Ep #75 - How to Get Found by AI Before Your Competitors Do

He's not a hormone doctor. He's not even in medicine. He trains dogs. And he might just have the sharpest, most battle-tested marketing playbook Jody has heard on this show all year.

When Chad first reached out, Jody almost said no — "you're not appropriate for this show." One call later, her mind was made up. Chad, a Navy veteran turned founder of K9 Revolution Dog Training, built his business from the ground up after nearly every "expert" he hired failed him. So he taught himself. Meta ads, Google ads, content, automation, and — most recently — how to get his business recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, and every other AI tool patients and clients are now using to find a provider.

In this conversation, Chad and Jody talk about the moment he realized nobody would ever care about his business the way he did, how he found his unique value by studying the gaps in his competitors' messaging, why it took him almost eight years to embrace automation (and what he'd do differently), and the exact test he ran to see whether AI search engines even knew his business existed. Spoiler: they didn't recommend him — at first.

Every principle in this episode translates directly to running a cash-pay hormone or functional medicine practice. This is one you'll want to take notes on.

Topics covered:

✔ Why Chad fired his marketing agencies and did it himself
✔ The two "buckets of money" every new practice owner needs before taking the leap
✔ Finding your unique value proposition by studying your competitors' gaps
✔ Lead magnets, automated follow-up sequences, and why personalization is everything
✔ How to test whether AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini even know your practice exists
✔ Three concrete tactics to improve your AI search visibility (Reddit, press releases, and YouTube)
✔ The mindset shift from "I hate sales" to "sales is how I help more people"


Where You Can Find Chad:
 K9RevolutionDogTraining.com. 
https://www.youtube.com/@CanineRevolution
https://www.instagram.com/k9.revolution_/

This podcast is powered by Accelerated Medical Practices, where we believe hormone and wellness care should be both life-changing and profitable.  If you own or run a clinic and are interested in being a guest on the show, please complete the form here and let's connect!  Or email Jody at Jody@AcceleratedMedicalPractices.com.

 🚀 Grow your clinic with proven systems at AcceleratedMedicalPractices.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Welcome to Bion Hormones, the business of wellness, the high class for hormone and functional medicine providers, hormone information, predictably, comfortable project, and maybe a little less dress along the way. Hi, I'm your host, Jody Lane, and I've worked with lots of benefits in marketing, sales, and business development. And I have seen what works and what doesn't. And here's what I believe. Hormone and wellness care should be available to everyone who wants it. And while providers know the medicine, many struggle with the business side of their counter practice. And that's where I come in. So this podcast is here to share real strategies, real stories, things you can implement in your practice right away. So I am so glad you're here. Come on, let's go. All right, everyone. I'm excited for today's conversation because while my guest is not in the hormone space, what he's built and how he's built it has so many parallels to what we talk about here. As a matter of fact, when Chad first uh introduced himself to me, I was like, no, you're not appropriate for this show. And then I got on a call with him, and my opinion 100% changed because what he's done for his own business is something we all need to take into consideration and learn from to grow our own businesses. So joining me today is Chad Singer. He is the founder of Canine Revolution Dog Training. Chad started his business back in 2017 and like many entrepreneurs, learned the hard way, working with different vendors, testing strategies, and ultimately realizing that nobody cares about your business quite like you do. And we're gonna get into a little bit more about that in a little bit. Since then, he's built a successful local business by getting really intentional about his marketing, his systems, a word you I use all the time, and how he shows up online from Google, uh Google business and reviews to retargeting and even positioning for AI-driven search, which we're going to definitely ask him about that because that's a hot topic for everybody. What I love about Chad is, well, he's easy to talk to. He's got incredible focus on doing things smarter, not just bigger. And uh that's exactly what we're gonna get into today. And I think we might even have a special guest pop his nose in once in a while. Hey, Chad, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Doing good, Jody. Thanks for having me. Honored to be here and hopefully you can bring some value to your audience today.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Oh, I don't doubt it. We we hopped on what was supposed to be a 10-minute meet and greet call and end up being like 45 minutes. So I'm sure that this is gonna be very, very valuable. Let's just start with, you know, like a basic question. So you started back in 2017. Kind of give us the quick version of like what were you trying to build? How did you start? You know, like give us the the beginning story.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, well, originally I got into uh dog training because my own dog who might pop his head in, like you said, his name's Bain. Um, I came back from a deployment. I was in the Navy. I came back from a deployment. I'm trying to make the long story short here, but uh, instead of, you know, that dog that's happy to see you, you know, this was before any I got involved in training or anything, he was trying to react at me, he was trying to get me in a negative way, you know, with his mouth. And so it ended up we had a couple of physical altercations where I had to grab him, pin him up against the wall to keep him from trying to get me. Most people would give up on their dog in this situation, but I'm like, this is my dog. I love this dog, I've been gone for a year. Let me figure out what's going on. And so got involved with some local dog trainers in San Diego, California, where I was stationed. And then uh I made that decision at that point. Hey, I'm getting out of the Navy. What do I want to do? You know, I have a degree in civil engineering. I did not really want to do that. Um, I thought maybe I could drive uh ships on the in the civilian side of the world. I didn't really want to do that. I said, I love this dog thing, I'd love to help people out doing dog stuff. So let me get into dog training. So that's what I ended up doing. Started up my own business, moved back to South Carolina. And uh, as you know, as you start getting into business, things get a little bit out of hand. You know, you got accounting to do, you got taxes to do, you got to figure out how do I actually get business? You know, how do I, you know, speak to leads, how do I follow up with leads? You know, you're you're trying to figure out all these things, and you're trying to do your passion, which for me is dog training for a lot of people you work with is hormones, right? But uh it's like, okay, I want to do my passion. I have all these other things that have to be done in order to run a business and stay in business. So how do I figure all this out? So that's kind of how I ended up stumbling into where I am today. Hopefully, that's not too long of a story.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

