[SAM CARVALHO] Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Mark Drager founded his creative production company in 2006, grew it to a little over 2 million in annual revenue, and then slowly watched as it all crumbled around him. Through the hard lessons learned and working to not make the same mistakes twice, today, Phanta Media focuses less on growth and keeping the machine fed and more on doing extraordinary work with really cool people. As the brand strategist, Mark also understands the need to be courageous and has developed a killer process that can help you make your next courageous move. Hi, Mark. Thanks so much for joining us today, [MARK DRAGER] Samantha, I’m so excited to be here. [SAM] So, as I do with all my guests, can you share with us a bit about your story and how you got to where you are now? [MARK] Sure. Well, if we go way, way back, when I was young I wanted to be an architect and an engineer. When I was growing up as a kid, I used to take chart paper and I would like draw stuff out and I’d play with my Lego and I just, I loved that idea. Then in the final year of high school, I got, frankly, really scared with chemistry. I did, I was, for the first time in my life, I was like an A+ student, and then I was not doing well, and I got really scared. I was taking this film class, this film, this communications, this photography class, now this is in the ’90s. We used to do things on tape back then, but it just seemed more fun and it seemed easier. So I went to film school, I did not go to college, I did not go to university, I went to a private film school and when I graduated I worked in television for about a year. I was the person in the news, on onset with the anchors reading the teleprompters and I was the one controlling the speed and camera operating. Anyway, doing all these odd jobs in film and freelancing did not agree with me and I found myself working at an internet marketing franchise in 2005, 2006. We had 90 offices in, sorry, we had 1500 offices in 90 countries and territories and I was responsible for producing all of the video content to try and communicate across all of the different territories, across all the different departments, whether it’s education or whether it’s onboarding or franchise development, marketing or advertising. Because it was an internet marketing franchise where we sold internet marketing businesses to people, it was like an 18 month, I was there for 18 months, 20 months, something like that. It was like a crash course in all things, understanding audiences, understanding communications, understanding the different mediums, whether it was long form or short form. So when I stepped out at the end of 2006 to start my own company, I brought all of that learning with me. I had just spent a year and a half or a little more steeped in all of these amazing marketers who were helping to build small businesses, who were helping to build private practices. We’re helping to basically figure out how do we get our message in front of the right people? How do we say the right thing? How do we get them in some way to take action? 15 years later, as you read in my bio, we built it Phanta Media to a multimillion-dollar company, because when I started, we shot everything on tape. I mean, social media didn’t exist yet. Facebook was, I signed up for my first Facebook profile after I had already started my firm. There was no Twitter YouTube was only making one- or two-minute videos at the time and so it was a totally different world. But basically video, like old school video became communications and communications became marketing, and marketing became advertising and we find ourselves five, six years ago, we’re doing national commercial spots with some of the biggest organizations, and we’re working with the NBA and NBA players. We’re also still working with entrepreneurs and pre-startup people and we’re working with people in private practice and in medical and in laboratory services and in all of these different areas. Then Covid hit. [SAM] Crazy time for everybody. [MARK] It was because at the time, 70% of our business was focused on like production work, boots on the ground. We would go into offices, we would work with people, we would go out on set. When that had to all stop I had to turn to my team of 24 people. I had to say like 70% of our business just got put on pause, on hold, completely, could not do anything. How do we pivot? What do we focus on? [SAM] I think it’s so funny because I think Covid did that to so many people. We’ve spoken about it before, but I always say how it’s fast-tracked things. I think it’s, we were heading into a world where things were more outsourced and people were working remotely and things like that but Covid just like fast tracked that in like two years flat. [MARK] it really did. It really did but every challenge brings great opportunity and it was a time of reflection. It was a time that forced me to rethink business and rethink how we went about what we did and really, it was actually a very good thing because by the time Covid hit, we were really becoming more of a generalist marketer. We were helping people with brand strategy, so who am I and what is my place in the marketplace? Who am I targeting and what do I say to them and where are they and how do we stand out and how do we win more business and all of those things? But we were also doing video production and landing pages and performance marketing, so we were like buying ads for people on Google and Facebook, and we were just spreading ourselves too thin. We were trying to do too many things for too many people. Frankly, I’m the type of person who wants to do things with excellence. I’ve always done the best work when we work with people and we say if we’re going to do this, let’s do this or let’s not do this at all. It’s not, I used to say that often people think that half measures will see like half the results and that’s just not true. Half