The Independent Physician’s Blueprint: Ditch Corporate Controls To Reduce Medical Practice Burnout & Generate Wealth Beyond Residency Training
(Previously PRACTICE:IMPOSSIBLE™)
Are you a physician yearning to break free from the corporate grind and find true fulfillment in your medical practice?
Designed for younger physicians, this show is your blueprint for transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without business experience.
Listen to discover:
- Proven strategies to decrease medical practice burnout and increase patient satisfaction.
- Remarkably simple ways to generate wealth and achieve financial freedom through leadership coaching, free online courses, and medical school debt reduction strategies.
- Insights from business leaders, spiritual mentors, and thought leaders to cultivate a deeper sense of purpose and master stress reduction habits in your medical practice.
Hosted by Coach JPMD, aka Jude A. Pierre, MD, with over 23 years of experience in Internal Medicine, this podcast demonstrates his passion for helping physicians thrive. Tune in every Monday for crazy medical stories and every Thursday for career-boosting insights or guest interviews.
Ready to ditch corporate controls, reduce burnout, and generate wealth beyond residency training? Listen to fan-favorite episodes 001 and 055.
Transform your medical practice journey today!
Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.
The Independent Physician’s Blueprint: Ditch Corporate Controls To Reduce Medical Practice Burnout & Generate Wealth Beyond Residency Training
043 - Dumbing Down Marketing for Physicians in Medical Practice with David Sanchez, RN
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It’s easy to fall into the pits of advertising and poor marketing strategies that will only help to increase the likelihood of recruiting patients that are unfit for you and your practice. In this episode, I have the opportunity to interview David Sanchez, RN and CEO of Digitalis Medical and Lift Transformation Recovery. David started as a Registered Nurse in the Emergency Department in Phoenix Arizona during the rise of the opioid epidemic. Inspired to make a difference, he established a nonprofit addiction treatment center. After working with digital marketing agencies who did not help them grow, he gathered a talented team of professionals and started Digitalis. Tune in to learn all about effective marketing strategies and how these efforts can help to streamline the right patient to your practice so YOU can Practice Impossible.
Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.
Coach JPMD 0:01
And so today, welcome to the practice impossible podcast with your host, Coach J, J eh ah. I can't even say my name today. Coach JPMD. I have some patients that actually tell me to slow down sometimes so I should slow down. And welcome you. Welcome, listeners. We're here with David Sanchez. today. He's a marketing expert and some people do marketing and some people do marketing for physicians. And if you deal with physicians, I know that you've got tough skin. So David, thank you for agreeing to be on the practice impossible podcast and reaching out to us.
Intro 0:37
Well, welcome to the practice impossible podcast, where your host, Jude, Pierre MD, also known as Coach JPMD discusses medical practice topics that will guide you through the maze that is the business of medicine, and teach you how to increase profits and help populations live long. Your mission should you choose to accept is to listen and be transformed. Now, here's your host, Coach JPMD.
Coach JPMD 1:02
This episode, I wanted to be an episode for physicians to understand the basics of marketing. And you were gracious enough to give us your time today to teach us about marketing physician practices and what you think should be the best practices. So welcome. And why don't you introduce yourself and let us know who you are and what you do?