No, no, that was great. And of course, I want to dive into the business stuff and the strategies and all that you can teach us. But before we do, let's go back to that moment where you made that decision. Because I hear this same story, but obviously different circumstances from all the hormone clinic owners that I've met, where they were either ER doctors, they were surgeons, they were primary care, gynecologists, whatever they were. And this moment that they realize what I really love is wellness. And what I want to do is take care of people when they're healthy and keep them, you know, healthy.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

So, what does it take, like a mindset issue, or like what kind of personality do you have to have to like risk on yourself like that? It's a huge deal.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Well, you have to be able to accept the risk, but it has to be calculated, at least from my perspective. You know, I'm I'm a very calculated person and uh I've always believed in hey, you know, make sure you retain a financial buffer between like what you're spending right now and what you need in the future. And that buffer is what saved me. You know, I had like six months of savings that I had continuously rotated through my financial finances when I was in the military. And, you know, starting a business, you run you're burning money very quickly. So that kept me going for six months. And right as I was hitting that cusp is when my business started to actually actually get clients and produce a profit, right? So thankfully I had that uh you know buffer there. Not a lot of people have that available. So if you don't have that available, then you have to make a calculated risk with the debt that you're gonna take on to, you know, in order to get your business going. But it's not like you want to take that debt on blindly. You know, you want to make sure that, hey, once I execute this step, what are the things that I have to do to ensure that I'm not gonna put myself in a very deep hole that I'm gonna end up taking myself down in, you know? So being able to make calculated risk, but also understanding what you're getting into. I did a ton of uh, you know, research. I didn't really think it was that important at the time, but it turns out it is. Research into hey, if I'm gonna start a business in this location, who are my competitors, right? Who do I who do I have to work around or work with, or who do I have to compete against? And you know, why am I better than them? Most of the people that you work with, they are better than their competitors, but why? And how can you verbalize that to potential leads that are reaching out to you or looking into you? And in today's world, you know this, the people that are listening know this, but we live in a society where where it's like, hey, everything is you have milliseconds to retain somebody's attention, right? So if they stumble upon your website or they stumble upon your social media, how are you going to grab their attention as quickly as possible and get them to go down your rabbit hole that you've kind of created? We call it a funnel as well. But how do you get them to go into that process of I might be interested in learning more from this guy, or I might be interested in actually working with this guy? You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

So that's kind of You said like a thousand amazing things. So let's just stop and let's go back. So, two things I want to really dive into quickly. One is you talked about living, like the money you need to, and and I this just came up recently when I'm a call with a provider. So this is why it's like front of mind for me. So when you start a business, there's really two buckets of money that you need. Bucket number one is what you need to live on as you're not making any money. And bucket number two is what you need to invest in the business in order to do the things you need to do, like build a website, you know, maybe hire some staff, do some marketing, create a business card, like all those things. You know, how do you think that is often overlooked when people sit down and create whatever? I mean, we say business planning, people think that has to be some 35-page spiral bound thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

But like what advice would you give to a provider that says, okay, I'm doing this now, I'm making like $300,000 a year as an ER doc and I need to replace that income? Like, how do they get started financially to figure out what they need in order to really be a calculated risk?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Right. I think uh first thing that comes to mind is like, okay, if you're used to living, let's just say $300,000 a year, let's just say you're used to living on that. Can you live on less for a couple of years? Because you know, as well as most people listening, when you start a business, you're actually going to just be reinvesting into your business very heavily, if not completely, you know, for the first couple of years to make sure that you're on a trajectory to sustain your business. I don't remember the exact uh percentage off the top of my head, but there's a high percentage of businesses that don't survive X amount of years. It could be three years or five years or 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

50% in the first year, right? So 50% of businesses don't make it up the first year for this exact reason. That's why I think it's so important that we talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah. So you want to be the 50% that's making it, right? You want to be the one percent that's gonna make it past everybody else. All you have to do is just outlast your competitor, they'll fall off. You can take their clients into your practice, you know what I'm saying? So uh if you're living on $300,000 a year, for example, what is the minimum that you can live on and still have a good lifestyle? Obviously, when you're starting a business, you're gonna be very busy working on your business. So you're gonna be working more than maybe you're used to. I don't know, you know, depending on their background, you know, they could be very busy like working in an ER, for example. But when it's your business, it relies on you. So you're gonna be working very hard to get it on that trajectory for survival and domination in your market, you know what I'm saying? Um, but then you have to think about which you have to calculate this based on your specific business. What are all the things that I have to pay for? And I'm a big bootstrapper, as you know. I like doing a lot of things myself, which we can talk about. But uh we will. But uh, you know, website, like you already said, website marketing. You know, if you don't know how to do this stuff, you have to learn or you have to hire someone to do it for you. And if you hire someone to do it for you, you're basically trusting that they know what they're doing, which is not always the case, which I can talk about as well. But uh, if you hire someone for something, you need to check behind them for a little bit to make sure they know what they're doing. And you probably need to know how to do that yourself as a business owner, anyway. At least the principles of marketing, for example, and follow-up and lead generation and everything, you need to understand the principles of that because you are the you are the big boss. You know, if someone has a problem down the road, you need to understand this is their job, this is their responsibilities, they're having a problem. I at least understand enough to be able to support them and help them. And this stuff ain't cheap, you know what I'm saying? So figuring out the cost based on your business in particular, you'll just have to do that calculation. But you want to make sure that you're on that trajectory, like I said, to sustain yourself at least over a year into where you're actually making profit. I don't know if that answers the question or not.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

