More Praise for the Startup DPC Book

Today, we got another shout out on LinkedIn for the Startup DPC book:

Are you on the fence about buying Startup DPC?

Well, I am here to tell you that after reading it cover to cover that it is the most extensive guide that I have found for starting your DPC practice and is worth more than the asking price for an insight into this specialty knowledge. (Don't buy the AAFP DPC Starter pack, you will be disappointed). It's a fun read because it is written like a story, not a dry textbook. Dr. Paul Thomas talks about his own experience of starting a practice and includes snippets of other people's experiences. He also compiles a vast amount of other helpful resources throughout the book such as other good books to read, and links to DPC websites, videos, and more. While everyone's journey is different, I love how lots of numbers were included in the book, like how many new patients you will get in a month or how much it costs to start a practice. This was great because it gave me a baseline to compare myself to. A detailed marketing strategy is also included that discusses everything from news media to Google SEO, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

I will be referring back to this book frequently as I start my own DPC practice.

Thank you Paul Thomas, M.D.

#directprimarycare #bookreview #healthcarereform #bookrecommendation #goodread

Thank you so much for the shout out Lauren Svensen!

Laura Svensen, FNP-C with a copy of Startup DPC!

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

Startup DPC Gets A Shout Out From Pretty Girl Practice

This week, Startup DPC got a nice shout out from Pretty Girl Practice on Instagram. If you’re a direct primary care doctor, social media applications like Facebook and Instagram can be great platforms to reach new audiences and also to improve your branding. If you don’t have a Facebook Page or an Instagram page for your direct primary care practice, consider making one to improve how people in your community perceive your brand and your business. I teach doctors how to do this, step-by-step, in the Sales Funnel course on our website, here.

The following images are screenshots from her story about Direct Primary Care

Startup DPC gets a nice shout out from Pretty Girl Practice on Instagram

Startup DPC and the DPC Mapper get a nice shout out from Pretty Girl Practice on Instagram

Adding a New Skill to Your LinkedIn Profile

How to attract more patients to your direct primary care practice by using LinkedIn

Adding new skills on LinkedIn can help to keep your LinkedIn profile looking fresh. It will communicate with your audience that you're actively engaged in the work that you're doing. If you're a direct primary care doctor, having a fresh and engaging LinkedIn profile is a must for attracting and retaining new patients to your direct primary care practice.

For me, I just took 5 minutes to update my LinkedIn profile. This action will help me reach a broader audience and keep my current audience engaged. I just wrote a book called Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice, so I needed to update the publications section of my LinkedIn profile.

In this video, I show you step by step how I did this. If you spend 5 minutes on LinkedIn every day, you'll see tremendous results for your personal and professional brand. I created an entire course on attracting new patients to your direct primary care practice, and it can be found here.

I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn - you can add me by going to my profile and clicking on the “Connect” button.

Have a wonderful day,

-Dr. Paul Thomas

How This Direct Primary Care Doctor Built a Successful Sales Funnel

How to attract more patients to your direct primary care practice

Direct primary care doctors want to know how to attract more patients to their direct primary care practices. This can be accomplished by using a sales funnel, which may seem like a foreign concept, but let me explain. You see, doctors aren’t taught how to market themselves in medical school. There is no course on branding and marketing in medical school or residency. Further, doctors can feel icky about marketing themselves or selling their services.

However, you shouldn’t feel gross about marketing yourself, and here’s why. The best form of marketing is giving the right people in your community the right information about your service. If you can clearly explain what it is that you do and how you help people, that’s marketing. If you can share interesting stories about yourself and about your direct primary care practice, that’s marketing.

There’s a lot of nuance here and there are some tips and tricks to create the best marketing plan for yourself and for your direct primary care practice, which is why I created the Direct Primary Care Sales Funnel Course on Startup DPC.

