How Doctors Can Build Membership-Based Practices That Create Real Impact

Founder-Led Marketing Through Content 0:00

What we're really seeing over and over is founder-led marketing via content creation. And it's really important now where your patients right now, they're listening to podcasts, They're discovering you on social media, and they really want to hear the founder. They want hear you, the doctor. they don't want here from your marketing team or someone else. The really wants to here directly from you. More patients, more authority, and more freedom. I'm Brett Gregory, founder of Doctor Talks. We're democratizing the creator economy for doctors.

Welcome to the show. Hello and welcome back to The Podcast. i'm your host, James Maskell. And today we are here with Brett. He is the founder. Brett, welcome to. James, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure and an honor working with you and I am happy to be here and excited to have our conversation. Yeah, before we kick off, I just wanted to let everyone know that Brett and his team run my podcast and I've had different teams over the years to organize it. But Brett, it's been great to work with you and your team and it makes it super easy to do all the logistical backend stuff.

So I'm really grateful for all of the support that you provided. Thanks so much. Really fun to have you on the network and to plug you in. We've got, you know, $3,000 doctors on our network now. And I love that you're such a champion of doctors. So that's near and dear to my heart. Well, look, one of the themes of The Evolution of Medicine has always been optimal practice models.

Doctor Talks Mission and Creator Economy 1:35

And there's a couple of things that have come up in the last little while that I want to ask you about with regard to getting the word out. But before we get into the specifics around podcasting, what is the vision for Doctor Talks? What's the mission and how do you help doctors in that mission? Sure, so the mission for Doctor Talks is two-sided, one for the patient, and one the doctor. So we're on a mission to help a billion people suffering from chronic illness and disease get the information they need directly from the source, which is you, the Doctor, who's listening to this.

And then the flip side to that same coin is we are democratizing the creator economy for doctors. I feel like doctors have been squeezed from so many different angles, So unfairly, And it's time for Doctors to get paid with your knowledge. so I've created a platform that helps amplify your voice, get you seen and heard and compensated for your information. So I'm all about helping doctors because I believe you're the ones that are really going to help us all heal. Amazing. Well, look, I want to chat a little bit about podcasting, and that's the main way in which the doctors get the word out.

I'm sure that as soon as I say, hey, the idea here is that I wanted you to think about starting a podcast, they've probably heard it before. They've grown. It probably is in some ways very aspirational, because it's fun to have a pod cast, but they may have tried it and done a couple of episodes, or they might have found the whole process overwhelming. Why do you think that this is a critical piece of sort of the infrastructure for someone who wants to have an impact in that way? Well, podcasts are by far the fastest growing segment of any media.

And I mean, by an enormous margin. Right now, there's 850 million monthly active listeners for Spotify and Apple. And YouTube for podcasts is significantly larger than that. So all of your patients, clients and customers listen to podcasts. Pretty much all them do right now today. If you're not being a guest or a host, you really missing out on a huge channel that in a lot of ways can be extremely low cost or even free. And you know, I'm a big fan of crawl, walk, run. So if somebody feels like starting their own podcast is really overwhelming, no worries.

Start as a guest.

Why Podcasting Matters for Doctors 4:05

And I've spent a lot of time creating a really easy system where doctors can be a guests for free on podcasts. We've created a way where they can create their own channel on doctor talks for free. It takes two minutes. That's just like creating a YouTube channel, but you get connected in a network of 3000 other doctors that all have channels and many of them have their on podcasts and you can easily become a guest on those podcasts. One thing when I tell doctors, that is like, okay, start out as, as a guess.

very commonly hear this response, why would anyone want to hear me? And isn't this information that I have to share, hasn't it been said already over and over? I want it just take one quick step back and let people know why I'm on this mission in the first place. From 1996 to 2006, I had my own employee benefits business, and we did corporate wellness programs. And I had a talk radio show where I would interview CEOs of companies. I ended up building a really significant business just from the radio shows, which certainly helps me with these podcasts today.

Sadly, in 2006, my 32-year-old brother was diagnosed with stage four non-small cell carcinoma. He was given nine months to live. I passed away peacefully in my father's arms almost nine months later. My dad's a doctor and my mom is a nurse and she was a palliative care specialist. And so I got to see firsthand with my brother having literally the best care that anyone could possibly have. Father's doctor, mother's palliate care specialists. He was living with them for the last nine months of his life.