That's great advice. That's great advice. And and you are definitely a master of marketing, and we're gonna get to that in a second. But you hit on in that last uh section something that most people just sort of gloss over. And it I believe that it is the difference between spending your marketing dollars wisely and spending them foolishly, and that is the message. So, as a service provider, which you are, which the hormone clinic doctors are, that's all service providers, right? Being able to articulate your unique value proposition, why you over your competitor. The natural answer is I'm more trained, I have more customer service, blah, blah, blah. How did you figure out your unique value proposition when you were crafting your message?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Well, first, if you're gonna do that, you know, on a high level, you have to understand your competitors. So that means you actually have to kind of look at their materials, you know, go into their website. You don't have to reach out to them in particular. You can do that, you know, but uh you start looking at everything that they're putting out into the the interwebs, right? Social media, right? Google pages, uh, Google Business Profiles, which are super big for local businesses, websites. So you figure all this out. I see you got a San Diego mug, by the way. So funny.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

That is my retirement location where I want to move to eventually.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

That's a great place. So uh, you know, you figure out what your competitors are saying because they're saying too, I'm the best, I'm the best. And here's why, you know, I've been doing this for 10 years or whatever, right? So you start listening to them, you figure out, okay, what is their messaging? And then you figure out, okay, where are the gaps in the messaging and where can I fill those gaps? You know what I'm saying? But it has to be it has to be your true story as well. You're not just gonna make things up that you can't uh execute on or that you can't commit to. And then what happens is over time, your message should continue to develop as you get better at articulating and speaking about your specific uh skill set, you know, like a hormone clinic, you know, they're gonna be better because of XYZ. Maybe they have a better uh long-term follow-up process with their customers. Maybe their patients are considered their family versus just a patient, right? So however you're gonna communicate that, you have to figure out what are my competitors saying? How can I make it better, right? What are the gaps at? And, you know, whenever this competitor eventually goes away, which most will, you know, how can I take over their uh their patient base or whatever service base that you're in? That's kind of what I think about, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah, no, that's great. I like the way you have like this peeled back the layers of the onion approach. It's like whatever first comes up, okay, that's great. Now let's go a little bit deeper. That's good. Let's go a little bit deeper. And I've never heard anybody say, look at your unique value proposition by researching your competitors and looking for the gaps. That is like one of those simple, brilliant tactics because yeah, if your competitors all have the same value, and even if it's your true story, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Right, exactly. Yeah, if everyone's saying the same thing, everyone just becomes like a pin on the wall, and then whoever's calling around is just gonna go with whatever person they call first, you know. So you gotta make sure you stand out among everybody else that's around you, or worse, you're being compared by price, and nobody wants to be compared on price.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Exactly. So since you're dropping these marketing, you know, gems in this, let's just go right into marketing because when we talked the first time, you said something to me that really stuck. You said nobody cares about your business like you do. And that kind of drove the marketing person you were to the marketing person you became. Can you tell everybody that story?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah, so basically, uh, long story short again, I you know, as I'm getting into business, well, this is interesting. Whenever I first started my business, I'm like, how do I market? I have no idea. I'm just a dog trainer. I know dogs, I know dog behavior, I know how to train people to train their dogs, but I don't know anything about business. So uh getting into marketing, and I'm sure your clinic owners have this happening to them. People are calling me. Hey, I run uh, you know, the neighborhood magazine, and if you pay us a thousand dollars, we'll put you in our magazine. I'm like, that sounds good, put me in the magazine. You know, there goes a thousand dollars. I got someone calling me, hey, we run magnets, we give out magnets to the community, we'll put you on the magnet for $500. That sounds great, put me on the magnet, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So the next thing thousand people will see this in the first week because we dropped them in their mailbox.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Exactly, exactly. And then you think about what actually happens. Like, if I get a magazine in the mailbox, I literally don't even look at it, it goes right in the trash, you know. So I'm like, that's what's happening to these magazines. And it took me a couple of years to realize that before I canceled all of my, you know, marketing with the magazines and everything. But it's uh, you know, so that's kind of how I started. And then I'm like, okay, let me try to get some help with marketing. And uh, so I reached out, work with some uh businesses, you know, that that claim to know marketing and to do marketing and no real movement, you know what I'm saying? And not really helping me. I'm spending a lot of money. They're telling me, oh, you're looking great. You got these numbers, you're getting these clicks and this and that. All sounds good. Nothing's really turning into a uh a lead, right? Or a or an actual uh person that's gonna use my service, right? And so eventually it got to the point where I'm just like, you know what? Like you said, nobody cares like you do. So I have to figure this out myself. So, of course, you go down the rabbit hole, you're up all night trying to figure this out, you're on Google, you're on YouTube, you're trying to figure it out. And uh, you know, I wanted to go head first into like social media. And so I'm like, for social media, I just want to educate people, I want to help people, I want to educate them. So that's how I got started with uh social media, right? And just started posting educational content as much as I could, right? And then after that, start getting into uh like meta ads. Okay, let me run some meta ads because most people are on Facebook, they're on Instagram. So let me figure out how to run meta ads. So I'm studying that, figuring that out, right? Then you start seeing some traction. So you're like, okay, so this is actually working, I'm actually reaching people. Then same thing with Google Ads, right? So I kind of studied one uh, I guess, pillar of advertising at a time, meta ads, Google ads, and then whatever after that, and figured it out myself and uh got rid of all the marketing agencies that were helping me because it's like they weren't really providing any value for me, any input. And then I started realizing that my organic content that I was being very consistent with on social media and YouTube was starting to generate leads itself. So it's like if both organic and paid is gonna start moving you in the right direction. And then, like, you know, like we already talked about with messaging, you just kind of fine-tune your messaging as time goes on. And with today's tools like the AIs, we can use those as good consultants to help us, but you don't trust them 100%. You have to double check because they do make mistakes as well. But that's kind of my journey to, and right now, even I do the marketing all by myself, even at this point, just because I don't really trust other people and I know how to do it and I feel good doing it. Um, so that's kind of where I've gotten to, bootstrapping it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

