Latest / Death Before Decay / You Can't Fake Authenticity/ Caring for the Brand
Transcript
- speaker-0: They're not what they used. speaker-1: Well, first art and if you don't have twenty five hundred bucks a year to maintain it. Yeah. speaker-0: ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, and I speaker-0: My S five has less than twenty thousand on it. I'm just gonna buy it out. speaker-1: Your twenty twenty K on it. speaker-0: No, if I would owe about forty on it, but it's stickered at fifty five, right? speaker-1: Gotcha. speaker-0: So I buy out the lease. speaker-1: Gotcha. Okay. All right. ⁓ are you gonna get a different one? Gotcha. Yeah. speaker-0: No, I'm gonna buy that one out. I love that car. Yeah. ⁓ I you know, I thought I'd be like super anxious to upgrade and I I just am not. The the new S fives really aren't that much better than that car in any way. In fact it might be worse. speaker-1: No, I'm actually not that this is like podcast worthy, but ⁓ I gotta turn off the air. speaker-0: We'll call this the cold open. Call it the cold open. speaker-1: What's that? I have the air on early. Sure. speaker-0: Yeah, I so I'm gonna buy out the S five. I d the new ones aren't ⁓ that much cooler to me. And until I can buy like a Porsche nine eleven or an R eight, yeah like It's crazy. The car's still fun to drive, so why would I get rid of it? speaker-1: Yeah. I I love driving my car. I had a I had a I drove over a nail the other day and my neighbors helped me with doing the repair, but it just kills me. Yeah. My poor my poor baby. speaker-0: Yeah. I'm gonna buy like brand new OEM wheels for it and get like low profile tires so I can actually switch them appropriately every year. But yeah, well I'm gonna buy all that lately. speaker-1: Right. right. All right, here we go. speaker-0: All right, welcome to the Death Before Decay podcast. I'm Dr. Elliot Hummiston. This show is about confidence, craft, and building something real in dentistry, in business, and in life. And this season is brought to you by Taylor Drive Dental Care. I am with my normal co-host, my buddy John Erline, but he's also kind of the guest today because we're gonna be hitting on a bunch of stuff that he loves to talk about as well. How are you, John? speaker-1: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me, Doctor E. speaker-0: ⁓ you bet, buddy. You bet. ⁓ Yeah, ⁓ speaker-1: We are we are not sponsored by Liquid Death, but ⁓ we do drink it on each show, so like maybe if Liquid Death is interested in ⁓ sponsoring just two guys that Yeah, sending sure, that's cool. But not the fruity pebbles. speaker-0: Bending free so You weren't a fan. I didn't try it. speaker-1: I wouldn't. Okay. Sorry. Real real talk here. ⁓ Mm-hmm. ⁓ speaker-0: Ha ha. Yeah, why not? You know? So today we're we're gonna be just kind of talking about some things that have changed in like business and in dentistry. and ⁓ really wanna get the opportunity to talk about marketing and the things that you and I enjoy talking about, which is branding and discovering ⁓ creating identities for businesses through branding. and we both ⁓ are the children of entrepreneurs. Both our fathers were entrepreneurs themselves. My dad was a dentist and your dad was speaker-1: is still a jeweler at eighty three years old. Absolutely love him for that. speaker-0: Still rocking it. And does he have a computer in his jewelry store? Okay, he does. speaker-1: He does. He does. Oddly enough too, he ⁓ it's a PC, but he's been an Apple guy for a long time. And I was always like, dude, what's up with what are you doing? He's like, Well, it worked with the printer that I had that was like twenty five years old. speaker-0: Yeah, so that's that's why he kept it. Got it. speaker-1: But I'm sure you can relate. speaker-0: I definitely can. Because like when it comes down like for my industry, I think dentistry has changed more in the last five to ten years than people realize with just the inundation of how much information there is out there for people. ⁓ social media has changed dentistry. You could say for the better, you could say for the worse. I think there's a a component that affects dentists specifically on a psychological level that speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: I don't like about ⁓ social media when it comes to dentistry. But we can get more into that too. But ⁓ when we look from like a technology aspect and what people expect and how they find you as a dentist and what the expectation is, I think has changed drastically from the time that my dad was doing it. And I don't it may be happening faster, but I really don't think it's a new concept. My dad Does it never didn't do dentistry how my great grandfather did dentistry? Right. ⁓ And in fact, when my dad came to this community, advertising as a dentist was like frowned upon. Like I remember that he like would get ra he told he tells me these stories of people would like give him raised eyebrows or like call him and be like, hey, you can't be doing that. When he would like advertise in the yellow pages. speaker-1: So I I what was what what was so frowned upon? speaker-0: There was just this like idea that you are a healthcare provider, you are a upper echelon figure in the community and like marketing your your your trade was just that's not what we do. speaker-1: That's so interesting because speaker-0: And marketing and dentistry is highly regulated. You cannot say certain things. Shakuna, I have talked about that. You'll give me scripts. I'm like, not allowed to say that. Nope. speaker-1: Yeah, it real fast. Well but but like so not even being able to market your services was frowned upon. speaker-0: Yeah, they did not want you it was just it was you know, I remember ⁓ he called the local paper when he got like some new machine. They did a story on it and he had like one of the old timers calling him and being like, What are you doing? I remember that call. speaker-1: ⁓ that's weird. speaker-0: Well, speaker-1: Okay, and how would you feel if someone was like challenging you to be like, Why are you marketing yourself? I it speaker-0: It's come up. speaker-1: Okay. Like so how have you handled it? speaker-0: I see you on the billboard all the time. Ha ha ha ha. Great. It's working. That's what I'm going for. I've w like my face is on my billboard because I am part of the brand. I am the pr the lead practitioner of the practice. They sh people should know who they're walking in on. I ha I have an amazing associate, Dr. Butler. We gotta get her on a billboard sooner or later. But sh like when I was seeking out an associate, I needed someone that matched that brand too, and that that caliber of human being. And we definitely speaker-1: Yes. speaker-0: nailed it with her, but ⁓ that's that's what I wanted. I wanted people to walk in and have some sort of familiarity with me and that's why my marketing is the way it is. That's why, you know, on the YouTube commercial, like I got that a lot. Well I keep you keep interrupting my YouTube video and I'm like, Good, good. It's working. Yeah. Like that's that's the idea. Like you can still hit skip after five seconds. Like I won't take offense. Yeah. But ⁓ speaker-1: So so where where was okay, so the marketing for Taylor Drive Dental Care, when you stepped into the practice. speaker-0: ⁓ so my dad was, you know, pretty he pushed marketing forward, I think, when it came to dentistry in this community. ⁓ he did a lot of radio ads. and they obviously worked. They at that time for speaker-1: Totally worked. Okay, so Yeah, no, they did because again, like pulling the levers that are available to you. So when your dad was marketing, there wasn't social media levers to pull, right? So there was really radio was an affordable option. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: and newspaper, right? So some sort of print and radio. But digital was not part of the conversation. speaker-0: Not right. And it's an area he never developed. He tried to get social media going a few times and he just hired hired like social media groups to do it. Right. It it didn't work. ⁓ but people still talk about the radio ads all the time. In fact, we had a Yeah. Yes. He would talk about sedation dentistry and pretty much nothing else. ⁓ that and not judging, which still is a core tenant at Taylor Drive Dental Claries. We don't judge, we don't criticize. speaker-1: They call it sedation dentistry. speaker-0: We meet you where you're at on your journey. What happened yesterday part of your journey, and I care about that, but it doesn't impact how I'm going to treat you today. ⁓ and that's something that I think he did a really good job about. And this is how well those radio ads worked, is I had a patient who came in and claims to have heard that radio ad like a few months ago. That radio ad hasn't been up for three years. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. It's just in their head. speaker-0: It's stuck. Yes. And it is. And my dad would do billboards here and there. It wasn't like his big thing. ⁓ but so when I came in, I wanted I was like, hey, I don't know if I wanna I'm not looking to become a ⁓ an influencer, but social media is a way that people check you out. ⁓ they wanna see what you're doing and they don't always care about the before and after. speaker-1: That's good, Mark. Absolutely. speaker-0: I care about the before and after and that's why I post that. They care about the journey and the experience of the patient. How is the patient feeling? So that's what you and I have been trying to capture more in the marketing is that journey. ⁓ we're doing more video testimonial work. ⁓ like we've got more things at the pipeline and what I like about digital ⁓ marketing is you can evolve it a little bit quicker. speaker-1: Yeah, and you can pivot and you can learn from it. You can get measurable results where you don't with other you know, with other mediums, right? Like a a billboard, right? It's just impressions. And it's brand recognition unless like, you know, you put a your URL on there and it's a unique one. So then like if ⁓ a user were to input that into their device or computer, right, you g you know where they came from and then you can kind of tie it back to that advertising, but speaker-0: Right. It's brand recognition. speaker-1: You know, ⁓ not a lot of people are really doing that. speaker-0: No, and what I o and I think I've told you this before, that my goal of the billboard is that when somebody Googles dentist in Sheboygan, even if I'm not top hitting the top because of my SEO which is search engine optimization, should clarify I do. Kind of. ⁓ I want people to be able to look when they Google a dentist, I want them to recognize the name. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. He knows marketing now. speaker-0: And that's what the billboard does. I'm not looking for direct traffic off of that. And I think social media ties into that as well. And when it comes down to it, patients are more informed and less informed in a lot of ways. You've got a lot of influencers out there who are peddling BS and people are willing like when you put a microphone in front of someone, they gain authority, it almost feels like. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What is the the other stuff that's being peddled out there that you're like Dude, stop. speaker-0: I don't want to criticize how anybody practices, but I have a really hard time with holistic dentists. ⁓ and there are some really, really good holistic dentists out there that care about their patients deeply. They care about their health and they do things and they practice dentistry in a way that I probably wouldn't. But I have met more than one holistic dentist who has blatantly admitted to me that it is a cash. speaker-1: ⁓ my god, no. You're kidding me. See like that's not cool. speaker-0: Yeah, like one of them telling me like, Hey man, like you're doing the same crown I'm doing. I'm just using ozone water in my hand piece but I charge a thousand dollars more a unit and people are willing to pay. Or they're charging almost three hundred dollars for a cleaning because they're using laser and ozone, and we use lasers in our office. Doesn't make me a holistic dentist. It means that I'm trying to keep up with the the technology. But again, ozone water has an antibacterial effect. So that effect drops every minute because ozone is not a stable compound and will break down. ⁓ and Again, not criticizing hol the holistic aspect of dentistry. It's not for me. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends or family. But there are a lot who are really trying to help their fellow patient and their fellow human being the best way that they can. ⁓ I would question effectiveness. But their goal is the same for a lot of them, their goal is the same as mine. speaker-1: the ⁓ but the marketing like so then like how are they marketing where it's like hey ⁓ what what are those key points of differentiation that someone would be like ⁓ that's the kind of dentistry I need speaker-0: So if you see the word holistic with a W, it usually means that the dentist is practicing in a biological sense, that they're looking at how the whole body is impacted by the mouth. Holistic will usually mean that they're quote unquote using natural products, but none of the compounds that we use in dentistry are natural or even like good for you if you were to eat. six pounds of them. They in the amounts that we use them, they're perfectly fine. Your body is an amazingly powerful system. You are not going to throw it off balance with minute amounts of anything, pretty much. Short of arsenic. Probably don't eat arsenic. But ⁓ you know, just because somebody uses tooth colored fillings exclusively, like myself, speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: They're just ⁓ they're marketing it differently. ⁓ you know, I'll hear oil pulling and things like that. Yes, it's oil pulling is this technique of of pushing different oils through your teeth to kill bacteria. The problem is is oils are not bacteriocytable, meaning they'll kill bacteria. They're bacterostatic, meaning bacteria has a hard time to grow. But in our saliva, we have enzymes and compounds that are part of our digestive system that kill speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Oils. So that's where that ⁓ so without getting I think we're getting a little too deep here and that's speaker-1: Gotcha. Okay. I was I was gonna I was gonna say like that's pretty deep. speaker-0: I know. But what I guess I'm trying to say is like there's there's a lot of dentists out there that are peddling this ideology that they are fantastic at everything that they do and it's good to be self confident. ⁓ but I have seen ads where the guy will put up the dentistry that he did and I know for a fact they didn't he didn't do that dentist. speaker-1: ⁓ God. See that's not cool. Yeah. Okay, well then okay, so in your opinion, in your expert opinion, what is good marketing for dentistry? speaker-0: I think Like there should be a mix of like, hey, I'm the fun guy, like at my at my office, my my staff are having enough fun to make a a funny TikTok reel or something like that on social media. But at the same time, like you need to put yourself out there in a real, authentic way. And if you aren't able to do that, maybe you shouldn't be the face of your advertising. If you have to fake fake an act. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: It's not gonna come across the same. And maybe you need to rely on a different way of marketing. Maybe you aren't the face of your marketing. So social media has made it like that the patients are more informed about who their practitioners are. ⁓ they can look up a ton of information so quickly, and sometimes they'll come in there and challenge you on it. There's a whole lot more options, and some of those people are like putting tons of money out for cheap dentistry, and it's just hard because Patients are more aware of everything. I think they're more cosmetically aware too. speaker-1: So speaker-0: didn't answer your question at all, what I think is good marketing for a no, I'm sorry. I'm I'm not sure. I think that's a unique I think that's a unique experience, and maybe we can tie that into like what a brand really is. I think good marketing for dentistry is authentic. You're not making any claims that can't be validated through science. Not not just storytelling, but through science. and does not speaker-1: Yeah. Sorry. Mm-hmm. speaker-0: ⁓ degradate or ⁓ diminish what your fellow practitioners are out there trying to do. speaker-1: Okay. Well we we okay, so I know a lot of times from a a marketing and branding standpoint, there's a question that I will ask, right? The first thing is like how how is this campaign or something gonna live? But then like what I when I go through my process, you know, it really comes down to what is life like with good dentistry and what is life like with you know bad dentistry or just not even maintaining your mouth. Right. And those are those are things that I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of people put off dentistry. Right. So right. And when because mouth pain, right, can be the worst kind of pain. But it but there's also what life can be like if you solve the problem. And that is something that I think when it comes to the work that we've been doing speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. And I get it. speaker-1: Is that we take an empathetic approach because we do understand. speaker-0: Right. I think it comes all down to confidence. I think a person with there's I've met plenty of patients that are confident and smiley and are great with their discolored, misshapen teeth that they have and the their health is good and they're doing fine. And then I meet people who are in