How this Direct Primary Care Doctor Built a Successful Sales Funnel

For me, it’s been exciting to watch more and more doctors purchase this course, learn from this course, and start applying this new knowledge to grow their direct primary care practices! Further, I’ve been getting some great reviews for this course material. Here’s what one of our successful students had to say about the Sales Funnel Course:

Paul Thomas through his marketing course explains how a blog will get people to click on your actual website and while there take a look at your services. You can also title the blogs to items frequently searched such as #bestdoctorincharlotte or #howtofindagooddoctor Since I’ve taken what I would’ve normally put in a Facebook post (like info about COVID-19) or that I put in weekly emails, into a “blog article on my website”, I’ve cross posted it in blog format so when they click on it to read-they are at my website. I get quite a few views from Facebook and LinkedIn which I used to never interact with. Google searches have gone up too. In terms of SEO it definitely works to drive traffic to your site (now it’s fun to see how many people have been to my website after a posting). In terms of patients-definitely a couple since I started doing it this way, but like a lot of marketing-it seems to be a long game. Since I’m basically giving out good info for free, it doesn’t feel like “marketing” or trying to be a saleswoman which I like. I do spend about 3-4 hours researching and working on content, so was very hesitant to commit at first. Since I’m still building and have empty slots-I just use that time to work on content. As I get busier, I plan to blog less or as needed when a topic is relevant. Some docs pay a service to write blog articles for them as part of their SEO-you could do this, but it isn’t as personable to you. It does work though-just have to weigh the benefits/ROI of your time.

I responded to her by saying that this made my day, because it sincerely made my day! There are few things that make me happier than seeing doctors succeed in their direct primary care practices. Sincerely thank you Melissa Jones, DO for writing this.

This is the review from Facebook of our Startup DPC Sales Funnel Course.

More About Melissa Jones, DO

To learn more about Melissa Jones, DO, please check out her website, here. Her practice is in Charlotte, North Carolina and her goal is to provide all of her patients with quality care, greater access, and better solutions all of the time. Check her out on Facebook as well!

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

Low Cost Tools to Create Excellent Video Content for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

How to Create Excellent Video Content for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

This week, I got a really nice note from a direct primary care colleague. He wanted to know about the tools that I use to create engaging video content for my direct primary care practice. Here’s the ask:

Hey Paul, I hope all is well and that you’re staying safe during this time. You posted your equipment on how you make videos - the computer program, the lighting, the microphone, and the camera that you use to make your videos for Startup DPC and for your practice Plum Health DPC. Can you share that information with me again? I can’t seem to find the post. I want to start making videos and I think these tools and resources will help me to create better videos.

Thank you

There are a ton of great people in the direct primary care movement and I love seeing them succeed in their direct primary care practices. So here it is, the tools that I use to make great video content!

Tools of the Trade

The editing software that I use during my lectures is called Camtasia and it costs $250 - https://www.techsmith.com/store/camtasia. I don't make any money from recommending this product and I recommend it because it's easy to use and low cost. Also, they're based in Lansing Michigan, so a part of my State's economy.

The camera that I use is found on Amazon and it's a Logitech C920S - it costs about $225 and it's worth every penny because the video quality is just so damn good. Here's a video with the basic MacBook Air webcam (super grainy, almost distractingly so). Here's a video with the Logitech C920S HD Webcam that shoots in 1080p: perfectly focused and crystal clear.

The microphone that I use can be found on Amazon, and it's called a Blue Yeti. It costs about $129 if you click over to the basic (silver) color package. The blue version of the Blue Yeti is $146. I don't know why I can't link directly to this lower cost microphone, but it's there for less expensive if you click over to the silver one.

So for right around $600, you can have everything that you need to create excellent content.

Lighting Your Video Perfectly

Now, if you want to kick it up a notch, you can use a simple ring light to give you the perfect lighting in any environment. It's about $60 or $65 on Amazon.

A ring light is great for shooting in situations where lighting is less than ideal. I shoot most of my videos in my office because I get great lighting - there's a large window that faces our front desk, so I just sit at the front desk or stand behind my front desk and enjoy perfect lighting.

A few things to note about this video - the sound quality isn't as good because the camera/microphone combo that is my iPhone is being held 8 feet away from my mouth, so it sounds echo-y. Also, the video quality isn't nearly as good as my other videos shot in 1080p using my Logitech C920S.

So in daytime situations at my office, my lighting is perfect. But, if I'm in another room in my office, or filming at home in my home office, my lighting isn't very good as is. Therefore, I bought a ring light to give me excellent lighting wherever I may be. Here's what that ring light looks like in my dining room and here’s what the ring light looks like in my home office.