You know, interesting. The theme of everything you just said is patience. Because I I know there's gonna be people listening to this podcast that are gonna say, Chad, that's good for you. I'm not doing my own marketing. And it is tough. Like, I don't recommend everybody do what you did. It takes a lot of determination, a lot of time, and you have to really have a knack for this kind of stuff. But what I see, and tell me what you think, like I see people hiring marketing agencies and they're failing them, not only because, like some of them don't know what they're doing, but mostly it's because the expectation that the business owner has of what the marketing agency can accomplish in a short period of time is so unrealistic. The marketing agency wants the client, so they make the promise. And then it's just not possible. So, like, how long did it take you to go from organic to like adding these modalities slowly till you started seeing some real success? How long do you think that was?

SPEAKER_00 19:17

You know, several, several months, you know, it takes like nothing moves fast, you know, it's all very slow. But the thing is, like, one thing that I do is if I identify, I try to look ahead. I'm like, okay, this is going to become a problem, right? If I'm not generating leads, this is going to become a problem at some point. So I need to be ahead of the curve. So you have to look ahead and understand I have a problem that's going to rear its head, and I need to tackle this problem, I need to figure out this problem. Now, you know, I have some people that are local to me, like uh I have a great friend, he's a physical therapist, he does all my physical therapy, and what he's done is he's got someone that works in his uh physical therapy office, you know, she's a younger person, and uh he's like basically handed off the marketing to her, and she's just taken off, you know, she's younger, so she knows all the trends and everything. It's right, she enjoys doing it. So I think that's a great tactic that a lot of uh people like clinic owners could do. You probably have someone sitting in your clinic that's working with you already. You know, maybe they're able to take on that extra responsibility. Maybe you got to pay them a little bit more for the extra time, obviously. But I think it'd be worth it to have someone that's on your team that kind of masters this versus you know, try to find the right marketing agency because you might go through two or three before you actually find one that works with you. I don't know what you think about that.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

No, I think you're totally right. And the big difference is the person doing the marketing understands the industry. What you also said that was true gold is that you didn't go on to social media and start promoting your service. You went on and started educating people through the love and passion that you have for what you do, which is why you started it in the first place. You know, and that, but again, that takes patience, that takes time. But if you hire somebody, an agency that is like, you know, 14 states away and they've never worked in the dog training world before and they have to learn how to teach about dogs and all that, it's gonna be even more time. But yeah, having somebody in office that is talking to customers that understands the process, understands science or dog training, they can do that much, much easier. Now let's talk about automation though, because obviously doing everything yourself, you probably have to put some automation in place. Did you do that right away or did you grow to that?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

I'm the I'm probably the slowest person to get to automation just because I was so busy doing things myself. I'm like, man, this would be way easier if I could click a button and these things would happen, or it'd be way easier if these things just happened on their own. Right. And so I didn't get seriously into automation probably until year seven or eight in business. So I struggled for seven or eight years just manually, or having my team manually do everything, just dragging everybody down into the dirt, like, hey, we got to do these spreadsheets and this and that, just make Makes no sense, but you know, uh we've we're heavy on the automations now. You know, we use our CRM for follow-ups, and you know, you click one thing, it sends the training agreement for us. It could be like a patient agreement for a clinic, you know, or if we have someone reach out that's interested, they get the follow-ups automatically. You know, we we obviously write the follow-ups, I'm sure you do with your program and everything too. We write the follow-up specific to us, and then it's just automatically going to reach out to that lead. And you know, you'll be surprised how many people reach out after the eighth follow-up or the tenth follow-up. They've never touched space with you ever. And then that eighth one hits them at the right time, the right day, and they're like, Hey, I am still interested. You know, like, holy cow, you know, we've been texting you eight times, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Where were you?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Right, right, exactly. And then you have people that just say, Hey, quit bothering me, and that's fine. Then you just move them to we just move them to like a lost category, which I'm sure a lot of people do. And that doesn't mean I'm not gonna reach out to you in the future, you know. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