extremely insecure with their smile and how that impacts their daily life. And when that comes down to it, that impacts your mental health. Your mental health can impact your physical health. So for me, I'm looking to, you know, create a healthy mouth. I'm looking to restore the teeth to their natural form and function and try to get them into their ideal positioning if I can. speaker-1: Right, but and and we've talked about this, right? So part of you connecting with your audience is meeting them where they are. You said that earlier, right? Meet them where they are on their photography journey or ph sorry dental dental journey or you know, whatever. But ⁓ so you meet people at all different stages right of this. speaker-0: Photography or dental. But I watch confidence light up on people when they have a smile that they're confident about. And I think confident people tend to be more and I think you would probably agree, if you're confident, yeah, your ability to be successful also goes up. speaker-1: But the messaging is very important because there are a lot of people, like you said, they're insecure about their smile. Maybe they're missing teeth, or the color of their teeth prevents them from smiling or doing public speaking or doing that presentation at work. Right. It's a total confidence shift for a lot of people. And you know, the first question that I like to ask is well, what are you doing about it? Right? But if when we're from a marketing standpoint, you know Clarity will always win, especially with me. So this is a bit of a narrow minded opinion, but ⁓ acknowledging are you missing teeth? Right? Hey, are you missing teeth and do you want your confidence back? Find both at Taylor Drive Dental Care with Dr. Elliot Humston. speaker-0: Yeah, and ⁓ that's worked. speaker-1: Right. Exactly. You know, it's it's not trying to be cryptic or like whatever. So when we got into doing a lot of this work, you know, I was trying to encourage you to just keep it real, be ⁓ be authentic and let people know how you can solve their problem. you know, you have another business venture too. I'm not trying to digress too much, but you know, one of the services is laser hair removal. Yeah. Right? You know, so like how do you advertise for that? How do you do it in a way that, you know, can get people talking, right? Hey, do you have unwanted hair? We can help. Yeah. Like I mean, it's as simple as that. You know, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to make people feel bad about it. But what that does is it lets other people know that, hey, we understand what your problem is and we can help you or we can solve your problem. speaker-0: Yeah, I think confidence is is is essential in i is what I'm going for with my result and the marketing we want to target towards building people's confidence. speaker-1: Right, building up their confidence because they're gonna leave feeling a lot better, right, about their smile and their smile transformation or whatever it is they do after they're done leaving ⁓ their session or their their appointment with you. But you know, there's that continued relationship. speaker-0: Yeah, and I think if we like look at what social media's impact is on the world, again, positive or negative, I'm not here to to debate that. People want to look are looking to look better, look more confident, because that's what they're seeing broadcasted back on them. And so for me, I always talk about and I've told you this before, me getting people's teeth in the right place and restoring them to form and function, the outcome is usually better looking teeth. And outcome of that is more confidence. And so for me, I'm just my goal is hey, I'm going to do my best to give you a healthy mouth, improve your quality of life, and hey, your teeth look better too. And the outcome from that is confidence. And, you know, people ⁓ have a lot of options out there. There's a lot of dentists out there. People are more willing to travel than they used to be. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And and we have to market to those people. ⁓ speaker-0: Do service certain service. So for me the outreach needs to be a little bit more broad, you know, outside of just my community at times. And it needs to be out that broadcast. And that's speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Easier too, right? Like, you know, when your dad had the practice and he was doing advertising, again, you know, print and radio were probably his two popular mediums, right? Right. But now you take a different approach from marketing because you have a local strategy, right? What are you doing locally to make sure that you're showing up in all the right places digitally? You also have the opportunity, and we do a lot of billboard campaigns with Dr. Ellie and his staff. ⁓ but now you can pull that lever of social media, right? And you could do a targeted campaign fifty miles away because we know that we already have ⁓ patients driving from that far away to work with doctor with Doctor. speaker-0: I mean it was pretty cool when I had my first patient travel two hours to speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ that's a great feeling. speaker-0: was. ⁓ and it added to my confidence. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. ⁓ speaker-0: And I think when we talk about marketing and you know, branding is like a word that gets thrown around a lot and I'm broad. And I think it's getting almost like this cringy reaction. Have you watched the Scrubs reboot? It's really funny. Okay. But there is there's Doctor TikTok. She's like an influencer resident. Okay. She's hilarious. But I like about her a lot too is she's a good doctor. ⁓ but she's crying and they're like, Why didn't ⁓ th speaker-1: Not yet. speaker-0: Something about like why did you act like that? Why didn't you just come to me for help? And she says, It goes against my brand. speaker-1: ⁓ my god. Well that's not bad though. No. speaker-0: But you know we'll just kinda tying things back in speaker-1: I'd like to address something on that. ⁓ whether whether it's real or not, right? But at the end of the day, man, your brand is a helpless thing that you have control over. And when you a brand is like a helpless baby, like a newborn baby, because it can't do anything for itself. And then when a brand is when you're feeling frustration from a project or you know, There's negative energy that comes from something from the brand. It's because it wasn't being taken care of. It's like a helpless baby. You know, when you feed the baby, it's calm, right? When it's sitting in its own poo, like no one likes that. Right? Like you don't let you don't let your brand sit in its own poo. Don't. speaker-0: Let's hit on that like a little bit harder then. Because so you and I met, became friends because I needed a headshot. Mine were awful. And I also recognized the importance of branding. I had was a member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry at the time. I still am today. And ⁓ branding was talked about. They even sent me a workbook to do it. And I was like, All right, I did this workbook and I great, I still don't know what my brand is. And then over the next few years You and I got talking about it more and more. We've talked you know, we can hit on this story. But when it came down to it, you and I sat down and were like, what's personal brand versus practice brand? And let's let's you know, so right now we have three brands that you've helped me develop ⁓ and are helping me care for. It's the personal brand, it's the practice brand, and it's the med spots brand. So what's the differences like like What did you have to like think about and what are the differences between those types of things? speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so the the difference is number one, taking a step back, right? Like sometimes as a creative and a marketing strategist, you know ⁓ you have to you you have to start to look beyond the brand. You have to look at the components and you have to see like what's possible and what's doable. Because a lot of time ⁓ a client will be like, I wanna do this but they maybe don't have the technology to support it. Let's speaker-0: More specific though, like let's so let's use me as an example. Okay, I will be vulnerable. Okay. Like what when I came to you and I was like, dude, I need a brand for the practice. What what did you see and go, uh-uh? ⁓ speaker-1: Right. Okay. So Yeah. It was inconsistent. It was you it was it was inconsistent. The logo was used differently, had some of it had different colors, you know, like the the only the one component that I felt that we could really lean into was the lips that you had. You had the lips created and it felt very modern and and you even expressed like I'm open to a lot of things changing, but you leave those damn lips alone. speaker-0: I had just for the record, I had spent like a