Here's an example of mediocre lighting, I was at Ford Field where the Detroit Lions play for a Men’s Health event. You see how the light source (big windows) are on the right side of the screen? And do you see how that illuminates the left side of my face, but leaves the right side of my face in shadow? This is an example of less-than-ideal lighting.

Here's another video with crappy lighting - the overhead fluorescent lights illuminate my forehead and leave my chin dark. Also, no microphone so bad sound quality, and no HD camera, so kind of a grainy video.

However, if that same office with the same camera location is shot during the day, you can see how much better the lighting can be.

With a ring light, you can have perfect lighting any time, any where. So it's a reasonable investment if you're filming in a location where you know the lighting isn't great - for example if you're shooting in a low-light environment or in a room lit by overhead fluorescent lights.

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

Startup DPC Show Episode 9: This Primary Care Doctor Charges $35 Per Visit

This week, I get to talk with Dr. Timothy Wong of iHealth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Wong is obviously a smart physician and he’s also a smart business person. To be successful in the Direct Primary Care model, it helps to be great at what you’re trained in, medicine, and it’s essential to learn new skills that will help you succeed in creating a thriving business as well.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Wong because this Episode of the Startup DPC show is full of excellent advice and great tips to help you start and grow your Direct Primary Care practice.

What is the Direct Access Primary Care model?

The Direct Access Primary Care (DAPC) model is something that Dr. Wong has built upon. He states that it’s similar to direct primary care, but the DAPC model is not membership based. Instead, patients pay $35 per visit, plus additional costs depending on which types of services they require. In Dr. Wong’s DAPC model, he doesn’t bill or use insurance for the visits and he keeps a very low overhead. He leverages technology like his EMR as well as Google Forms to collect vital information on his patients quickly and efficiently.

How Did You Market Your Direct Primary Care Practice?

Personal Branding, Business Branding, Marketing, and Public Relations can be foreign topics for a lot of physicians. This was also the case for Dr. Wong as he didn’t have any formal training in these areas. However, that did not stop him from taking a tremendous step towards making his name known in the community and beyond his community.

I reached out to Dr. Wong for this episode because I saw his profile on LinkedIn and I recognized him from the recent NPR article about his practice. He had this to say about his experience in engaging with the local media, also known as public relations:

“Media kind of snowballs. Once you get one thing, a lot of reporters are actually looking for stories - we don’t realize that, but they’re actually looking for stories. And, if you have an interesting story, they’re going to reach out to you. But, you have to get that initial momentum going”

So how do you get that momentum going? Dr. Wong recommends cold emailing journalists and talking up his practice. He was first interviewed by a local newspaper, and then it snowballed into the local NPR affiliate, and then NPR and other national media outlets.

As long as you have an interesting story that could touch a lot of people and help a lot of people, the story starts to speak for itself.

In journalist parlance, that “interesting story”is also known as a peg, or the reason for writing the story in the first place. As Direct Primary Care doctors starting new clinics and hiring new doctors, we have a very clear peg.

The Importance of Sending the Email

Dr. Timothy Wong talks about sending dozens of emails to journalists, but only getting one story. But the difference between no stories and that one store (that may start a snowball of additional stories) is tremendous. If you have no stories, you have a limited stream of new customers. If you have just one story, that then snowballs into additional stories, you may open a floodgate of new patients, new enrollments, and new customers for your business.

That’s why it’s important to send the email, to reach out to the journalist, to tell your story so that your clinic is featured. You’re doing great work that’s changing lives and changing the community, and the world needs to know about it! So, send the damn email.

Business Logistics at iHealth in Pittsburgh

Timothy Wong MD of iHealth in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania talks with Dr. Paul Thomas of Startup DPC about how he’s starting and growing his direct primary care practice.

Dr. Wong uses Athena Health for his electronic medical record. He pays a percentage of his revenue to AthenaHealth, about 6.4% of revenue, but that includes all merchant fees on credit cards. He uses Google Forms to collect patient information up front for his new patients. This helps him prep charts quickly and efficiently.

As for growth, Dr. Wong would like to get up to 20 to 30 patients each day, or a higher volume for his practice. He’s enjoying the practice and feels less burned out. His patients enjoy the service, especially those uninsured patients in his community and those with high out-of-pocket costs. He’s also looking at how he could grow his practice, either by franchising or consulting or by creating an open source platform that other people can replicate.