So I'm so glad you're saying this because I hear, like, obviously, we sell an automation system, right? I'm very much into automation, but I do believe that you should do manual work first. How do you know what to automate if you haven't done it repetitively, manually, seeing what works, what doesn't, or jumping to some tool that is gonna save you, you know, so many hours of work, but you don't really know what you need it for yet. So I love that you said that maybe seven or eight years a little long. Uh you know, you started a long time ago, so we'll give you a break.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yeah, that's not recommended, you know, maybe a year or two, and then you should be right on the automations, you know. But uh they make a big difference as far, like you know, lead generation, lead follow-up is a big deal. Or if you have uh the the uh like I forget what they're called technically, but you give somebody like a freebie, like a checklist, or hey, here's a P A lead magnet. Yeah, you give them a lead magnet, and they reach out to that, you follow up with them on that. And what I've done with some lead magnets is I've created separate follow-up sequences that are specific to that lead magnet. So I'll give them like a training checklist that says, Hey, you want to teach your dog how to walk on a leash? Here's a free checklist on how to do that, right? They get the checklist, and then five days later they get my automation that says, Hey, it's Chad just checking in. You should have your dog trained by now. How's it going? They said they're not trained. I'm like, well, reach out if you want help. So uh that's that's one way that we do that. But uh also on the the social media side, right? It can be very busy. And I do think that if you're gonna dominate your local market, you should have a social media presence because you know, people do, you know, we're in a society that also rates you based on your social media presence, right? Whether it's YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or whatever. So having a presence, I'm not saying you need to be on there all the time, but having a tool that helps you post is uh very useful. You can batch your content in a in one day, just make a bunch of content, then batch it out those next two weeks, go out on a schedule. And uh that makes a big uh it's it's a big time saver if you can do it in that way as well. So those are kind of the main two automations that we do.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Absolutely. And again, the theme is patience because when you send the checklist out and you're sending, you know, seven, eight, ten touches afterwards, you're really just warming this person up. And then you've got to continue to communicate with them. I love that you said that you communicate until they tell you no, and then you just put them into a different bucket and you communicate with them slower. That's all right, right. It's not until they unsubscribe that you ever stop communicating with a lead because you just never know.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Exactly. One thing, uh, real quick about like the lead magnet is I will have people like and like obviously I'm a dog trainer, right? So my lead magnet might be leech pulling, and I'll send the follow-up five days later. It's automated, but uh, you know, it goes out to them. Hey, it's Chad, how you doing? How's the leash pulling? You should be done by now. And they say, Hey, it's great, it was perfect. Thank you so much. I'll manually respond to that. That is so freaking awesome. Thank you so much for the feedback. If I can support you in any other way, just let me know. But in the meantime, please, you know, subscribe to our channels and stay in touch. Boom. I actually helped somebody, you know, I was sent out a lead magnet that has real value. So I'm really helping people, but there's also people that need that next step. They actually need to work with me to achieve the result they need. You see what I'm saying? So it goes both ways.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

For all you longtime listeners, you know how much I love working in the hormone clinic space. And I want every one of you to have the best clinic possible. So if it's okay with you, I'm gonna pause this podcast for just one quick second and share quickly about a product of ours that I think is going to make a real difference for you. And it's called Practice Automation System. Now, first I want to share something that I had to learn the hard way. If you're struggling to get patients, your marketing probably isn't the problem. It's what happens between when someone raises their hand interested and actually gets someone on the phone. That's where the problem lies. That's where most clinics are losing money and they don't even know it. Does this sound familiar? A lead fills out your form, your front desk is busy taking care of patients, so they get back to them in a few hours or maybe the next day. They call the lead once, they don't pick up, so they leave a voicemail and they move on. The person never calls back, the lead goes cold, and your ad spend just vanishes into thin air. Practice Automation System is the solution that we built to solve this exact issue. Within five minutes of someone filling out a form, the lead gets a text. They get nurtured by email for as long as it takes, and your team gets assigned follow-up tasks based on how much time has gone by so that they never let anything fall through the cracks. We have used this foundation of this system inside my own clinic, where we grew to over a thousand patients, four providers and 23 staff members in just seven years. So you know what? We know this works because we've used it ourselves and we have helped clinics all over the country roll it out too. To find out if Practice Automation System is the right fit for your clinic, just go to accelerated medicalpractices.com slash automation. That's acceleratedmedicalpractices.com slash automation. All right, let's get back to the show. Again, how many times can I tell you how brilliant you are? I love that you said that because we get hyper-focused on marketing being nothing more than a sales-driven action, which it is. Like I've been in marketing my whole entire life. And I do believe that if you don't make money off of your marketing, then you're not doing it right.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

You have to.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Sometimes it's just goodwill. Sometimes the actions that you take are just like that person that got the leash pulling down in five days, and you've responded, whether he subscribes or not, he might be at a party, a kid's party the following weekend, and someone's complaining about their dog. And they're like, oh, you gotta call, you know, Chad because he's the best. Like exactly he taught me and and he also followed up with me. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

That's great. Exactly, exactly. So for your clinics, it could depend on you know what they do in particular. But if it's like a hormone clinic, I'm assuming they'll do blood work first so they can explain this is what you're looking for in your blood work, right? Then someone goes and they they might respond, thank you so much for sending that. I had no idea that my free testosterone mattered so much or whatever, you know what I'm saying? So they can figure out the lead magnet magnet that would provide real value, but also could generate those leads and referrals in the future as well, which I'm sure you coach them on and all that too.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yeah, so actually, I there I do a webinar on why leads don't convert. And I I talk about how automation needs to be personalized. So if you send a very generic automated message, no one's gonna respond to it. So that automated message that you sent about, hey, did you get this done? Like, think about that, guys, who's listening. Like that person responded to an automated message. Now, the fact that you saw it and replied back is extraordinary. But the fact that what you created in that automation made this person feel like it was you. That is how you do really good automation.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

I was literally, I'm glad you brought that up because literally last week I sat down with my team because my dog trainers are the ones that uh we have an on-call trainer every week. They rotate weeks and they're the ones that are answering phone calls or responding to leads that are responding. Because it's better, at least in my experience, it's better for my actual trainer who has the education, the knowledge to respond versus some generic office person that's like, yeah, I can get you in touch with a trainer later. You know, so uh I was literally sitting down with them last week and I said, Hey guys, when someone responds, you know, to a to an automated follow-up, you don't want to send a generic response. You want to look at that person. We have all this data on that person, read through their data real quick. It takes 60 seconds with the way that our CRM is set up. You know, read through the data, understand the data, and send an actual personalized response to them. And then, you know, if they're not locked in and doing a phone call or meeting with us, do a specific question to them at the end of your response that will trigger another response, but it has to be personalized. And uh they were like, Holy cow, this is so awesome! Right. So sometimes you just have to think about it a little bit differently, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