measures see zero results, like, you’re either in or you’re out, you’re committed or you’re not. So what Covid forced us to do was to really look at what we did better than anyone else. What, frankly, out of all the different services and all the different things we did, what actually drove value to the people we worked with and that brought us back to branding, brand strategy. What do I look like? What do I say? How do I make people feel? [SAM] That’s awesome that such a positive result came from it. Mark, can you tell us about the secret formula for creating can’t ignore brands. [MARK] I certainly can. I’ll preface it by saying that if your business is built on you and you’re not growing fast enough, you’re not making the type of money you want to make. I know that your audience is mainly made up of clinicians, of private practice owners or operators. If you’re in counseling and if you’re in therapy, I’ll frame it this way, it may not be about the money. It may be about the impact you want to make with people. You may want to, like I know, and I’ve worked with a ton of people in this space, and I know that those little breakthrough moments, and I’ve been on the other side of it, because during Covid, I went out and I sought out a therapist who could help me and help me figure out the challenges I was facing. Because I was actually diagnosed mid-pandemic with GAD and I had been living for 20 or 30 years with this. My son, we had to go through diagnosis for ADHD. So I know how important the work is that people in this space does. It’s not usually about the money. The money’s nice, it helps pay for the staff, it helps scale and it helps with all these things but most people get into this work because you have a heart for helping people. So what I would start with is you would never bring someone into your practice, intake them, sit them down and not meet them with where they’re at. You would want to meet them where they’re at. If they are at a really critical point in their life, if they’re in a high stress situation, if they’re having some episodic issue, you would probably treat them differently in that moment. You would speak to them differently. You would intake them differently. You would meet them with whatever language, with whatever tone they require in that moment. Because your goal is to help them. I’m curious why and I always wonder why when it comes to us moving outside of the four walls of our office, working with people, and it suddenly moves to the lobby or the parking lot or the way we communicate on social media, the way that we advertise. I know in different regions there are different governing bodies that will allow us to say certain things or not, sometimes we all have colleges or we all have governing bodies where we’re allowed to say or do certain things. But it’s always curious to me why when it comes to, before people ever contact us, or even when they’re on our landing page or they’re on our website, or they’re calling us, or they’re on our reading, our blogs or whatever it is, suddenly we forget to meet people with where they’re at. [SAM] That’s so true. [MARK] A language becomes, here’s a perfect example. I mentioned that I, through the pandemic, sought out a counselor to help me with GAD. Well, the reason for that was because I was in such a state, I was so burned out that I thought I had borderline personality disorder through research and all this stuff. Now I have a friend who runs three different private practices in Australia. I reached out to her and I said, I think that this is me. She said, no, Mark, this is not you. I said, I don’t know who to turn to in my area where I live. I could Google it, but how do I tell one practice from the other practice? How do I know? I’m not even, all I know is that I’m struggling and it doesn’t help me that when I land on a landing page or a website, it says we do cognitive behavior therapy and we do dialectal behavior therapy, and I have 16 years of this and I went to this school. That doesn’t help me. So, step number one, if we want to create can’t ignore brands, I’m going to take you through three steps, three simple steps that you can use for your marketing or your advertising. You can use it if you are a speaker or your YouTube videos or your social media, or frankly, I use this, I used the same process a few weeks ago when I was at my brother’s wedding and I had to give a toast. It’s the same steps anytime you want to communicate with someone and actually meet them where they’re at. So on the business side, maybe you can sell them, but on what the work you’re doing so you can help them. You probably do this naturally already. So step number one is we have to start with you. I want you to think of a Venn diagram I want you to think of like a Mickey Mouse. We got the ears, if you’re listening, we got the two big ears and then we got the face, three circles that overlap with the two big ears at the top. The first circle, the top left ear of Mickey Mouse here is you. Who are you? What are your experiences? Yes, the schools, yes, the number of years in private practice or the research papers that you’ve written or the different things that you’ve done or the number of clinicians that might be within your practice or the different areas of practice, or maybe you specialize on younger people or older people or whatever it is. That’s all great but again, that doesn’t help me understand your voice, your perspective, your approach, what it is you want to achieve, the breakthrough moments that you want to have with people. What makes you credible. So we want to find out all of those things, but we actually want more than that. We want your goals. If you’re going to do a YouTube series, if you’re going to write a blog, if you’re going to develop a new website, if you’re going to give a speech at your brother’s wedding, what are your goals? I’ll use the speech at my wedding, at the wedding because it’s almost like the weirdest