David Sanchez, RN 1:20
Sure, yeah. So I'm David Sanchez. I am a registered nurse. And my path to marketing has been a little bit long. It's an interesting, but it's a lot of fun. I love helping practices grow and, and healthcare brands grow. So a little bit of my background, I became a nurse in 2009. I originally wanted to be a physician, actually. And I felt like I wanted to become a pastor actually around age 16. So I was like, You know what, I don't want to be a doctor anymore. Too much school, too much of a commitment. I don't want to commit to that much time. And then got married. About a year after graduating from high school, working at a grocery store. I was like, You know what, these bills are a lot more expensive than I thought. And so I just say, Well, I don't want to be a doctor. But I had a friend who was a nurse. And he inspired me. He's like, Well, why don't you just check out nursing and so yeah, I've always liked healthcare. So I went to nursing school, graduated at age 23. And been a nurse since but it's been an interesting journey. I started working in Phoenix for Banner Health. But I did have worked in probably five, six different specialties, psychiatric hospital, outpatient surgery, pre op and recovery and as a circulator, then later than progressive care unit, working with lots of cardiac patients, and then eventually in the emergency department. And when I was in the emergency department, so this would have been about 2010-2011. That's when bath salts and spice were really starting to come around. And heroin started hitting our area pretty hard. I'm in northern Arizona, and seeing 19 year olds overdose. 25 year olds overdose and not being able to do anything about it. Besides just trying to save their life when in a critical situation. It was just very, very difficult. And I thought, man, there's got to be something else I can do to be able to make more of a difference than just giving Narcan or helping with ventilations. And I felt like I really needed to do something more to make a difference. So I started a nonprofit Addiction Treatment Center. And that was my first business. I had no idea about business or starting a practice at the time. But within a couple of years, we became a medium size facility. We had an outpatient clinic, we offered detox services, and then also housing for men and women. So it became a pretty decent sized practice a seven figure practice 25 staff. And it was really rewarding and a lot of fun. But I had no idea how competitive it would be. It's the most competitive healthcare specialty. So I was forced to learn marketing. And I was working with some agencies, I got really frustrated because I couldn't understand what was working, what wasn't working. I was paying at least $15,000 per month just for advertising. And it was just frustrating. So I ended up starting to learn marketing. I said, You know what, I'm going to fire this agency. They're not actually helping us, I need to figure out this on my own, get my own team together. And eventually, I did start an agency of my own, to be able to support the mission of saving lives from addiction, and it also help other practices grow as well. So that's what led me into marketing.
Coach JPMD 4:33
That's an interesting story. So do you still have this business running?
David Sanchez, RN 4:37
I do. Well, yeah.
Coach JPMD 4:39
So you divide your time amongst ad agency, this business? Are you still practicing nurse or are you still seeing patients?
David Sanchez, RN 4:47
I still have my licence. Yeah, I work typically half a day a week in the or as a circulator at a an outpatient surgery center. Yeah.
Coach JPMD 4:55
That's pretty impressive. I didn't know the details of that story and If you know some of my work and what I've been trying to do and help them physicians, but physicians actually struggle with similar things, similar addictions, and we actually commit suicide 1.8 times more than the general population. So one of my goals it is tragic. And one of my goals is to help physicians and understand the business of medicine. Because I find that physicians, if they understand the business while their stress levels are down, if they have the right people in place, and they have the right consultants, then their stress level goes down and their income goes up, and then they can then take care of patients better. So marketing knows is even for me, I'm using this episode as a teaching tool for myself, selfishly. How do you convince a physician that they need to spend money on marketing?
David Sanchez, RN 5:48
Oh, when it comes down to it, it really has to do with putting yourself in the patient's shoes, because that's who you're trying to reach is the patients. And when they see health care providers, what they think is those health care people, I have a need, and I need you to help me. They don't even a lot of times see the distinction between a medical assistant and a nurse and a doctor. They just see it's those health care people, I need you to help me what's in it. For me, that's really what it comes down to. So if you can put yourself in the patient's shoes, then you can see a little more clearly how to meet that person's needs.
Coach JPMD 6:23
So you're speaking towards empathy.
David Sanchez, RN 6:25
Empathy, that's it.