lot of speaker-1: X amount of dollars. It's double X. speaker-0: acrylic cutout that we had embedded into the decor at the practice. Right. speaker-1: So, you know, you you take a look at a brand and you start to identify, okay, what do they have and what don't they have? So when I looked at your brand, I saw that you have a logo. you did not have an established typography, ⁓ your color palette there was somewhat of a consistent color palette, but it there was still ⁓ I di it was wasn't as harmonious as I would have liked. speaker-0: Yeah, and it was just it wasn't me. speaker-1: It wasn't it wasn't it wasn't Dr. E. So So once you start to when you're when you're building a brand, you need components and you need to have that right foundation. So for me, there are three to four, but the first three are the most important. One, you gotta have a logo. Then you need to have identified typography. One or two at most. Maybe there's a third one for special things. Because it's speaker-0: Why is the typography important? Because that was the hardest thing for me to just to explain to my staff. speaker-1: It was one of the things that like so if you break down typography, right, and I'll just keep it simple, you have a serifont, a sans serif font, right? So a sans serif font is a typeface or a font that has like little feet on it, right? Don't think little feet, but like it it goes beyond the base, right? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, just you know, Times Roman and Helvetica, just look at the difference. So speaker-0: Anyone can go into the Word right now and say speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so so for the typography, right, like when you're doing a headline, that's showing up consistently with your logo, right? So you wanna those component trees that you're always using, you know, you wanna have harmony there. You wanna have consistency there. So if you know, you're gonna do a different typeface for something on one piece of marking material, but then you're gonna do it on something else, you're confusing your audience. speaker-0: We were do ⁓ we were doing okay with the website, but we had too many different cooks in the kitchen. You'd look at our billboards and it's using fonts that I it looked confused. It's not as confused as some dental marketing that I've seen, but you're right. It there was no consistency and peop and you want immediate recognizability. speaker-1: Mm. Right. You want to look at that and be like, that's yep, I know that. That's Dr. Elliott and his you know. ⁓ but so then yeah, so the components that you need, logo, typography, ⁓ and then a color palette. So the color palette is very important because you know, you wanna have these colors that support your brand, you know, in the digital world, in the print world, and then in the real world when people show up to your facility, right? Or they show up to the practice and it's like, you know, you you start to build this universe that, you know, people become familiar with. Right. And there's a process. And and this isn't like a f a switch that you can just flip overnight. You you have you really have to pay attention to it. Now, once you have those foundations set, then we started to work on your tone of voice. Right. Well, no, but like speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: When we're doing messaging, how do we sound? Right. There's a big difference between saying, like, I can help you I can help fix your cavities. Or is it, you know, again, are you missing teeth? We can help you at Taylor Drive Dental Care, or missing teeth and confidence, find both at Taylor Drive Dental Care. So we're trying to be relatable. And not just tell people what we can do. We're trying to tap into that messaging, that polls. speaker-0: 'Cause I could list everything that I do on my marketing or I could deliver a message. speaker-1: Right. And you could deliver a message. And I think ⁓ you know, a lot of people too get caught up in well, they they want to tell everybody everything because they wanna piggyback on this opportunity. Let's just take a billboard, right? Yeah. How many times have we seen the billboard and it's ten pounds of crap packed into a five pound bag? speaker-0: Yeah, listing you know, and we even did that. W ⁓ we had billboards that listed twelve to fourteen services on them. No one can read it. speaker-1: No, no, no one can. So you want something that's digestible in three seconds. And that's why, you know, from a marketing standpoint and social media with reels and TikTok and like all that stuff, that's why that micro size bits and pieces of information started to drive different types of marketing. Right? The seven second clip or the fifteen sec I would have known like twenty years ago it'd been like a seven second ad? You kidding me? speaker-0: But you know, wha you know, I think you and I talked about this before. I was looking through an old Life magazine. They had the some of their ads were extremely basic because the attention span even back then was short. I just think we've gotten better at creating a digital and video format that amount of time too. speaker-1: Yeah. I mean and even my time at Mercury, you know, at Mercury Marine, you know, and it's an engineering company and features and benefits around engines, you know, the amount of nerd information that ⁓ speaker-0: But when you approach that you put a really sweet picture of a a guy on a boat. And for someone like me who wasn't into the engine maybe, yeah. I'm looking at the cool boat and I go, I want that boat Yeah. speaker-1: You want the lifestyle. Yeah, you want the lifestyle. People don't go engineing. Yeah. Some do, yes. speaker-0: They go back ⁓ Well okay, can we like break this down a little bit further then? Like I came to you and I'm like, I want to be the brand. You pump the brakes on that a little bit. Just telling the story here. Like you need to encompass the brand, but you have other practitioners working. speaker-1: Absolutely. Right. So if everything is gonna be about you, right, then then we don't we don't get to see the team aspect of it that I know you care about. So ⁓ so yeah, when you brought brought it up to me and you're like, you know, I know I need to be the face, you know, but ⁓ I I think I I was like, hey, let's pump the brakes and let's take a step back and like let's talk about how a lot of this stuff will live. speaker-0: Super important for speaker-1: Right. That's one of my favorite questions. How will this campaign live? Or how will this picture live? Right? And it challenges my clients, customers, friends, people in life to think differently about what is happening. Because how many times in marketing were you like, I gotta get a website done? But you didn't ask yourself, what do I need my website to do? You just needed you knew you needed a website. speaker-0: That's one of the things I came to you with is that I was like, Is is this website right? And I guess to kind of like pull pull it in here a little bit, like I think one thing you said to me is that the brand of the business needs to exist, whether or not you're the face of it, but it shouldn't conflict with who you are. Am I like quoting you correctly there? speaker-1: Yes. If for some reason you're not here tomorrow at the practice, then what? You know, so again, that's like thinking about the brand, thinking about the practice as something that cannot help itself. So how do you set it up for success? speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: It's interesting. A lot of people that start a business and they get into it. Marketing is something that is an afterthought. They're like, I'm open my doors and people will walk in. speaker-0: Heck. It doesn't work. It speaker-1: That doesn't it really doesn't. So, ⁓ I mean, I don't know how far down the rabbit hole you want me to to go here, but I could do this all day when it talks to how you should care for your brand and the things that I think you've done an amazing job in doing. So I do wanna call out one thing. So one of the first the very first exercise ⁓ Dr. Elliott and I did to improve the brand was creating a brand book. Yes. This is something that is also like once you've identified like, you know, you have a logo, typography, and color palette. You know, this is now where okay, I have a business. I have other employees. I need to ensure that the brand is going to be cared for. So how might I ⁓ educate my staff on the brand? speaker-0: And this is something that I didn't realize I had gone through multiple exercises doing at the time. ⁓ was creating a mission statement, trying to create core pillars of what my business had to be. That was like one of the first things that we needed. Now we didn't use exactly what I had come up with in the past. That definitely influenced the rest of the brand book. speaker-1: Yeah. And I think it also helped you understand, you know, a lot better about