He literally had the best care in the world. And it made me realize what a privilege it is to be related to a doctor, to have a Doctor in a family. While I can't give everybody their own family member who's a Dr., the next best thing is I give people that information from a on demand at scale anytime they need it. So that's why I created Doctor Talks and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for doctors to get booked on podcasts. And from my perspective, I would respond to the doctor who says, why would anybody want to listen to me?

I'd say, Why wouldn't they? You know, when you go to a cocktail party and you tell people a doctor, they start asking you health care questions and medical questions. That happens a lot. So that should prove all you need to know about how people want to hear from you. They want that information from. You. I have found that it's incredibly easy for doctors to get booked on podcasts for free. We have a whole system and a process for that. Actually, I'd love to share if I could. Probably many of you are using your favorite AI product, whether it's Claude or ChatGPT.

What I always recommend for doctors is to create what I like to call your signature talk. And so this is the prompt, go to your your favourite AI platform and type in, help me come up with a catchy podcast interview title on, and then you fill in the blank. Whatever your area of expertise is, Alzheimer's, brain health, hormones, peptides, whatever it is, fill in the blank. So help me come up with a catchy podcast interview title on and fill-in-the-blank and it'll come with some amazing catchy podcasts interview titles.

Find the one that resonates with you and then we've made it really easy for you to send that as your pitch with one click to hundreds of doctors that host

Using AI to Create a Signature Talk 7:50

podcasts on Doctor Talks. And let me tell you, Most doctors that host their own podcasts are trying to do approximately one interview a week. They need 52 interviews a year. There are always looking for new people to interview and on doctor talks, it's usually doctors interviewing other doctors. So it is great because you can get interviewed by your peers. You're going to have a great conversation that, trust me, millions and tens of millions of people want to listen to. Yeah, super cool. Well, look, I've been thinking a little bit about, had a conversation a few weeks ago with a pharmacist from Ohio who has been one of the first people to use Fullscript Journey.

So Full script is a mission partner for us on the evolution of medicine. And on journey she said you know she'd start to build these journeys which is essentially like having the equivalent of a function health, you on the front of your practice we could sell labs to patients directly and then you have that without starting a new patient engagement with them. And so she's now selling 20 of those a month outside of just the normal pharmacy business. Wow. And she said that she had started a podcast.

Thanks. That she has her own journey as the only sponsor on that podcast, and it really got me thinking about, because I thought, like you said, when I started the Evolution of Medicine podcast I think there was zero podcasts for doctors in functional medicine because it's such a small niche. But, you know, there's lots of other people who are doing that now. But I had this idea and I wanted to run it by you because you, know the podcast business, and in this world, better than almost anyone. I have an idea where it's like, if I, had a local clinic and, I really wanted, to thrive, but I want it to grow my practice.

And I was really focused on my local area rather than like telemedicine. What about starting a podcast that is all about health but in my county or in chiropractor or local gym owner or a local therapist or whatever, I've probably been dreaming of being asked to be on a podcast, but no one's ever asked me. And if I show up and I say, hey, do you want to on my podcast? And then, Hey, would you send this to all your patients so they can hear you say? They probably would. And then that's going to put you in a position as a person of authority who has the podcast, who the has podcast called, you know, healthy El Dorado or whatever, is a great way of establishing that.

I think I just wanted to share that because I feel like that in my mind is actually a pretty exciting proposition for people who want to focus on building

Local Podcasting to Grow a Practice 10:50

a local practice. not only do I love that I recommend it constantly because that is actually the fastest way to monetize your podcast a lot of times when doctors start their own podcast they're thinking okay I want to be like Andrew Huberman or something and I tell people well there's a way to try and grow listeners and followers, but that's almost never the fastest way, to make money off of your podcast. If you're trying to actually monetize your podcasts, if you want to use your pod cast to get real patients in the door, what you just described is the fast way do it, local podcasting.

And it's really specifically, you wanna interview real referral sources. Now, depending on what do, That could be everything from other local physicians, it could a local chiropractor, a nutritionist, your local gym, the local yoga studio. It could also be local patients that love you and would be happy to be on and talk about their real patient success story. They love the Local Podcast as the fastest way to monetize interviewing real referral sources. So one of the things we did with doctor talks with our 3000 practitioners that are already on the platform.