That's an excellent tip. So, like at the bottom of any kind of response, or even if an automated message, like, what are you dealing with today? This is for the hormone clinic providers like, what are you dealing with today that you wish wasn't there? Or you know, how do you feel today versus you did 10 years ago? It's those open-ended questions that people start to, even if they don't reply, they will be thinking, Oh, this is my issue. They know enough to ask about it. It's so brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Exactly. And you never know uh what someone's doing because your automated uh follow-ups might be going out to people at different times during the week, but that person might be busy, they might be at work, they might actually look at your text and read it and be like, Oh, I want to respond to this. And they're like, Hey, Bob, and they're like, Oh, you know, then they go have a coffee with their coworker, they lost track. So that's why it's important just to keep that cycle going because you just got to hit them the right day, the right time. And then as soon as they respond, ideally you respond as quickly as possible. Response time matters.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yeah, and I and I'm sure you do this, but I'll just throw this out there. A great way to know whether your messages feel personal is send them to yourself. Like I every automation I create, I put myself in the automation. And usually the touches are over the course of like 14, 21 days. So I will forget what I'm getting that day. And then an email will show up from like one of my providers. I'm like, oh, well, that was nice of them to reach out. Oh, wait, they're not actually reaching out. That's an automation. You'll know if it feels personal when you get it in your own inbox or on your own text message.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Yeah, I run tests myself all the time, and I'll just put my own info back into our automation system. And that way I'm just constantly getting the the uh automations. That way I'm like, okay, yeah, this still sounds good. Or I need to tweak it, you know, and and every so often I'll go and tweak those messages that are going out to people. But uh, but yeah, it makes a big difference, and you just let that system run. You set it up, and you just let it run. You know, you keep tabs on it and uh it will work.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

And I think the big takeaway from all of this before we move on is that you have to embrace this portion of your business. Like I know that a lot of people don't go into business to become marketers, and we're not suggesting that they do become marketers, but you've got to embrace that sales and marketing is a part of what you are doing. And if you resist it, it's just gonna get harder and not work.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Yeah, I mean, I hate being a sales guy, you know, I hate going to the car dealership and and the sales guy walk walking up on me. So, but the thing is, if if you don't, if you can't communicate to people, you know, if you can't get them to convert and work with you, you can't help them because your service can help them, right? If you're a homeown clinic, it it's literally life-changing. And so uh if that person doesn't know what you offer or you're not able to communicate with them or following up with them because you think that follow-ups don't make sense to you at the time, you're you're not able to help as many people as that that need your help, right? So it's not being salesy, it's helping people, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Excellent. One last marketing thing. So I'm sure we need to move on. But you mentioned when we talked the how you are starting to set yourself up to be found through AI. That's a big hot topic right now. We're talking about it a lot more with our clients. What what kind of advice do you have for business, small business owners to get found inside of Chat GPT or Gemini or any of those?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Yeah. So the first thing that I recommend is just going to all the major AIs, Gemini, Chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude is getting more uh prominent. Even Grok, I've kind of played around with Grok a little bit, but uh you know, those main four, the main ones I'm looking at. And I remember I pulled them all up in an incognito window and I said, Hey, tell me about local dog. I said, Hey, I'm in Somerville, South Carolina, I'm looking for a dog trainer, and it popped up the top three. I was not in the top three, right? And uh yeah, exactly. I'm like, holy shit, I got some work to do. Exactly. So then I'm like, Hey, well, have you heard of canine revolution dog training? And it told me, yeah, I have heard about it, it is a good choice, blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, okay, why you know, why did you not recommend it? So I think for anybody getting into AI, this is the first thing you should do is just go talk to it and position and do it in a private window. That way it doesn't have your data and everything as much as possible. And just ask it, hey, I'm located in Austin, Texas, and I'm looking for you know, testosterone replacement therapy, for example, if that's one of the clinics that you work with, and uh, who should I work with, right? It's gonna recommend most likely three people. And if you're not in the top three, ask it, have you heard of your clinic name? And it'll tell you, yeah, yeah, they're they're located here, they do this, they do that. Okay, well, why didn't you recommend me in the top three? And it'll start saying, Hey, their website is set up like this, their website doesn't have this information or that information. And I made a checklist, I'm like, okay, these are the first things I need to work on, is my website. And I had a website developer at the time, and uh, they were a good developer, but they were not focused on local business, they were kind of anti-AI. I'm like with the world we're in this day, you know, it's like it matters, you know, it matters being in AI. And so started working on that checklist, and then I stumbled down the rabbit hole. AI is looking for references across the internet, right? So just because you have a nice website doesn't necessarily mean that it will recommend you, right? So there's a couple of key, and you might hear Bain Barker. There's a couple of uh key factors that AI likes looking at, they want to see good references across the internet um that your business is mentioned, right? So it looks at Reddit. So what I did was I just went into Reddit. I've never used Reddit before. I'm like, okay, go into Reddit, and I'm not saying every clinic owner needs to do this, but it's just something to think about. And I joined a bunch of dog training communities, and people are asking questions Hey, how do I train my dog to walk on a leash? You don't go on there and say, Hey, go to my website and go to this video. You just provide value, right? And you say, Hey, this is how you train a dog to walk on a leash, and you make it, you know, a little paragraph. And then on your profile, you go to your profile, you set up your website to be linked to your profile, and what the AI LLMs are doing, they're scraping Reddit as they're processing responses. They see your response, they see it has uh whatever the upvote is on Reddit. I'm not that familiar with with all the intricacies of the platform, but they see the little upvotes, they're like, Okay, this is a cool answer. Then they link your profile to your website, they're like, Oh, this is the TRT clinic in Austin, Texas, right? And so uh then they start to rank you higher in their search results. So that's one tactic. The other tactic is press releases, and so uh I was like, okay, how do I do this? And so basically, you write a press release around something your business is doing. Hey, new TRT clinic open Austin, Texas, they do XYZ. They're better than you know, you don't say they're better, but you know, basically they're the best in the business because of blah blah blah, right? You make this a uh professional uh news article, right? A short little article, you run it through a press release or a press wire website, like uh I use EIN PressWire. There's a bunch of them out there though, and you release it. And when you release it, there's a bunch of news platforms that will pick it up and then they'll post it on their website. And now you're getting some cross references across the internet from other websites that the AIs are like, oh, this guy's mentioned here, he's mentioned there. Okay, he's more legit, right? So these are the kind of things that I've been working on. And I have seen, you know, my rankings in AI searches starting to grow, right? We're starting to have some traction just because it's been a couple of months of me working on this. But you got to start thinking about these things now because you know, next year it's gonna be completely different. So you want to be relevant to that AI.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Yeah, basically it's a popularity contest. Whoever is putting out the most and people are responding to, whether that is social media, Reddit, whatever, if people are spending time on your content, commenting on your content, liking your content all over, then you won't show up in AI. And and what you said was really, I want to drive this point home. You've got to start now because I would say, I mean, I'm making up this percentage. This is just, you know, right a feeling, but I would say 20% of businesses are doing this. Not a lot of businesses are doing this. And so the first to start is gonna be the end, they're gonna be the winner. Because other businesses, when they finally realize six months from now that you've got to be doing these tactics, they're gonna be playing catch up. They're gonna be ahead of the game.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Yeah, you'll have the history, right, of all the work you've been doing and they're just starting. There's no way they're gonna catch up to you unless you just stopped, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Or like they have some sort of like angel investor and they have a hundred grand they can put into just right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Well, starting a YouTube channel too, you know, like you said, it's looking at the uh social media platform. So I, you know, even even a small business, you can post a YouTube video that's eight minutes long if you're talking about a blood work topic, you know, or or like, hey, this is why we do TRT in this way, right? This is why we recommend intramuscular injection or subcutaneous injection, right? You talk about one specific topic on your YouTube video, just post one a week, and it can just be you talking. The AIs are picking that up, they're transcribing the video, they're reading the video. Um, but also people are searching these things on the internet, they're searching, and YouTube is a search engine, so they're searching YouTube. Hey, I have low testosterone, what do I do? And that your video eventually, based on you being consistent and how you're performing, is gonna pop up, they're gonna find your video, they're like, Oh, I want to work with this person, right? Right. Then they reach out to you. So it's another lead generation uh method, but it's also supporting your relevance in AI search.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