Coach JPMD 6:27
And serving the patients. And I have something written on my board here. And it's a mission statement that I kind of developed over the time. But after reading Stephen Covey's book, trust and inspire our mission now is to serve and relate with our patients with knowledge and empathy. So I tell my staff, they're here for a need, we need to serve that need. And we need to relate with them. Because sometimes patients are upset, they're angry, they're yelling at you, but why are they yelling at you, you have to kind of relate with them to learn why they're going through what they're going through with knowledge, and then of course, with empathy. So how does a physician then use marketing to target that patient who thinks that everything is everyone is the same,
David Sanchez, RN 7:09
you have to have a unique selling proposition. There's different details, but it really takes thought, what makes me unique, what makes my practice unique, the patients can't see your skill level, and be telling them is not as powerful as what they'll see, either online or hearing from other people. Research has shown us that at least 88% of patients will research practice online through reviews, forever calling to make an appointment or stepping foot in the door. And especially the millennial generation and younger, we put a lot more value. I mean, I'm 36. But our generation puts a lot more value on what they read online than a lot of other sources. So the physician referral from another provider is becoming less and less important to people nowadays,
Coach JPMD 7:56
You're absolutely right because I see a lot of patients coming to me and saying, Oh, I saw your video, I saw your profile online and wanted to see you. But what I see when I searched for physicians, even today, many of them don't even have an online picture.
David Sanchez, RN 8:10
Yeah, that's true.
Coach JPMD 8:12
They don't have online presence at all. And Healthgrades is one of the prominent websites that features doctors, what do you recommend to a physician, like one of the first steps in getting their online presence?
David Sanchez, RN 8:24
One of the first steps, if you have a physical location, there's really a lot of resources to do that very quickly, which is great. Google, my business is the number one most important profile to create, you want to make sure that's updated with your correct address, website, address, phone number, and then the details of the services that you offer. So that's one thing. And then the other ones are there are some other huge ones like WebMD, vitals.com, Healthgrades, Yelp, those are huge Apple Maps. So those are all like probably the top five. That's a really good place to start. And then also getting consistent reviews, asking patients to give feedback. It's not saying, Hey, give me a five star review. But it's saying asking for honest feedback, because that really gives you good insight, seeing the words that they use helps you to understand using empathy, the words that they're saying what they actually think about you. And it helps you to update things, the practice, if it was hard to get on the phone with a person, you'll find out in those reviews. And Google places a high value on that too.
Coach JPMD 9:29
And what I've seen is a lot of the negative reviews that I see online for physicians are related to basic communication, and office didn't communicate this the office didn't get back to me. And I don't know if you see that in your practices as well.
David Sanchez, RN 9:42
Yeah, it's a big thing in automation really helps with that a lot. But a personal touch is it speaks volumes.
Coach JPMD 9:49
I've done this in the past and created some case scenarios, especially with our experts who can kind of go through a case and help us understand what physicians or what they could do in their practice. So let's say you have a new physician that starts, he has no website. He's working for the hospital system. So he's working for the big hospital system. And they are hiring him to see outpatients. What would be your suggestion for that physician? I mean, we talked about the online presence with Google. But what are some of the specific things that they can do
David Sanchez, RN 10:22
With this provider? Are you saying that he doesn't have any sort of website profile at all through the through the hospital system?
Coach JPMD 10:28
No website at all.
David Sanchez, RN 10:30
Okay.
Coach JPMD 10:31
And many of the hospital systems may put a profile up with a picture and their training, but nothing else.
David Sanchez, RN 10:37
Yeah. So it really depends on what's driving revenue, because something's a liability if it's not going to bring you more revenue. So is this non salaried or...
Coach JPMD 10:46
It would be a salaried position.
David Sanchez, RN 10:48
Well, for me, if it was me, it would depend on what actually benefits you because if you're going to have a return on investment with getting more patients, better patients, more referrals from patients to other ones, it would be worth investment for me to get a website. So I would go ahead and get a website and get your own profiles, because it sounds like the hospital system may not do that for you. So get your profiles on Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Healthgrades, because you want to place for patients to be able to give their actual feedback. So you can see how things are really going in your front office, and have a place where patients to give a response. And that's a good place to start. I would start there. And then with some basic search engine optimization, you can set up a system that automatically asks those patients for their feedback, which is really cool.
Coach JPMD 11:38
So how do you do that? So you said with this SEO or Search Engine Optimization, how do you automate that?