like why we were doing what we were doing. So I walked Dr. Elliott through a whole exercise of like trying to understand the business, how that related, how we could start talking about it. Right. You know, we identified that, you know, what Dr. Elliott does is not only does he help people maintain what they have, but he provides comfort and confidence. Yeah. Right. You know, and then the parallels between what he and I do professionally, ⁓ we we kind of met in the we kind of met on the journey. speaker-0: think it really helped for you to understand what I was going for in the way that we were able to ⁓ layer and find the parallels of of our two b industries in photography and in dentistry. ⁓ you know I guess that's a good message to people though. Like people who are listening to this podcast and go, how the heck do I start with branding? If you started a business and you don't have a mission statement, you're already way behind. But most people who have started a business should have some sort of mission statement and core values. You've already started the process. Whether you realize it or not, you've started your branding. speaker-1: Absolutely. And so the and the brand book is again one of those things. Usually it's a PDF document, you can get it printed. But now that Dr. Elliott and his staff have it, you know, they all understand what the logo is. They all understand how to use the logo. They have the typography that they should be using. They have tone of voice examples. And when I say tone of voice, you're establishing guardrails around how you talk, you know, like We don't sound this way, we sound this way. We are not rude. We are not critical, you know, overly critical. We are not judgy. We are kind. We are supportive. You know? We are guiding, right? You know, like speaker-0: Yeah, and all my employees get that brand book when they start. In fact, when we interview them, we're looking for things, are they gonna conflict with the brand? Mm-hmm. Because all of my employees interact with our patients. speaker-1: Exactly. Absolutely. Right. So so this is right. But then also sometimes like you get a advertising opportunity. And you know, although you have resources internally that can do the creative for you, but sometimes this requires you just outsourcing or providing to ⁓ whoever you're gonna advertise with, you're like, Hey, here's my brand book, here's my logo, here's all the things. And the response is thank you. No one ever does that for us. speaker-0: So when Paramount Plus ever picks up my dental office based sitcom, I can hand them the brand book. speaker-1: And they're gonna say you're already one step ahead of everyone else. But yeah, so ⁓ I would say like, you know, if you're starting out, and then this is also a document, right, that holds accountability to the brand and yourself as in your case the brand owner. So ⁓ that that is probably a really good place to start. And the best thing about a brand book too is it evolves as the brand evolves. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Kip it can be added to, things can be taken out. ⁓ and I think when you're putting together a brand, it has to be something that you're excited about. And I do you mind if I go into some of the mistakes I made along the Well you're the guest today, you're not just the couple speaker-1: Your show, buddy. No, I mean no. I mean like what you learned through like you said, through some mistakes is why Yeah, man, go for it. speaker-0: Okay, so one of the things that I did early on was ⁓ I tried to keep everything too much the same as how my dad had things laid out. And what I realized is that my dad's eclectic nature was not gonna be cohesive with building a brand behind it. One of the most popular things in objects in the office was for a while was a wooden statue my dad had just sitting out of a skinny South American man holding a chicken. speaker-1: He may have gotten that on his travels, I would imagine. speaker-0: No, he probably bought it at a farmer's market somewhere. My dad was not a big traveler. But just like random like nothing was cohesive. So I like, Okay, we need to like step back. This office looks like my parents' house. It's like down to the s they use the same color stain on that front desk as they did for their entire stairs growing up. Like I I want this to not I want to feel like I've moved out of my parents' house. So we started updating the aesthetic and I did that without any brand. speaker-1: Gotcha. speaker-0: No colors really picked out, nothing. I hired an interior designer who's like, hey, you need to have a brand. I'm like, just come up with something, and if I like it, we'll go with it. So he came up with some mood boards, and that was actually a good place to start. And he had like really like distinct, like, this is the feeling I'm going for, this and that. But it was what he thought ⁓ it should be. And I had I haven't I hadn't given him any idea of what my mission was. And speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: He just kinda pulled what he knew from me 'cause I he knew me personally. He's like, This is what he wants, this is the type of clientele he wants to attract, this is what we need to do. So we then took so then I hired a web developer and they were a they're a good company. ⁓ they did a good job. But again, I didn't give them enough information. I'm like, well, we've been using red and blue in like and navy blue in a lot of our advertising in the past, so let's just continue to use that. And what we got was like kind of an American flag look across our website. Yep, so then I'm like, okay, back up, back up, back up. We did a boot board for the interior design work. speaker-1: Red, white, and blue. speaker-0: Let's just hit send them that mood board and have them replicate that. Well now now the messaging isn't matching the mood. Now it it just didn't fit right. So th that's when I cut and no one everyone had an input on what it should be like. Like all my staff were making like suggestions. Way too much. And what I needed to do was I'm gonna be like, okay. speaker-1: Lots of cooks in the kitchen. speaker-0: Not everyone's gonna like how this is gonna be decorated. In fact I had I had one staff member who's always told me how ugly she certain things thinks certain ⁓ things I've picked out are. Yeah, it's fine. speaker-1: That's so great. It's really nice to let people know when they think things are ugly. speaker-0: Yeah. You know what? At least she's honest. and then I have ⁓ and I'll never falter for that. ⁓ but I was like, Okay, I'm done. I'm done. I'm gonna meet I'm gonna call John And I am going to do what I should have done at the f the start, which is meet with him, tell him what I want my business to be like, what I have established already, and I'm not gonna have anyone else in the room to bias it in what the bit place had been like in the past. And then you and I had to digest like Are we creating a brand that can sustain itself or are we trying to create something that has no semblance on reality? Can we deliver what we're we're proposing here? Well speaker-1: I also, as we were going through the exercise, I needed to learn about we did. We talked a lot at dentistry, learned a lot 'cause I I get very inquisitive, right? Like I start to ask a ton of questions because ultimately like the marketing should be adding to the bottom line. Right. speaker-0: Yeah, we have to talk a lot of dentistry. And here's my message to anyone who's starting a business or any dentist that is trying to start or buy a an office and it wants to create a brand is to work with a group of people or a singular person like I did with John who understands what branding is and you spend a minimum of a four-hour session with them. speaker-1: It goes by quick, believe it or not. And it's a lot of fun because you start to uncover a lot of things you didn't even realize. speaker-0: Now any company that says we're gonna propose a brand directly to you without a conversation like that, find someone else or insist upon it. Like, hey, no, I need to be here. And if they hand you three different things and you're not excited about any of them you need to ask yourself, is it time to move on to a different company? Or speaker-1: Did you do a good job briefing them on the tab? Because in my experience and I saw with my own two eyes, so about a twenty year corporate career, and I saw it time and time again where we would we would be working with an agency for a specific project and it was just like a carpet bomb. Here you go, get it done. You're an agency, you have all the skills, you guys are smart. So like that's why we pay you all the big speaker-0: That's true. That's true. speaker-1: All the big money. That's website. And honestly, like that's where you fail. That is the biggest point of failure. And that goes back to not caring about your brand. You're going ahead and putting your brand in the hands of another human being, and you're saying, Here, I now don't care about my brand, and you tell me what my brand should be. speaker-0: I like it. That it or I don't like what you're saying, but I like the message. You know, there's a lot of self discovery when we get out of dental school. I was fortunate enough to be older when I went to dental school. I had probably a better grip on who I was as a person than a lot of my classmates who were four to five years younger than me. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: ⁓ 'cause I started dental school at twenty seven and most of them were twenty two and we even had some people who were younger. I had toured, I had worked in retail, I knew I was a nerdy anime kid who could felt as comfortable in like skate shoes and skinny jeans as I did in a suit. Like I knew that I had different aspects to who I was. I was never trying to like force myself to look like to be someone else. Mm-hmm. Then I got to dental school where they put you all in the same color scrubs and they try to beat the individuality out of you. And if you're twenty two years old and this doesn't apply to everyone, and you've lived at home the entire time that you're at school, you know, ⁓ your life has been school since you were in kindergarten. You went you didn't take a gap year, there's no self discovery. Finding out who you are right after coming out of dental school is going to take time and it's okay. And I think that's true for any entrepreneur who's worked in an industry for a really long time and maybe you can echo this after you left the corporate level. Mm-hmm. Did it take it sometimes takes time and and therapy, which is okay. I went to therapy a speaker-1: It's okay. Therapy comes in different shapes and sizes and situations. speaker-0: Mine was paying a therapist to yell at her so I didn't yell at my family. speaker-1: Some people do that into a pillow. speaker-0: Yes. But the t pillow can't give you retrospective on whether you're being a jerk or not. speaker-1: I mean there ⁓ there's definitely ⁓ more of an upside to yelling at a human being when you pay them to yell at But ⁓ carry carry on, carry on, carry on. speaker-0: No. When you got out of the corporate sector, was there th there was probably times of self discovery going on? speaker-1: ⁓ my god. ⁓ my god, you I love this question and thank you for asking it. Like So yes, I was completely beat up and broken down within the the corporate structure, you know. ⁓ speaker-0: You're not trying to rag on it. speaker-1: No, no, man, I love I love where I was. But you know, I got it was time to move on. I moved on and self discovery wise I ⁓ I learned a lot. I think it took me about six months before things really started to clear up because when I left I felt like man, I I'm you know, I'm forty six. I I th I thought the juice was gone, but it wasn't. It just it got exhausted. speaker-0: Yeah. I think it changed too and I think when I came in and we were just talking. ⁓ I you and I both figured out what we liked about our professions more. speaker-1: Yeah. The the clarity that I got was that, you know, I still had a lot to offer. You know, I I can help people with their brand. I understand the process. So that I think for me is really where my confidence comes from when it comes to marketing and branding is the process. ⁓ I I have started I started at an entry level way ⁓ you know job. ⁓ as a production designer, which is a lower than a graphic designer. ⁓ and I worked my up to being a creative director, you know, and through that process, right, like you you get to you get to sample all of it and it it's really, really that's the growth. ⁓ and then when you add the business side to it, right, because when you're doing marketing, right, like you know, it's gotta add to the bottom line. So you have to start to care about those things. But it's the process and it's ⁓ it's ⁓ It's the process. So Baking that into everything I do helps me being able to lead and guide and discuss those ⁓ conversations. speaker-0: Can we so like moving on from that because I think we could talk about this for another hour and a half. Yeah. But one thing that you pushed me to do, and you would also push back on is I I was like, I'm gonna be authentic to who I am. Mm-hmm. ⁓ I'm gonna wear black scrub. I'm not gonna hide my tattoos in marketing and advertising. No. I am going to ⁓ we're gonna play more energy filled music in the dental office and we're gonna create an authentic experience for the patient. speaker-1: Right. It's those little things too. So like showing up as who you are is gonna make you is gonna make your brand more authentic. And it's also gonna cut the crap with yourself. Right. You know, like you're being who you are, so you're not wasting any energy trying to be something that you're not. Agree. And then you can put that into your craft or something else more meaningful. speaker-0: And and you really like hit that hard. We we did all kinds of like like metaphors and like comparisons. We talked about Voltagio. The like the great chef is again unapologetically himself. In fact, a lot of chefs since he hit the really hit the scene have I don't think we'd see so many neck tattoos in the kitchen on the head chef if it wasn't for Valtagio. speaker-1: yeah. He I think he yeah, he made it feel like do what you love and express yourself how you want to. speaker-0: Right. And then for me, 'cause like, you know, I want to be a little edgy. I want to be unapologetically myself, but I want to be a professional. And that's what we really embrace with dentistry. ⁓ we've created a patient experience that can be relaxed and feels like home because when it comes down to it, the patient comes in, we interview them, we try to meet them at their part of the journey. Yep. ⁓ and then their pa their experience after that. Is curated to them. ⁓ we try to create a relaxing environment. I am trained on dental sedation and I feel like I use it less and less because we provide more our our experience has become more and more comfortable. speaker-1: Well, in building that trust. speaker-0: Yes. By being authentic. Yep. So it's everything from I come in, I I've gotten some information from your interview to get to know you a little bit. So we don't have that awkwardness of like hey I don't know. speaker-1: Right, but you're also marketing to this different generation than your dad was too, right? Where, you know, there there was a lot of feature benefit and the stereotype. But like you said, the white lab code. Like if you don't look the part, are you the part? And that now is I personally think that's out the window. speaker-0: I think so too, for the most part. There are still people who you know, gravitate to that and that's speaker-1: It's just not something that it's a watch out anymore, you know, like ⁓ nose rings, septum piercings, you know, tattoos below the elbow, etc. speaker-0: Very interesting to edit the ⁓ dress code ⁓ in our ⁓ in our practice manual so I could come to work. speaker-1: That that's a that's a heavy task. Yeah. You know, speaker-0: And we embrace the things that we did really, really well to begin with, which was the patient experience and and really targeting comfort. Making sure that the patient has an outlet to express what they're fearful of or what their expectations are in their new patient interview. Down to ⁓ making sure that our chairs are comfortable, that the padding isn't worn out. We do noise canceling headphones. Some of our rooms have TVs on the the top. We nitrous or ⁓ laughing gas is always Available, we do sedation dentistry. And the whole point is to get to know where you're at on your journey and make sure that your person your patient experience is different ⁓ than the last patient. And the way we do that and make people feel comfortable is by being authentic and offering certain amenities that you're not gonna find at every. ⁓ and then when we talked about the branding and marketing for the med spa, I was like, dude, I haven't embraced enough of who I am as like that was more even more fun. Yeah. I'm not saying that Denish the dental branding wasn't fun, but we did have to be more professional. But with with the med spot we could just be straight up speaker-1: And that and that was fun. Dude, the med spa wa is just straight up unapologetically authentic. Yep. Like straight up. So why okay, why don't you say what the other business is and say like what the stereotypes are and then like how we appro and then we can get into how we approach it, but I'd love for you to just kind of like tee it up. speaker-0: Yeah, so ⁓ I own a facial aesthetic center. It's not a a true med spa. ⁓ but we we focus on the head and neck and ⁓ we do do some body treatments as well. ⁓ but we provide Botox fillers, ⁓ collagen stimulating injections, laser hair removal removal, ⁓ medical grade ⁓ facials and products. And a lot of other services that are designated towards