We now have an AI matching tool that matches guests to host and one other things that you can do is source locally sometimes people want to do interviews only in their state because of their licensing requirements. Sometimes people want to do interviews only in their zip code to find people who can walk in the door. I'm a huge fan of that. It's something that is extremely practical and you can make a terrific podcast out of interviewing local referral sources. So it's one of my favorite ways to, and it is the fastest way to monetize your podcast.

Awesome, yeah, I could really see that working. I put together an event last year called Healthy El Dorado, and through that I met the local farmers, all the practitioners by putting on the event, but I can see a podcast would stand the test of time. and would be there as a, it's really about building a media brand around your business, right? Yeah, and here's kind of the pro move for that. So one of things that I always recommend to doctors is, especially when you first start out your podcast, all podcasts start with zero subscribers, you have zero five-star reviews, what I recommend is have the guests Ask the guest to give you a review after your podcast is done.

And the way that I like to do that is to use the phrase, please don't keep me a secret. So after you're podcast, is complete, send an email to your guys say, Hey, thank you so much. That was so great. I really appreciate it. Please don' keep us a Secret. Would you mind leaving me? A quick little review. on Apple. Now, if they're local, you would just simply ask them to also take that same review that they wrote and they can maybe modify it a little bit, but post it on your Google, your google business.

And so reviews on Your local Google business are help you tremendously with SEO search engine optimization. So you can have this dual effect where you get this real referral source who is happy to give you actual referrals. and you get the review for your podcast and the reviews for Google. That's the pro move when people are ready to do that.

Reviews, SEO, and Referral Sources 14:20

I love that! That sounds like a compelling starting point for practitioners. The objection might be, that sounds an overwhelming amount of time. Can you share how your system allows people to minimize the amount and maximize the output? yeah so i think it's the most important thing so again if you're going to be a guest your time commitment is not that much you know i i generally recommend people shoot for approximately 25 minute interviews that's just a rule of thumb that doesn't mean if go just that length.

But if you're going to be a guest, it should take about 30 minutes, an hour if your going have a long podcast. And however many times per week you can be guest on someone else's show, that's the extent of your time commitment. If you are going be host, all you have to do is make it work for you. So I have some hosts that only on Thursdays when they don't see patients Once every Thursday afternoon, they do one interview and they did that very consistently and it works great for them, one hour a week.

I have other doctors that have much more chaotic and busier schedules where they'll do a block recording once a month. They'll four plus shows once month, I'll have others that are even more extreme where there'll be two weeks a year they just knock out 25 interviews. Once or twice a year they'll knock out all their interviews at a live event. That's something that you're about to do. And we do that all the time. So when we go to live events now, we always have our camera crews with us. We're always recording podcasts.

I'm going to do an event in September where we're actually going record three podcasts simultaneously and I think we are going do 86 interviews. You just have to make it work for you. whatever is going to work for your schedule is what will allow you to sustain it. And so the thing about podcasts, the doctors that we have that have had a tremendous amount of success, we've got Dr. David Jockers who's got the largest functional nutrition podcast out there, Dr Joel Kahn who has got largest vegan cardiology podcast.

The thing that they have in common is longevity and consistency. They've been doing it for six and seven years respectively, and the only way that you're able to do that is if you are able make it work for your schedule. And I'll share one last side effect that most people don't expect when they're starting a podcast, whether it's just a guest or a host, is it is way more fun than they expected it to be.

Time-Efficient Podcasting Systems 17:15

And that's something that I always experience. The last thing that i'll say is having your own podcast, I call it super networking. It's a license where if you're at a conference and maybe there's some very famous person speaking on stage, somebody that you've always wanted to get to know and idolized or wanted just get a chance to shake their hand. Having a podcast is kind of like a license to walk up to that person, introduce yourself, say hello, and actually ask them if they want to be on your podcast.

And I think I have about a 99.9% success rate of our doctors who have done exactly that, getting people booked on podcasts. It's been really, really amazing. Right. You've just described, you know, my life story because that's literally how the functional forum happened. And then, with the evolution of medicine podcasts, I had a good run in that. We were the only one going, if you wanted to get the word out to other doctors about functional medicine or about your methodology or something you were doing in practice, it was a great place to do it.