David Sanchez, RN 11:44
Well, search engine optimization is more like a it's kind of a science, the basics behind it is setting up the code for your website in a way that search engines like, so they'll rank you above similar types of providers or specialists. That's one of the basics of it.
Coach JPMD 11:59
So what are some of the basics are for SEO for for physician practice? What would be basic stuff?
David Sanchez, RN 12:06
There are three basic pillars of SEO four if you have a local physical location. So the first most important would be your website structure to make sure there's no errors in it in the code, make sure that the menu and the page structure is formatted in a way that search engines will be able to read it clearly and quickly. And that it has a lot of authority in the eyes of search engines compared to other similar websites. So if it's a primary practice, it has more pages, and is easier to read than another primary practice in the same area. So that's the structure. Second would be for local practice would be your local listings. Like what I mentioned before the Google My Business Healthgrades, WebMD. All those profiles are accurate and up to date, they all have are getting reviews consistently from real patients, the services listed on your Google profile are accurate. The third would be the content on the website. So that would include pages describing the services you offer the conditions you treat, a blog that's ongoing that provides helpful information for patients. So that's content. And the way it's structured and formatted is very important. And then the last thing which actually carries the most weight would be links going to your website. So like links from really high authority blogs, or websites, like if you get quoted on Yahoo News on MSN, from health websites, Mind Body green, different health blogs, and the local listings, like we mentioned before, all those carry a ton of weight in the Google algorithm.
Coach JPMD 13:42
So if a hospital has a website that gives you basic information, you would tell the hospital then to link to your website.
David Sanchez, RN 13:48
That is a really strong tool. Yes.
Coach JPMD 13:52
And blogs. I thought blogs are old, because I'm old and remember blogs when they first started.
David Sanchez, RN 13:58
Yeah.
Coach JPMD 13:59
Now there's vlogs video blogs, I guess.
David Sanchez, RN 14:02
Yeah, everything.
Coach JPMD 14:04
Which is more important in a search now?
David Sanchez, RN 14:06
Everything. It's called omni channel marketing. So omni channel marketing is like let's say we record a podcast episode. So that's recorded as audio. Well, what if you recorded as zoom too, then you could use that Zoom video upload it to YouTube. You could write an article with written words and put it on your website blog. You could embed that YouTube video into that. But the written version is the website article. That's a blog. And then what if you cut that up into six to 10 Different bites or thoughts that you could use as little social media posts as omni channel marketing so you can take one piece of content and turn it into 90 or 100 pieces of content. This saves you a ton of work. And all that originally came from one interview one video.
Coach JPMD 14:52
But is the physician doing this stuff? Or is it his staff doing it or who does it?
David Sanchez, RN 14:56
Yeah, if you have a marketing team agencies do it too. Content marketing agencies and you can distribute that all over the internet, see there's you can set up a system that automatically will send that you can pre schedule it ahead of time, so you don't have to manually do it. Okay. You send that to your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram.
Coach JPMD 15:15
I know that's what my team does. We use Canva. Is it a great tool? Because, you know, when she, Katlyn said she wanted to use it, I was like, okay, and I'm seeing the posts come along. And you know, I am ignorant in this realm, because I'm learning. But yeah, I think consistency works and helps in getting your page ranks and I guess the SEO search engines to pop you in their churches, but many physicians don't have time to create these blogs. How do you deal with that?
David Sanchez, RN 15:44
Somebody has to do it. If you want the patients, that's the thing. Because referrals are becoming less and less important, less common. So what it comes down to is who can do it, you know, learning how to delegate. You don't necessarily have to learn it yourself. But like Henry Ford is, I'm not the smartest engineer out there. But I can hire an engineer, why would I want to be designing cars?
Yeah, so case number two. So you have a practicing physician, he's been practicing for eight years, he has a Healthgrades account, he's got a couple of reviews online. But wants to get more patients, where does he start? I mean, the reviews are there. So you're saying that he continues to do this?