example. My goals at the wedding a few weeks ago was I didn’t just want to honor my brother and my new sister-in-law. I didn’t just want to look good, which I frankly did, if I’m being honest with you. I wanted everyone in the audience to turn to the person that they’re with and feel like anything I was saying to my brother that they could relate to. That was my goal. What are your goals as a clinician? It’s probably to get more people to walk through your door, to get more people to call you, to get more people to trust you or to get more press. I know a few weeks ago you had an amazing PR person on. Maybe it’s to get more appearances or to get more guests, like what is your goal? This is really important because we can’t be fuzzy on this because if we’re really specific with our goal, it actually narrows down the next two steps, the next two parts of the diagram, and I’ll share those with you. The next two steps are who are you speaking to and then the third one is, who is your competition or what is distracting your targets from the message? Okay, so if we get specific with the goals, my goal for the wedding speech, honor my brother and sister-in-law look good so that way I’m not embarrassed and I wanted that feeling. I wanted those goosebumps. I wanted that moment where anyone sitting around a table at the wedding would turn to their partner and they would think, I can relate. He’s speaking to me. Okay, so those were my goals. Your goals, again, get people through the door, make a connection, help people. [BRIGHTER VISION] It’s Brighter Vision’s biggest sale of the season. 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So if you’re ready to get started or just want to learn more about how Brighter Vision can help you grow your practice, head on over to brightervision.com/joe. That’s brightervision.com/joe. [MARK DRAGER] Step number two, the second ear of the Mickey Mouse, the second circle in this Venn diagram is your targets. Now we can call them an audience, we can call them prospects or customers or patients, we can call them clients, we can call them anyone you want but at the end of the day, because I’m a marketer and we’re talking about marketing terms, we call them target audiences. Some people call them personas even. Personas are great, but personas are not really that helpful. I’ll use an example here. Let’s say that you really have a heart for mothers, people who have had children in whatever form motherhood is. Well, if we’re thinking about motherhood, let’s talk about that for a second because you might say like, I work with mothers who are between 30 and 50 years of age or something. They’ve left the workforce and they have all these challenges. But let’s break that down. Okay, so what is the difference between a single mother and a family unit where she has a partner or a spouse to help her? What’s the difference between a working mother and a stay-at-home mother, a mother who said one child and a mother who has five or six children? What’s the difference between a mother with older kids and a mother with kids who have three kids under the age of five? What’s the difference between a mother who has postpartum depression and a mother who doesn’t have any mental health issues? What about socioeconomic status? What about the environment that they live in? What about whether they adopted the child or birthed a natural child? What about the struggles, the medical struggles she may have had through birthing her child? What about the death or loss of a child or stillborn birth? Again, it’s easy to put a persona of like, I want to speak to mothers, and yet I just, off the top of my head listed, I think, I don’t know, 12 or 15 different versions of motherhood who would all be different people of different ages with different needs, different desires, different wants. They will be on different platforms, they will want different messages. They will be looking for different outcomes. [SAM] Yes, that’s crazy. It changes entirety. [MARK] It changes everything. So this is why step one, that first ear of Mickey Mouse again is what do you want? Because we need to narrow the number of people we’re speaking to because we need to get specific. Everyone I work with, I was going to say most people, everyone I work with is too generic in what they say and when they’re generic in what they say, there’s no flavor, there’s no personality, there’s no hook, there’s nothing to draw people in. There’s not that secret little thing. You go to a cocktail, do people go to cocktail parties anywhere, you go to a party or a barbecue or whatever. When I was growing up, my mom used to go to cocktail parties and, I don’t know —, [SAM] I wish we still went to cocktail parties. [MARK] I don’t even know, I realize as I’m saying the term, I’m like, does anyone go to a cocktail party? You go to a party or you meet some new people and maybe you’re at work and you start a new job or you go to a gym, you meet people and you go like what, I really like that person. I want to be their friend. It’s because there’s that weird little essence or that flavor or there’s something about them yet when it comes to our marketing or our communications or what we’re putting out there, especially in a professional setting, we want to be professional so people realize how professional we are. We’re not giving people that flavor, that secret thing that they need. So we need to narrow the number of targets so that way we can understand who are they, where do they go, what do they consume? What do they care about? Because here’s the real secret, if we know what people want to hear and we know what questions they’re asking and what their fears are and their desires are, what outcomes they want, we can just tell them that. It doesn’t have to be right. It doesn’t have to be correct. We don’t have to try and get on our high horse and educate them at this moment. We need to have a conversation with them and frankly, we have to meet them where they’re at. We have to give them what they want, not necessarily yet what they need. So a lot of times we’re very principled and we want to teach people and educate people and show them how professional we are and none of that stuff works. Even if it’s misinformation, even if it’s wrong. Now, again, you have clinical, you have a college, you have an association, you have a clinical body that you have to report to. We can’t be spreading stuff that will hurt our practice or hurt our profession or hurt ourselves. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying let’s not try and get into arguments, principled arguments with people as soon as they walk through the door and say, stop. No, no, we would, if they walk through the door and they needed help, we would wrap them in comfort and we would help them and we would create a safe space for them and then we would start to show them or help them show themselves that maybe there’s a different path forward. So that’s step number two. Understand who you’re speaking to and limit the number of targets because there’s also a difference between how you’ll speak to someone on YouTube versus a blog post, versus a tweet versus an outbound ad if you’re allowed to do that, versus a social proof ad, like a testimonial. All of those things are different. They’re different people, different times, different context. So get really specific with that. This is what we help clients with. It’s a lot of work, but my God, it’s worth it. Then step number three, the bottom of Mickey Mouse, the bottom of the Venn diagram is the market or your competition. Every person who works with us says these two things. I can’t differentiate, meaning I can’t stand out. There’s nothing that makes me different. I’m just like everyone else. The second thing they say is, I get a lot of interest, but I don’t get enough business or I don’t know what to say to people, or I don’t know how to close them or I don’t know how to onboard them. Now, there are certain practices in certain regions where the government might compensate obviously for the pay, or you may be busy, you may be busy and busy and you’re like, the last thing I need is more patience but what about a different quality of patient? What about a different style of work? What about specializing in a really specific niche? Maybe you want to raise your hourly rate. Maybe you want to raise your pay, your revenue in the practice. So it’s not just about more, sometimes it’s about different or being more selective and so we need to understand the market. I’m going to go back to the wedding speech. What did I want? I wanted to honor, I wanted to make people connection. Number two, who’s my audience? I was thinking about my audience. I was thinking about my family members. I was thinking about the people I like. There’s some people who were at this wedding who I have not spoken to in 20 years and frankly I was really nervous to get in front of because of some childhood issues and other things. They were invited because they’re invited and I’m invited because I’m invited and we all had to get along. So I’m thinking about that stuff. I’m thinking about the fact that, but step number three is the market. Right now, I’m at a wedding. What market is there? Well, we just came out of a pandemic. This is the first real party that we’ve had in our family in two years. My brother’s wedding was supposed to take place in June of 2020. They had to push it off for two years. So there’s no competition, but there certainly is a moment or a feeling or a context or a space. So in your advertising and your marketing and your personal brand, we want to control how you look, so that means credibility. We want to control what you say, so that’s your message that’s going to connect and we want to control how you make people feel. If you can do those things, you’re going to make much deeper, stronger connections. So when we come back to the market in the competition, sure there’s the 3, 4, 5 other clinics in your area. You probably know them, you’ve probably Googled them, you may know the owners, you may like them or you may not like them. There’s also what else is happening on the internet, what else is happening in the world. So your competition is not just the competition. Your competition is probably the status quo, maybe. When I first reached out, so I reached out to my, like this is crazy for me, and I apologize using that word. I know it has negative connotations. This is silly for me, I should say. But I reached out to my friend and I said, ah I think I have this borderline personality disorder because over the course of a day I’m cycling through really, really up and really, really down and I’m hopeless and all of this stuff. She said, Mark, that’s not you. I didn’t believe her. So she said, here are three different clinicians you can reach out to into your area. I looked into them, I think that they’re all qualified and they’re all good even then I didn’t really trust her, but okay, I reached out to one and then I booked an appointment and then I canceled my appointment. Then I was like, okay, never mind. I’m going to rebook my appointment. I wrote back right away, please, hold my appointment. Then I went through three-month process of getting the diagnosis and going through all these assessments and everything and the very good clinician I worked with just said, “Mark, it’s not an, you have anxiety. That’s the swing between being anxious and being depressed. You have anxiety, you have GAD and here are the next steps.” Then I didn’t do any more therapy. I just didn’t want to face it. I just didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to work through it. But I knew in the back of my mind that there were other options, like maybe I could look at anxiety medication or I could look at other things. There were other things I could be doing. Two years, a year and a half, two years go by before I finally reach out to my family doctor