month for just a regular adult membership, but the employers were only going to have to pay $60 a month. But I still can't get anybody to commit to paying $60 a month for their employee to have DPC care.
Speaker 3:I think you and I need to have a conversation, see how we can fix that. Something's not going right. I also created an entire marketing training, for I have two separate ones, so one is for your ideal patient, who would be like an individual or family member, and then for business owners. So maybe I just need to send you my marketing training. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'll pay for it. Like I don't have any marketing tools that I'm using right now, which I know that Brian has his marketing thing that he does and it's probably really successful for a lot of people. I just haven't jumped into it because I know he's very busy with it and he's got a lot of people that he's trying to help, so I kind of feel like I don't want to overwhelm him.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, I have a marketing team that does everything for me, so they they do my website. They do all of my social media like static posts. They do all of my email follow-up with all my patients. Um, they set up all my email marketing sequences for people that I do meet at different things. They do all sorts of things and I do that through Amplify DPC. They will also be at the DPC Launchpad. Stephanie McGurr is the owner there and she is a phenomenal human and they have different packages all over the place for DPC practices, so like from rock bottom, where you're kind of just doing it yourself but they give you the software to do it, to make life easier all the way up to done for you.
Speaker 2:So you feel like you get a lot of patience from what she's putting out there.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's for sure, gives us brand awareness, and so they also have run Facebook ads for us, which have been successful but not successful, so we don't see a lot of conversions from Facebook ads. But we turned them off for a while and our numbers dropped drastically, and I think it's just that brand awareness that we need to keep, and so we turned them back on and our numbers went back up, and it wasn't necessarily that they came from the Facebook ad, but I think that it becomes more top of mind, right? They say people have to see your name something like seven to 10 times before they'll remember you, and so, once again, not only do they have to know you exist, but it has to be the right time for them, and so I think that that's been very helpful, and Stephanie and her team are just they're phenomenal at helping you understand the things you don't know, cause guess what? You're not good at marketing, cause you're not agreeing in?
Speaker 3:it, and I mean social media algorithms and all of the Google algorithms. They change every day, but they're really good at making sure my Google business profile is getting updated. I didn't know that you had to like, post pictures and post things in there so that you get natural SEO. And now there's the whole AI. It's called AEO. So instead of just being top of, like the social game, you also have to answer the questions, because people aren't just typing into Google now primary care, they're typing primary care near me without insurance, or they're asking questions or they're using AI tools to find the things that they need. And if the answers to those questions are not on your website, you're not popping up, and so if your FAQs are not top notch, you are likely falling to the bottom of the Google page instead of being at the top.
Speaker 2:And Amplify. Dpc helps you with all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Stephanie and her team, they just they know what's going on and so they will be like, hey, we need to make this alteration to this part of your website. Cool, Do it go for it Like they just know the things to do to to keep you where you need to go. So they've been really helpful to me. Well, thanks for that tip, Okay.
Speaker 2:I know y'all you are getting ready to have to leave, to go to an appointment, so do you have any last final words you want the audience to know? Just sign us off with any of your words of wisdom. And we got to make sure people go by the book. But other than that, what else do you want to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, just follow your heart, guys. If this is in your heart, then do it, but if you're just forcing yourself to do it, then don't. You're going to be miserable. You don't want to take this leap when it's not the right time, and that's really what this book is about. I'll also tell you that I believe there's maybe one other book written about DPC that is not by a doctor, and so I need my book to be above them in Amazon. So I need all of you to go buy it, every one of you. I don't care if you read it, just go buy it, so that way we can be better than the doctors.
Speaker 2:We do care that you read it, though. Like, if you're going gonna buy it, at least read it. It's 90 pages, right out loud, right. It's a quick read and maybe if it doesn't benefit you, you will think in your mind of a nurse practitioner friend that you're like this is gonna be perfect and you're gonna change your friend's life, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's keep taking over the world as amazing NPs. And to the physician assistants out there too we love you guys too. Let's take over the world. Yeah, we are totally taking over the world.
Speaker 2:Okay, guys, DPC, dream job or total disaster, the good, the bad and everything they forgot to mention. Go buy that book August 4. And then, when you read it and you decide you're going to be a DPC provider, then go get the DPC launch kit online course and let Monica tell you what not to do and what to do.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thanks again for having me, amanda. You are the best, as always.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks Monica, the feeling is totally mutual.
Speaker 3:And if you want to come have drinks with us, because you just know how cool we are DPC launchpad conference in February We'll see you on the ship.
Speaker 2:We will be having some margaritas there, for sure.
Speaker 3:A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you so much, monica. Thanks, amanda. All right Bye. Thank you so much for joining us today on the DPCNP. We hope you found our conversation insightful and informational. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing to our podcast so that you do not miss an update, and don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback means the world to us and it helps others discover our show. We love hearing from our listeners. Feel free to connect on our social media, share your thoughts, your suggestions and even topic ideas for future episodes. As we wrap up today, we are so grateful that you chose to spend a part of your life with us. Until next time, take care. This is Amanda Price signing off. See you on the next episode, thank you.