Well omni channel marketing... Yeah, well, that's content marketing, you know, you have to have a marketing budget to be able to do that, because there's so many hours that goes into it, unless you have someone that you can hire, affordably, to do that, or somebody that enjoys doing it in your practice that has at least 10-20 hours a week. So if you already have a flow of patients coming in, and you just want to grow it, I would talk to someone who can do some marketing strategy for you. Because what it really comes down to is seeing what you have, what you built, where you're at, compared to your competitors, what are your goals over the next year or two for your practice? And then that marketing strategist can help show you, okay, this is how we can get there. What's the budget that you're working with? And then let's see, what are the next steps that take to get there because you have to be able to break it down into steps. So it could be as simple as focusing new blog content on covering specific questions that patients are asking in your zip code, answering those in blogs. And then when they asked that question, typing that in Google, your blog posts will come up about that and answer that, or your YouTube video will come up answering that question. And then they'll be on your website, and they'll be interested in scheduling an appointment.
Coach JPMD 17:35
So you've mentioned a couple of times to see, you want to position yourself in a place where you're competing with other people in the same space or for marketing some where? How do you see what another provider is doing? Or what other practices are doing? Where do you get that insight from?
David Sanchez, RN 17:50
I have dozens of software's that help us to do competitive research.
Coach JPMD 17:54
So you type in the name of the doctor, and you see what they're doing and kind of mimic them or how does that work?
David Sanchez, RN 18:00
Well, we look at different factors, it depends on what we're looking for. So with SEO, the main factors we're looking for is how many pages are contained in their website. How many of the main terms that you're wanting to compete for? Are you in the top 10 on Google compared to your your competitor? So if you're a new orthopaedic surgeon in a new city, what is the competitive landscape look like? Knee Replacement doctor near me? Who's in the top five? So you take those websites that are in the top five? How many links are going to those websites? How many pages do they have? What is the menu look like? And then how can you gain more authority than them? When you gain more authority than them you have more links to them from really high quality websites, then you will take those spots. When people search and Google almost 90% of the time, they're going to click on one of the top three results.
Coach JPMD 18:59
Okay.
David Sanchez, RN 19:00
So an old SEO joke is where does the website go to die on the second page of Google.
Coach JPMD 19:04
So if I'm on the second page of Google, based on the search terms that I'm trying to do, so I'm going to use myself as an example. Now, I'm going to be totally, totally transparent here. And say, when I type in the business of medicine, it's not coming up by Coach JPMD is not coming up or practice impossibles coming up. What would you say? Again, in general, you don't have to give me specifics as is not a consulting call. But what would you say would be the first place I should go to to be able to determine why that is? A marketing person...a software or...
David Sanchez, RN 19:35
That you would go to an SEO person, healthcare SEO, because there's a number of factors, you want to compare the pages that are ranking for that term, all those factors that I just described, and then design a path to get to there, where you can be on the top page.
Coach JPMD 19:50
So it sounds like you need to get someone that actually knows what they're doing.
David Sanchez, RN 19:54
Yeah, or you can take the time to learn it. Takes years... it's taken me years, but I've been doing it for eight years now, so I'm well versed. But no, it does take time. And it is constantly changing. Google makes over 500 algorithm changes per year.
Coach JPMD 20:09
And Iknow they're pushing everyone to video these days. So a lot of things are going to video and in shorts and reels you hear about that, as well. And I'm learning about those things as well. So
David Sanchez, RN 20:19
Yeah, that's interesting that you mentioned that, because one of the predictions that some of the marketing researchers were making in 2018-2019, they're saying that 70 to 80% of the Google results were supposed to be video by 2020. Well, that didn't happen. So written content is here to stay, it looks like.
Coach JPMD 20:39
Interesting.