I totally agree. That's been my experience as well. Yeah, amazing. Yeah. So what's the best way to start the process if you're interested in finding out more? Absolutely. Go to DrTalks.com forward slash connect. We'll put the links in the chat and there you can create your own channel for free. Once you there's an onboarding process that'll walk you through it takes about two minutes. And if you have a YouTube channel, one thing I found is like 95% of the doctors who come on have A YouTube Channel, you may have some content from that YouTube.

Channel. We've made it where you can automatically import that content, which gives you like a really robust, good-looking channel right out of the gates from moment one. Our AI automation system will match you as a guest with hosts or if you're a host with guests. And it's a great way, I wanna encourage you to then reach out to other doctors who are on the platform. You can reach to interview them on your channel or you can to be a guess. So remember what I told you earlier, is to create your signature talk, send them an email and say, Dr.

So-and-so, I love your show. Here is my signature. Talk. I would love to be a guest on your podcast. And many times you might get a response faster than you think. Now don't just send one and stop. I want you to send multiple, but look for a lot of the doctors that you're matched with on AI and send out, send that to several of them. You know, go ahead and set it to 20 or 30 or 40. There's plenty of doctors. That are looking for you right now on doctor talks. And we'd love to have you. So fill that out and we'll see on the inside.

Yeah, I love that. Well, just what you were referring to earlier, you know, this podcast is coming out around the Institute for Functional Medicine's annual conference. I am going to be there and be recording podcasts. Uh, got a live podcast set up there. So I'm going be, knocking out a lot of those. If you are around, love to see you come on by and we'll capture that with you. You know, Brett, I know I'd love to get your take on this because I think you've sort of really worked out one very interesting corner of this world, which is the distribution of these information.

And I guess I just love what you think is coming next, because ultimately a big differentiator 10 years ago, five years,

Super Networking and Conference Opportunities 21:00

maybe even still today to a certain degree, and I'm still actually baffled that more and more clinicians and doctors aren't aware of what's happening in the functional medicine space or the broader longevity and health creation space. But what do you think is coming next and how can practitioners prepare for being relevant, being found, and being successful in this next era? What we're really seeing over and over is founder led marketing via content creation. And it's really important now where your patients right now, they're listening to podcasts.

They're discovering you on social media. And they really wanna hear the founder they wanna hearing you the doctor they don't wanna here from your marketing team or someone else they want to hear directly from you and what i love about podcast is it's the easiest way to create that content. But also being interviewed or being a host is the way to create the long-form content. The short- form content is great to get found, and that's what you would see on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube Shorts. That's the great way get discovered.

But if you want to build trust enough so that you can convert a browser into an actual paying patient, they really love that long form-content. And that is what the interviews do so well and so easily. And if you're not out there creating the content, I think a lot of people are going to have a harder time getting discovered. So again, we've tried to make it as easy as we possibly can so that if the easiest way to create that content is for you to get interviewed.

Getting Started with DrTalks 22:55

And I've try to made that as easily as possible by being a guest on podcast with our network and system at Doctor Talks. Love that. Well, Brett, I really want to just share my appreciation for all the support. It's really good to work with you. Doing those summits has been really wonderful to lay out a framework to understand this new understanding of Alzheimer's, to connect with practitioners who are doing on the front lines. And I do think that if you are serious about building longevity into your practice, and I mean like being around for a while, not going out of business, and not having to be an employee to go out and do that.

Building this media channel is really powerful. And I think that what we talked about today with regards to the local opportunity is huge. I'd love to see more and more doctors stepping out to lead those conversations. Because really, the doctors that we know are a good source of being a quarterback for that information, because they can help sort of separate the wheat from the chaff, find the best vendors, put it into the context that people should understand. And I think that that's a translation element that can be really powerful.

Yeah, amazing. I couldn't agree more and I love helping doctors get discovered and growing, getting new patients and helping more people and getting paid fairly in the process. Awesome. Well, look, I would love to hear from you.

Founder-Led Content and the Future of Practice Growth 24:25

Set up your own system on DrTorch, your page, and ping me, one of the doctors here. I'm one the users, particularly if you have something that you think is interesting for health professionals and doctors, that would be great. This is the Evolution of Medicine podcast. If you found this episode valuable, please consider hitting the like, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps others find the show. And if you're ready to get known, get booked, and get more patients now, visit DrTalks.com forward slash connect to sign up for free and start getting booked on podcasts today.

We'll see you next time.