Dr. Wong is also looking at creating an application that can be a plug and play option for doctors looking to start this Direct Access Primary Care model.

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE Practice?

If you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

How to Communicate Your Value as a Direct Primary Care Doctor During Times of Coronavirus

The Coronavirus is here in the United States and it’s causing new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. People are scared about their own health and they’re worried about the health of their communities. People are looking to their doctors for answers during this time. In this blog post, I’m going to address the following:

• What can you do during this coronavirus pandemic?

• How can you communicate the value of your Direct Primary Care practice during this time?

• What are the most effective mediums of communication?

• What are some examples of successful Direct Primary Care doctors who are communicating clearly during this time?

What can you do during this coronavirus pandemic?

As a primary care doctor, you are uniquely positioned to address the public and the concerns of the public with excellent information. You want to provide the public with information that is evidenced-based. Avoid making prognostications or letting your opinion seep in. Stick to the facts and best practices.

Additionally, keep an even keel and a calm demeanor. If you look anxious or scared, your patients will pick up on this. If you look calm and collected, your patients will take note and they’ll be more trusting of your advice.

How can you communicate the value of your Direct Primary Care practice during this time?

You can communicate your value by telling folks what you do and how you’re uniquely situated to triage patients. Let people know that you can help them and guide them to the best care possible. This is what you’ve been trained to do - to triage patients, to treat people with medical concerns - now you just have to communicate that ability with your broader audience.

What are the most effective mediums of communication?

Your most effective means of communication are Facebook Live streams, Facebook videos, and YouTube videos. It’s difficult for people to read a lot of information about the coronavirus, so if you can break it down in a digestible format as a video, you will be able to reach a broader audience. You can supplement this video content with written content either in the notes below the video on Facebook or LinkedIn or as a separate blog post.

Examples of successful Direct Primary Care doctors who are communicating clearly during this time

There are a number of Direct Primary Care doctors communicating information clearly to their patients and their communities. I’ll use myself as an example to start and then showcase a few others. So this is a Facebook Live video that I put up on Facebook. It received 180 reactions, 117 comments, 85 shares, and 4,500 views to date. I then downloaded the Facebook live video, uploaded the video onto YouTube and created a blog post around the content. We had 10 new patients enroll in the 24 hours after posting the video.

The next video was not a live video, and a second update on the Coronavirus. I discussed why we’re enacting social distancing and how it can slow the spread of the viral infection. This video received 108 reactions, 27 comments, and 55 shares after posting it.

Dr. Delicia Haynes and her video

Delicia Haynes has a great presentation style and I love what she says here: “It’s Time for Precaution not Panic: Tips For Individuals and Business Owners to stay COVID-19 Free.” Dr. Haynes is the Founder at Family First Health Center in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Focus on her body language, the lighting, her tone of voice, and her speech pattern. She looks directly into the camera, she has nice lighting on her face, and she is in the center of the camera. These are all great. She keeps an even tone of voice and she speaks at an even pace. These are good things as well.

What if you don’t like to be on camera?

If you don’t like to be on camera, it’s a missed opportunity. However, you can make up for it by sending patients emails with photos of yourself in the office. Photos are important because people are way more likely to engage with visual media than with written posts.

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE Practice?

If you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

The StartUpDPC Show Episode 1: How this Direct Primary Care Doctor Successfully Leveraged His Personal Brand

Building a Personal Brand can help you build your Direct Primary Care practice. By having a trusted personal brand, more people will be willing to sign up with your Direct Primary Care service.

Paul Thomas, MD and Kendrick Johnson, DO talk about personal branding for Direct Primary Care doctors on the first episode of the StartUpDPC Show.

But, many of you reading this are unfamiliar with how to build a personal brand. So, I wanted to show an excellent example of how to get this done.

Dr. Kendrick Johnson is a Direct Primary Care doctor with Ark Family Health and he recently made an excellent post on LinkedIn, which helps build his personal brand. The post is titled “Why this Doctor Had to Escape the Healthcare System.” During the video, he tells a personal story, shows real emotion, and even vulnerability. He becomes a relatable person and builds trust with his audience.