to book an appointment to talk about these things. Now, in that situation, what is the competition? What is the market. It’s not like I wasn’t struggling during that time or having panic attacks or getting volatily, like not, not violent, but very angry at certain times or feeling the pressure or lack of control or hopelessness or any of the other things I’m dealing with. But if like we always say, well if you can’t, if the person’s not willing to help themselves, I can’t help them. Well, perhaps your biggest competition is the fear of the unknown. No one really sat down to explain to me how this would work or the goods or the bads of it. That’s on me and that’s fine. I’ll take responsibility for it but I like to think that I’m a pretty smart, capable, well-rounded guy. I’m a high-achiever. I’m willing to do things. I always want to get better. I always want to grow even I put stuff off for two years. So let’s think about again, what you want, who you want to speak to and what’s happening in the market. How can we encourage more people to see your services? How can we lower the scariness or add more visibility to what the process is like, or explain the outcome a little bit better or get people over the hurdle of status quo or things can never change or things can never get better, or I’m not sure it’ll work or any of those things. All those unknown fears. Now the last step is we have this Venn diagram, three bubbles, the Mickey Mouse. In the center of that Venn diagram is your unique positioning, your unique brand. I’m asking you to show up for people telling them what they want to hear so you can engage them. But because there’s an overlap with what you want and who you are, it’s authentic still. I’m not asking you to be someone you’re not. I’m asking you to show your targets, the version of you in the message that’s still true to you, but it’s more about them. I’m asking you to do it in a way that isn’t like the competition because there’s that overlap or in a way that will help fight the status quo or help fight the fear of media or help, just whatever that competition is you’re going to do what you want to accomplish and achieve in your voice, your message, your background, your purpose, true to you with the message. That’s actually what your audience wants to hear that you can get on board with and you’re going to do it in a way that punches through the noise of the marketplace or is in a way that the competition isn’t saying it. That ,whether it’s a wedding speech or it’s a marketing campaign, or it’s the front page of your website, whether it’s a research paper that you’re working on or writing and you thinking about who’s going to be reading this and consuming this, or whether it’s a presentation you’re giving at your local club or your local annual, your annual professional college area, whatever it’s called, a seminar, if you do this every single time, you’re going to form much deeper connections. You’re going to engage many, many more people and you’re going to actually encourage more people to seek out your help and you’ll grow your practice. [SAM] Amazing. I think you’ve given us all — [MARK] A masterclass, sorry [SAM] Yes, no, it was so good. It was so good and packaged so well. Thank you so much for all of that value that you provided. Mark, if people wanted to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that? [MARK] The best thing you can do is head over to Instagram. My handle is at Mark Drager. Just send me a DM. I don’t have chat bots or a VA or any of that stuff. It’s me. Send me a dm. I also have a playbook. It’s pretty dense, it’s 60 pages, but we have a playbook that if you just send me a DM and say, “Mark, can you send me that badass playbook, that badass brand playbook,” I’ll send you a link. It’s not part of a funnel. You won’t go on an email sequence. Literally it’s a Google document, but it’s 60 pages and it explains this process with visuals and it actually gives you a full breakdown of all the different tools we use. So if you want to take a little peruse at that, you can as well. [SAM] Amazing. We’ll definitely have a link to how to contact Mark and the show notes. Mark, if every private practice owner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [MARK] I would want you to know that I believe that it’s your duty to communicate effectively, to market effectively, to advertise effectively. I believe that if you are setting out to grow a practice for more reasons than just money, but because you want to help more people, it’s your responsibility to take on really an effective brand, an effective message. You don’t have to be on every single platform and you don’t have to be doing people are saying blogging and podcasting and all that stuff. You don’t have to do all of that stuff. But the leader, therapist, the counselor, the practitioner, the private practice owner that doesn’t show up, doesn’t help anyone but the one that shows up as okay, I guess so, I don’t know, I don’t know if you’re good or bad or not, I don’t know how to tell if I can work with you or not, I don’t know, I don’t really understand what you do or how you’ll help me, they’re no better off. They’re no better off than the person who’s hidden in the dark that no one is aware of, that no one sees. So if you’ve dedicated your life to helping people, it’s your duty and responsibility to get out there and get more people to know about your services so you can help them. That is what I hope everyone hears. [SAM] Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark, for being an amazing guest today and for appearing on the Marketing a Practice podcast. [MARK] Thanks, Samantha. [SAM] Just a reminder that if you’re wanting to make use of Brighter Vision Cyber Monday sale and save $340 in savings of a new website for your private practice, head on over to brightervision.com/joe. Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon. Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.