David Sanchez, RN 20:39
But Google owns YouTube. So obviously, you can see the YouTube results in the top when you search for something on Google. And so it is there, but it's in conjunction with each other. I will say in Facebook, when you create a video and upload it directly to Facebook, their algorithm definitely is very favourable towards video. If you're going to create a Facebook ad, that's just an image versus the same subject, that's a video, a lot of times we'll see 50 cents to $1 a click maybe for the still image. But for video, sometimes eight cents a click, the video actually gives you much more bang for your buck on Facebook.
Coach JPMD 21:19
I see. So you're paying less per click, and you're doing video as opposed to...
David Sanchez, RN 21:24
Like 90% less per click.
Coach JPMD 21:26
So they're obviously pushing people to create more content for a video.
David Sanchez, RN 21:29
Exactly.
Coach JPMD 21:30
So during our conversation, you had mentioned that you have a system? It sounds like you've touched on a lot of systems that you have, but it was interesting approach. How do you kind of target your marketing for physician practices? And you mentioned the bullseye approach. And I forgot the name of that author that you said, introduce you to that.
David Sanchez, RN 21:50
Yeah, it's a book called Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. Yeah, he's the founder of DuckDuckGo, the search engine. And so he's founded multiple companies, very smart guy, I really like his approach. But I've used it myself, and I've used it, helping other businesses with growth, it really is fascinating. So the way that it works is you've got all these different ways you could possibly achieve growth for your business, regardless of the type of business. But in healthcare, there's, we have a lot of traditional ways, right? You have traditional media, which would be radio, newspaper, billboards, you've got new types of media search engine optimization, content marketing, social media, you've got digital advertising, on search engines, like Google ads, on social media, like Facebook ads, which is not the same as organic social media, you've got conferences, networking, referrals from other physicians, that would be more like business development. So we've got all these categories. And generally, what growth researchers have found is that, generally, there's one, maybe two categories that businesses focus on, that are directly responsible for at least 80 to 90% of their growth. And so the key to really growing effectively, and getting a great return on your investment, when it comes to growth or marketing, is finding out what's going to work for your practice, and your target audience at a very low cost with a great return on investment. And so what I like to do is, is help businesses, look at the options, the opportunities that they have, what is going to give you the best odds for a great return on investment, quickly test those very inexpensively. Maybe like it was digital stuff, it's maybe 250 to $500 per test, at least one test per week, go through them as quickly as possible. So you can find out what's going to give you the best return on investment. And then once you find that out, I mean, if referrals are giving you all of your patients, and it's something that you can actually scale, grow multiple locations, or add more providers or whatever, to delegate more, so you're not responsible for every decision, go for it. If that's it's working great. But if you can get patients really quickly having a YouTube channel or YouTube ads, Facebook ads, SEO, if that's going to give you amazing return on investment, you know, often providers get 10, 20, 30 times return on investment with SEO for local practice, then do that. That depends on what's going to work for you. But you don't really know for sure until you test it.
Coach JPMD 24:24
So you do a test. You see what works and then you pour more money into that test.
David Sanchez, RN 24:30
Yeah, you maximize what's working.
Coach JPMD 24:32
So more money than the initial investment or like we're about the same way. I know it's hard for you to tell us how much to spend but physicians are we are frugal. We don't like to spend money for whatever reason. How do you tell a physician okay, we've got the test. We know what's going to work. How much money do you put into this?
David Sanchez, RN 24:49
Yeah, I can always give suggestions. But really, it's up to them to decide. What I see a lot of times hurts providers is if they're not willing to invest either in the initial tests themselves. As at all, or when they see what's working, they're afraid to release so they can get more.
Coach JPMD 25:05
Talk to me about that fear. You said they're afraid to release?
David Sanchez, RN 25:09
Yeah.
Coach JPMD 25:10
What is your experience in that fear? What do you think is driving that fear?
David Sanchez, RN 25:13
I'm sure school that's a part of that. A lot of times, because they've got a lot of debt, I've run a practice, you know, I was paying $60,000 a month for payroll alone. At one time, I felt that overwhelming pressure, it's a lot. I don't want to minimize that. However, if you can set aside a budget, that's not going to hurt you, if you put in $1,000, you get 10 back, if you put in $20,000, you get 100,000 back, why not increase that so you can continue getting more return on investment, it's an investment, it's not an expense.