And what equipment do you need? I've got a laptop that has a camera. I spent $120 on this microphone. Yours looks like it's almost identical. Like you don't really need a lot of equipment to do this. As long as you don't look sketchy, people are just interested in what you're saying, not how you're looking.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Yeah, you could do it with the phone and airpods to start. Oh, you know, and then and then just slowly get more equipment if you want it, you know, don't go crazy.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

And sunlight is the best lighting equipment there is. Exactly. It trumps any other thing you can, any ring light you can buy. So just do your stuff during the day.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Right, right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

But let's talk about dogs for, you know, because we're getting towards the end. And I I would really, you know, want to hear about what you do in your business. What are some of your methodologies for training dogs? What kind of dogs do you take? You told me something interesting about people that are across country and they're sending you dogs. So give us some background or some behind-the-scenes stories about what you do.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Yeah, so most of the dogs we train are uh pet dogs. You know, most people have a a lot of people have pet dogs, right? But the pet dog might be countersurfing, you know, not good, right? They might be jumping on their guests, not good. They might be reacting on the leash, not good. So our main thing is helping people achieve the life they want with their dog so they can both live the best life possible. And in most cases, that's just teaching the dog how to behave properly, what appropriate behaviors are. And those are different for everybody and every family. I was just talking to a lady yesterday. I said, hey, what you expect out of your dog might be a little bit different than me, and that's okay. And we're gonna train your dog to meet your expectations so that you can live an enjoyable life with your dog and not be upset all the time that it's jumping on your counters, right? Um, but we do deal with dogs that have, you know, uh behavioral issues like high levels of anxiety, fear issues, aggression issues. We call that behavioral modification because we have to modify those behaviors. That takes a little bit more time, a little bit more work. Um, but that's another big thing we do. And then we have people that have puppies that are like, hey, I I need this dog, I don't want this dog to be a problem in a year. I want to work on it now. And that's partially because of the education we're putting out. I've been saying for years, don't let a problem, you know, get created with your dog if you can help it. If you got a puppy, get training done now. Yeah. Well, you don't have the problem come up later, right? Um, so those are kind of the big the big things that we uh we do now. I have done police dogs in the past, you know. I stopped doing that just because the pet dogs need they need more help, they need more work, right? Uh, my passion is helping people with their dog, right? So that's what we focus on. But uh I really think the people that have come across the country, they've come from two reasons. Number one, when I was in the military, I was obviously traveling around, so I had a lot of uh networking and those types of capacities, but mainly YouTube. You know, YouTube, you put out the video, the educational video. Someone sees it, they're in California, they're in Washington State, they're like, Hey, I have to work with you. You know, I've worked with other trainers, they haven't been able to help me. I need to work with. You? How can I work with you? I'm like, we got to get your dog here, you know. So uh that's basically how that's kind of started. But uh we do that a fair amount.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

What is your five-year goal? Like, where do you want to take the business?