creating healthier skin and making you feel more confident in the way you look. Mm-hmm. Helping you age gracefully or maybe changing something about the appearance in a non surgical way. Mm-hmm. That that you're happy with. That you know, we're always we're not looking to make you look like you've had something done. So but There's a lot of med spas out there. And they're it's just pink. Everything is pink. Or it's really soft spa tones. Mm-hmm. And I did an exercise. I don't even want to call it an exercise. I would show my wife, I'm like, Hey, what med spa do you think this is? And it would just be a bunch of pink stuff and she'd be like, ⁓ it's this one down in Milwaukee. I'm like, No, this one's in Texas. It's right. It was the exact same thing done over and over. And as a guy in that industry, which is kind of rare, I was like, well, let's capitalize on that. Let's make a place that male or female are really comfortable going to. And let's lean into something that the Generation X and Millennials, which are my target audience, both can relate to and I can relate to, which is kind of that MTV punk rock vibe. Mm-hmm. speaker-1: Yeah. And that's the approach we took. Now, the first thing that we discussed was the stereotype around ⁓ Botox fillers, right? Yeah, we we we addressed it right off the bat, right? So if we were gonna go into doing this brand, like my approach to it is like again, gotta be genuine, gotta keep it real, own who you are, right? Like there the and I'm just gonna say it. ⁓ there's a the stereotype is Like that people can look really bad when when it's not done right. And and they can that's not absolutely so the really what the driving force behind the brand now, so Taylor Drive Facial Aesthetics, TDFA, is to own your glow and unapologetically be yourself. If you want to get Botox, you wanna get fillers, you wanna do this, this and that, that's cool. speaker-0: And they can but that's not what we do. speaker-1: You know what? You're doing it for you. You're doing it for your confidence. You're and you're you're discarding the naysayers out there because you're doing it for you. You're not doing it for anyone else. speaker-0: Right. And and we we built from there. We did. We're gonna do black, we're gonna do textures, we're gonna do bright colors, we're we're going to like I thought you on using pink at all and you found a way to use it as an accent color. ⁓ but we created a brand that is completely different than any of the other like ⁓ Businesses that are in the industry. speaker-1: It is. It's it's different, you know, and you know, I'd not to kind of like take a nod at like the brand Liquid Death, but you know, they were actually very inspiring to me and not just like for this exercise with TDFA, but just they are a brand that came out and they were basically like, you know, screw corporate America. You know, like you know, if you go on your website, you know, they're basically like we are the uncorporate corporate. You know, so it was with that sort of inspiration that like we should be unapologetic for the services we offer because we know what people say. Right. So like let's just nip it in the butt right off the bat. And as you walk through the door, you even see it. Own your glow. Own who you are. speaker-0: Yeah, I think that's hugely important. ⁓ and it it embraced who I was. I felt more comfortable in that because again the branding that was done for that business was done by someone who marketed it around themselves more than a business. Mm-hmm. And I even like told my employees, I'm like, look, we can kind of do whatever we want with this because like if you think about it in the like idea of MTV, MTV has Brittany Spears and Slipknot playing on the same stage. You you know what I mean? Like there's there is like you do like everyone has some sort of thing about themselves that they they yeah, ⁓ tongue in cheek aspect of themselves, and that's what we're kinda hitting at. and I think when it came down to it, that reflected everything about what I think I do differently in dentistry. And I am not saying that I am a unicorn in any way. There's a lot of really great dentists that I think have improved. Started to embrace this ideology. ⁓ but like, it's not just about the technology. You and I went over that over and over and over. And I'm like, I want to do a video that shows every little aspect of what I'm doing with the computer because it's freaking cool. And I remember you like stopping me more than once and being like, the consumer doesn't care. They want to know that you're using the technology to create better care. ⁓ And we do do that. speaker-1: Exactly. speaker-0: Like we stay ahead of the game. Like ⁓ we use three D printing in ways that have never been done before. It speaker-1: And you see, like you allowed me to understand how the technology could be leveraged as marketing, right? So same day crowns, right, goes back to technology. speaker-0: Right. But if I had it my way, we would have made a five minute video of the same day crown process and try to use that as an advertisement. Right. Where yours was well, let's just show you making the crown really quick, but let's look at the patient experience in that that video as well. speaker-1: Yeah. I and that's something that a lot of people miss. ⁓ with their advertising is they don't put the customer experience at the center and they feel like what they need to do is just talk about the services that they provide and the features and benefits that go along with them. So it you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like buying a car. speaker-0: And when I was thinking like how I think through cases is I'm thinking about how everything is gonna move and go together. ⁓ virtually mounting up cases or even printing them out and looking at teeth, how am I gonna do this? ⁓ like printing out models. I have to think about like where's the patient at? What can they do financially, because that's a huge component. Right. ⁓ at the same time, I'm not there to diagnose their wallet, there to diagnose their mouth. But I think about cases in this this big overarching way. If that's not part of advertising, the patient doesn't now that there are people there are patients who are interested in that. And that's where a blog post comes in. speaker-1: Right, or a case study, right? And it goes back to your portfolio of before and after. Right. speaker-0: Right. But they're but when it comes to your marketing, right and this is maybe a message for dentists who are trying to figure out what to do with their marketing. Mm-hmm. That's not what brings people in necessarily. They wanna f they wanna like look at you as an authority. They wanna look at you as they wanna get a good idea what their experience is gonna be look like. And they wanna know that the outcome is gonna be solid. So in a sense, you could do a really basic Video showing the patient walk in looking super comfortable, smiling the entire time. You wanna show off your tech, show them getting stand and how it's comfortable, and then show the final outcome. You don't even need to show them the before. speaker-1: It's that smile, right? Yeah. And that's and that like let's tie back to that confidence, right? Like I I mean I've seen it when you've done the reveal, but like there is nothing more genuine in nature than when you know that you you just change someone's life. speaker-0: And you can see that in the smile and in the before and afters. And that's where those should play. When somebody is like once you've got them in from your marketing and they get to your website, that's where your blog posts start to sing. Mm-hmm. And that's where the before and after smile gallery sits. And what I love about a smile transformation that has improved someone's confidence is so many people think I did Botox or fillers on that patient because they're glowing. compare I'm like I've haven't and and most of them I haven't done a thing. On one side we have a person who's forcing a smile and isn't confident about themselves. And on the other side we have somebody who is. They look more radiant, they look more natural and they look more confident and that has almost a physical change in their appearance. Does have a physical change. speaker-1: I mean the Yeah, I mean we recently just did a video testimonial with one of Dr. Elliott's patients and I I actually met this patient prior to ⁓ and then t when we did the interview, it was just like night and day. It was like holy crap. Like sh one of the things in the video was she's like, I got my confidence. Like that's amazing. speaker-0: Right. See and I I think she had a really good line of like I was confident in who I was but there was a part of my confidence that I was missing that I didn't even realize I was missing until I got my smile. speaker-1: Right. Right. It's a powerful thing. So ⁓ speaker-0: For sure. I think, you know, like we should start to wrap this episode up, but when we talk about your industry and my industry, dentistry is hard. ⁓ you're you know, mark y a lot of guys who are in private practice, the marketing is difficult. You're running everything as the business owner. Having a really good office manager can help. Well speaker-1: How about this, right? So you were a dentist that was also doing your own marketing. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Do you suggest that? speaker-0: No. Now I do suggest you being involved in your own brand and working on your brand. Mm-hmm. If you have the background and the tenacity and the time to do it yourself, you can. Like I know guys who started their own practice and their things are slow. That those types of people are able to do it themselves to a degree. Again, it it doesn't always work. speaker-1: Done and done. speaker-0: But me, I bought a super busy practice and I was the lead clinician. It it I would not suggest it. speaker-1: Something's gotta give, right? And those are the things like as you you know, as a manager, whatever, right? Like you have to let go of those things. Because your job is to focus on being a kick ass dentist, right? And expand your craft. Not to be the best marketer. And that's something that I think just even outside of dentistry, I think people people don't realize. speaker-0: The yeah, people this is a big I mean there's parallels to a lot of things. I mean when you buy a business or start a business, you're usually your accountant, your bookkeeper, your payroll person, the manager, everything. One thing that you don't want to screw up on because it can f like it can make or break your company is your marketing and asking for help is always a a valuable thing. and and for me as a dentist speaker-1: There is. speaker-0: My job is really hard already as a dentist. speaker-1: Yeah. You're you're in there doing ⁓ you know, three tooth extractions and then like you're supposed to be working on headlines for a Google Ad campaign? No, I don't think so. speaker-0: Eighth would be easy. I could do a Google ad campaign during that You need to get on my level here. Twenty speaker-1: Yeah ⁓ speaker-0: hard. You've experienced that. But you've also seen where good marketing and pivoting on marketing is important. I mean, your headshot comp like business just came out of nowhere and probably could have sustained sustained you for the rest of your life if you had chosen to go that way. speaker-1: Yeah. You know, I think so. I mean, again, you know, I I it's what I bring to that though. Like and and it's interesting, right? Like I don't know like if I could in a sense do what you did, like buy a like sell my practice, right? You d sorry, Dr. Allen but he bought the practice, right? But if I were to sell my business, my photography business, like yes, they can use all the same tools. But they're not going to get the same results. speaker-0: a huge problem in dentistry ⁓ because you sell the practice and so many single doctor practices everything is based around that single doctor and it loses value in that way. Right. So for me I was like I identified that early and I'm like my practice needs to be worth something whether I'm working or not. ⁓ so I need great associates or to bring in great partners. And that was another thing, and I think that loops back, we didn't even mention this, is that was why it was important for my brand, for whatever comes from this podcast or my mentoring or things like that, was not going to be the same as the business's brand. The business's brand had to be a reflection of me because I needed to be authentic. But it is not me. speaker-1: Well, I think we did a really good job of breaking down some of the concerns around the tattoos. Right? Yeah. You know, like establishing that it's okay to be who you are because and once you get past that, like you know, you just show up as yourself. speaker-0: Yeah, I don't even wear my clinic coat unless the handpiece is spinning anymore. I just So ⁓ speaker-1: And and has it changed anything? speaker-0: In a way. I'm just more confident when I walk into a room, this is who I am. If they have a problem with it, they can go somewhere else. So that ⁓ it makes my day easier, that's for sure. Because if you're faking who you are. Like I have a f a bunch of friends who are very introverted and they'll try to like force themselves to be extroverts. ⁓ and it makes them miserable. ⁓ and they don't have to practice dentistry that way. You can create a brand that is quiet and more somber. We talked about that. You don't have to be everybody's dentist. speaker-1: No, you don't. Well, how about this? Because I know we're near the end. What advice would you give to other dental practices in regarding like and I know we've touched on it, but just kind of close it out here. You know, when it comes to your dental practice and the brand, what do you recommend? speaker-0: ⁓ As an owner or like I need a little bit more space. speaker-1: Okay, yeah. So as the owner and when it comes to marketing, you know, and it's a dental practice, I wanna keep it kinda on that track. How how how do you recommend handling this? speaker-0: Let's narrow the scope just a little bit. Let's say that you're buying an established practice. speaker-1: Okay, you're buying an established practice. How do you handle the marketing? Sorry. speaker-0: That's a little easier. Well, you know, a startup is completely different. ⁓ but if you're buying a practice and you're about to become the practice owner, ⁓ the worst thing I think you can do culturally for your staff is to tear down everything that was existing about that practice. But you also cannot continue what the culture was about that practice is if it's in conflict with who you are. So When it comes to marketing, your branding should maybe have s honor what came before that. So for me, that was leaving the lips intact and focusing on the patient experience, which was always my dad's goal because he he's not the warm fuzzy type. He relied on his staff to provide that patient excellent experience, or I rely on myself to provide that experience. ⁓ I'm way more speaker-1: ⁓ you're way more personal, jovial, like all the things. speaker-0: My dad is a great guy. ⁓ a conversationalist but he's not the same as I am when it comes to like ⁓ my my staff have to sometimes drag me out of there. So again to narrow it back if you're buying a practice and y you can't tear down everything that happened before. You need to honor the aspects that are there that made it great in the first place, the reason you wanted to buy it, but it should not conflict with who you are. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: And your brand should develop from there. And I think one big suggestion is that I can make, and I think it was a thing that maybe was a mistake I was making early on, is trying to throw everything that was about like about myself into the brand, but it was also making me try to be someone I wasn't necessarily. Like the brand should be a reflection of you and you should feel like you can be authentic within that brand, but it is not you either. Like speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: You know, who I am in my social media posts and things like that are a reflection of who I am, but that is not who I am. speaker-1: Right. Yeah. But speaker-0: And I think that's why I'm excited about this podcast is I get to share more about who I am. speaker-1: Agreed. Yeah. Well speaker-0: Yeah. But I still love it. I still love dentistry. I s like even through all of this roller coaster of things that have gone on. ⁓ you know, growth is hard and I'm liking what we're building. I'm liking working with John. I'm liking to see where John's growth is happening. And you know, where it's going, I don't know. I'd love to be to move into mentorship one day. I'd love speaker-1: Growing speaker-0: To own another practice maybe one day. I'd love to see my med spa grow or my facial aesthetic center grow. speaker-1: And and like now having those feelings because you've kinda gotten over the hump because from a marketing and branding standpoint right. You know, like you need you know now part of the process, you know what it takes. speaker-0: Couldn't do it without a group. Yeah. Yeah. I guess one exercise that you can do with yourselves is if you're spending too much time looking at your marketing that's proposed to you and going, I don't like this but I don't know why it's probably because your brand is not defined. speaker-1: Yeah, I would agree. speaker-0: All right. Again, we could talk about this forever, but I think we'll get too much into the nitty gritty. ⁓ but this has been another great episode of the Death Before De Decay podcast with Doctor Elliott, brought to you by Taylor Drive Dental Care. ⁓ thanks for listening and have an awesome day. speaker-1: Thanks for having me. speaker-0: I'll see you next time. speaker-1: Yes it was