Because of this, we thought he'd be a perfect first guest on our StartUpDPC Show, where we will be interviewing thought leaders in the Direct Primary Care field and asking them some tough questions.

In our conversation, we talk about building a Direct Primary Care Practice, leveraging Social Media to get this done, the importance of Google Reviews, sustainable growth rates for Direct Primary Care practices and more.

One of the things that really struck me is that Dr. Johnson used a relatively inexpensive technology, an older-generation iPhone, to shoot his LinkedIn video. Take this as a lesson: you don’t need to hire a camera crew or an agency to produce high-quality content. Instead, you need to look into the camera (on the back of your iPhone or other smartphone) and tell your story with authenticity.

Thanks for watching and have a great day,

- Dr. Paul Thomas with StartUpDPC

Positive Reviews for our Presentation at the AAFP DPC Summit 2019

In June 2019, I was invited to speak about personal branding at the AAFP DPC Summit 2019 in Chicago. It was an incredible event with hundreds of Direct Primary Care doctors from across the country sharing best practices with each other.

Dr. Paul Thomas speaks at the AAFP DPC Summit 2019. His talk is about using your personal brand to grow your Direct Primary Care practice.

My presentation was entitled "Building a Personal Brand to Grow your DPC Practice" and I talked about the tools that you can use to attract and retain patients for your DPC practice. Basically, if you can build a strong personal brand, people in your community will trust you with their health care and want you to be their doctor.

For the Effectiveness of Faculty (ie. knowledge of subject, organization & clarity, effectiveness of teaching methods), I was rated as excellent by 90.8% of the attendees. The remaining 9.2% rated me as very good. I had no good, fair, or poor ratings.

I received so many positive reviews for the presentation that I gave and it was really validating for the amount of time, effort, and energy that I put into these events. Anyways, here are some of my favorite notes from my colleagues:

-Excellent speaker! This was very helpful, and he’s got a fantastic, enthusiastic delivery!

- Great success story with outside-the-box marketing.

- Really interesting presentation. Eye-opening and useful for more than my practice.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

- Paul Thomas, MD

How to Build Your Personal Brand for your Direct Primary Care Practice

Building a Personal Brand can help you build your Direct Primary Care practice. By having a trusted personal brand, more people will be willing to sign up with your Direct Primary Care service.

But, many of you reading this are unfamiliar with how to build a personal brand. So, I wanted to show an excellent example of how to get this done.

Dr. Kendrick Johnson is a Direct Primary Care doctor with Ark Family Health and he recently made an excellent post on LinkedIn, which helps build his personal brand. The post is titled “Why this Doctor Had to Escape the Healthcare System.” During the video, he tells a personal story, shows real emotion, and even vulnerability. He becomes a relatable person and builds trust with his audience.

Video of Dr. Kendrick Johnson posted on LinkedIn - this is a great example of how you can build a strong personal brand that will help you attract new patients to your practice.

So, the first part of building a strong personal brand is building brand recognition. Brand recognition is exactly what it sounds like: the ability of a consumer to recognize one brand over other brands. In other words, it's the ability of consumers to identify your product by its attributes and design elements.

But, in this case, it’s you and your face, your body, your beliefs, and the stories you tell. And no, you do not need to have a perfect face, body, belief system, or stories, but you do have to share these elements (aka your personality) with your audience.

So, in the example above, Dr. Kendrick Johnson is introducing himself to his audience by telling a story about himself. He even tells a very touching and relatable story about his father.

Importantly, he Dr. Johnson uses a medium that many people use - LInkedIn, a very popular social media platform. This sort of professional discussion about the role of a physician in society plays really well on this medium. In fact, LinkedIn is probably the perfect medium for this video.

And, because Dr. Johnson delivers a strong message with a great medium, he has great results, and this is based on the engagement that this post has received - over 100 reactions and several comments with thousands of post views.

The third part of this formula is consistency. If Dr. Johnson can create unique, engaging, thoughtful content that demonstrates his trustworthiness and compassion on a regular basis, he’ll build a strong personal brand. If this is a one-off thing, Dr. Johnson’s efforts here won’t be as impactful.

Consistency is key. Consistently generating high-quality content helps you win on social media platforms.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more content and more informational blog posts and courses.

Sincerely

-Dr. Paul Thomas