Coach JPMD 25:47
That's great. That's exactly what it is. And I had to learn that the hard way myself, as I continue to learn and grow not only my practice, but also grow the business that we're doing to help physicians practice impossible. So what would be the one thing that you could tell physicians that I doing it make everything easy or unnecessary in marketing? What would you tell that physician?
David Sanchez, RN 26:10
For me, it all comes down to data, working in healthcare, we love research. I love research, even though I'm not I don't know, as much of the research as physicians do when it comes to health care stuff. When it comes to marketing, you have to know where your patients are coming from. So measuring that is critical. You have to have accurate numbers. So you have to know where every patient how they heard about you. It can be as simple as one question on the intake form. And they become new to the practice. And it's great a lot of providers that I work with every new patient, I know they track them all every month. And one provider was a he's a chiropractor. And we we'd work together for six months, we had redesigned his website. And they've they've been tracking where all their new patients are coming from, how many of their patients are returning, you know, long term patients, they call them practice members. So we started working together in 2019, right before the pandemic broke out, he stopped his contract when our contract was up at the end of that year, January 2020. And the pandemic broke out, he was doing tons of community events, networking, all kinds of really cool stuff with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Well, they couldn't do any of that, because the whole world was shut down. But the SEO work that we had done the previous year in 2019, it has a snowball effect. So it was just building. And then right basically, when he stopped everything else, or stopped our marketing, and was forced to stop everything else, our work continued to snowball. And that year was their best year ever with new patients, which is baffling to him. So he calls me back and says, Hey, this has been a record year for us, despite the pandemic. And it's become clear to me that we need to start working with you again, because I had 30 new patients, and then a few months later, 40 new patients per month, and it just kept increasing. I said I can ask them, and 80% of new patients are coming from Google. So it's obvious that it's the work that you guys did last year. So when you just start working together again, that's great Intel, but he wouldn't have known that unless he was asking. And unless he was measuring that every month.
Coach JPMD 28:14
Data is key, I think you hit it right on the nail, because without the data, then you don't know where to target your money. You don't know where to spend the monies you don't know where to advertise you. So data. That's great. So what do you do when you're not doing marketing and running a center?
David Sanchez, RN 28:31
I am very involved in my church. It's a lot of fun, being involved. I helped start a medical team there during the pandemic to be able to screen people do temperature checks. We weren't able to meet in person for quite a while. But it was good to be able to help in that way. I don't directly supervise that anymore only respond to emergencies. Now. So I've been able to hand off those responsibilities. I play basketball.
Coach JPMD 28:54
So I can't tell how tall you are. So I mean...
David Sanchez, RN 28:56
I'm six two.
Coach JPMD 28:57
Are you a guard or a...
David Sanchez, RN 28:59
I can't dunk, I wish I could.
Coach JPMD 29:01
Six, two, you can't dunk?!
David Sanchez, RN 29:03
I would be a small forward.
Coach JPMD 29:04
Okay.
David Sanchez, RN 29:05
Ah, man,I wish I had that kind of ops. I try.
Coach JPMD 29:10
Cool. Well, it's been a great conversation. I mean, I think you've given us so many nuggets of information for physicians and things that I didn't know. And maybe I should I should start thinking about implementing in the practice as well as in the practice impossible. So I appreciate your time. And how can we get a hold of you if someone wants to reach out to you and ask you some questions?
David Sanchez, RN 29:30
Yeah, I would say LinkedIn is a great place to do that. I can give you my email. You can put that in the show notes if you want. But David Sanchez, RN, I'm on LinkedIn.
Coach JPMD 29:40
Okay, that's a good way to reach me.
David says I'll have all your information in the show notes for sure. Thank you again for coming on to the practice impossible podcast and I really appreciate you being with us.
David Sanchez, RN 29:50
It's my pleasure. Thank you