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Uh well, uh, you know, my main thing is is helping the dogs, helping the people. So I've been wanting for a while now to build a new training facility. I still train all the dogs basically out of my home. I do have a team that's 20 to 30 people. Um, but what I've done is I've basically put an extension onto my home that is uh business only, and uh that's where all my team members are working out of. That's where all the dogs are staying at that do our board and train programs. But I've been working on this uh facility for years, but every time I get close to it, something else happens that uh needs prioritization, right? So I've kind of put on the back burner. And so I've I've this year we're we're working right now on securing financing and making sure that it's a risk that we can take on, right? And make sure that we have a game plan that, hey, this is not gonna uh impact us in a negative way. Because as you know, like a clinic owner that's opening up a clinic, they got a brick and mortar that is expensive, you know, whether you're building one yourself or whether you're leasing one, that is a big expense, right? So you got to make sure you can handle that. And the other big expense for a lot of businesses, myself included, is payroll. That's probably my number one expense is payroll. So I have to make sure that the balance is in order and that the business can sustain it. Um, but yeah, we're looking at building that facility. And once we have that done, then we'll increase our boarding capacity so that we can uh provide boarding for people, not just training, but also just boarding for their dog whenever they go on vacation or something. And so that's where we're trying to move to. And I'm trying to do more uh virtual training. You know, I do a lot of local training, but there's people all over the country that are, you know, I need help with this, I need help with that. So I coach them virtually like on a Zoom call, or I might work with some dog trainers on a Zoom call. I won't work with dog trainers that are local to me because I'm not giving them, you know, all your secrets competitor, you know, but uh someone that's in Texas that's halfway across the country, sure, let me help you out. So that's kind of where we're moving to.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

So if you had to start all over today, same business, anything you would do different?

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Get into automations faster. That would save so much time, you know. But uh get into automations faster, obviously, part of the journey of business is learning as you go. I've learned so much about managing employees. You know, I was uh I was an officer in the Navy, and so being a basically a manager in the Navy is a little bit different than being a manager in the civilian side, right? So how to handle employees, hiring slower, firing faster in some cases. You know, I've learned that lesson the hard way, as I'm sure a lot of your uh, you know, business people that you work with have as well. And uh, you know, getting into automations that would make a huge difference in how much time is saved. And if you thought about how much time is saved over the years, you could have been way ahead of where you're at right now, which is fine. I'm happy with where I'm at. But if you look back, if I knew back then what I know now, we'd be at a whole nother level. You know, so the people that are listening to you now and they're starting a clinic and they're working with you and getting those automations going and you're and working with your program, they're gonna be 10 steps ahead of somebody like me who's been bootstrapping for 10 years and figured out this late in the game.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Well, this is why we teach, because we make the mistakes and then we teach, and hopefully people will make the same mistakes that we do.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Exactly. Exactly, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

So I always end the show with a quest. I stole this thing from Diary of a CEO, Steve Bartlett. He's my favorite podcaster. And he ends his show by asking his current guest a question from the past guest, and they don't know what it is, and that's I do the same thing. So unfortunately, the question that was left by the last guest is very specific to a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

So we are going to do something unprecedented here on Beyond Hormones. We're going to ask the exact same question I last asked the last guest because I think it's a good one for you.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

That question is what is one personal perceived weakness or flaw that actually makes you great at what you do?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Good question. So what is what is my uh perceived personal flaw that is actually a strength?

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Uh maybe that I care too much. I I care too much about everything, and that's that's a difficult thing, but it's also makes me good at what I do. I care about the individual dog, I care about the individual family, I care about the individual team member that's working, you know, for me. I care about, you know, every little system that we have in place, you know. So uh obviously I care about my family too. So you have all these things you care about, right? And uh I think that that gives you a strength, but it also could be a weakness because sometimes maybe you spread yourself out too much. So hopefully that was a good answer. What was the question for the doctor? What was the doctor question? Just out of curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Well, I can't tell you. I'll probably hang up because otherwise the next guest might hear it. I got you. I got it. I'll tell you why hang up. Um, this has been one of my favorite conversations when way over time. I hope that everyone listening enjoyed it as much as I did because you know, you gave so much value and you've got such a grounded, realistic yet optimistic perspective about your business. It's just beautiful to hear. And I'm sure that there's a dog owner out there that is listening that is dying to work with you. So how do they get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Yeah, you can just reach out to us, caninerevolution dogtraining.com. It's spelt out. The word canine is spelt out. It's not the letter K number nine, it's the word canine revolution dog training.com. But just go to our YouTube channel if you've got a problem. We have basically worked to create a library of content broken down by specific problem. So you can go there, you can help yourself. And uh then if you need my help after the video, then you can reach out. But go try to figure it out yourself first and then reach out if you can't do it or if you if you want some follow-on support.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Awesome. Well, I'll definitely link the YouTube channel in the show notes. And Chad, thank you so very much.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Yeah, thank you. It's been an honor to do this, and uh hopefully you brought some value to people. And for all the people that are running hormone clinics and all the doctors, thank you guys, because I myself work with a local hormone clinic and it's made a huge difference in my life. So thank y'all for what you do. So keep getting after it.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

I got chills. Thank you for listening to Beyond Hormones, the business of wellness. I hope that you're walking away with fresh ideas and real strategies you can use to grow your practice with profit and purpose. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow the show so you never miss a conversation. And if something you heard today resonated with you, do me a favor, share this episode with a friend or colleague. It's one of the best ways you can support the show, and it might be exactly what they need to hear right now. If you want even more tools and support, go ahead and head over to accelerated medical practices.com. Until next time, keep doing the work that matters. Your patients need you, and I am cheering you along every step of the way.