Intro  0:00  

Welcome to MedShark Insider with Bill Fukui, your expert host on all things medical marketing and SEO. 

Bill Fukui  0:08  

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of MedShark Insider, and today’s guest, I think, is going to bring some really good insights beyond you know, we talk a lot about digital marketing and websites and things like that. My guest today is Mindy de Crossta, and she is the founder and owner of this. They are an agency that specializes in mental health, but they offer services that are very complimentary to what we do, and I’m going to have Mindy kind of share a little bit more about that. And Mindy, welcome to the show today.

Mindy de Crossta  0:49  

Thank you, Bill. Thank you for having me. 

Bill Fukui 0:54  

Yeah, you know we’ve known each other for a little bit, and I’ve learned about you from one of our clients, who uses it to you guys, and it kind of shed a whole new light on kind of a difference because we generate leads, right? Our job, as a web marketer, is to generate leads for practices. But a lot of times what happens beyond just their websites and social media and those types of things. It stops once it gets to the practice. So give me an idea, kind of give a little bit of background of your, of your business, but also a little bit of background in terms of how you, you know, kind of, how did you get into this?

Mindy de Crossta 1:41  

Sure. Thank you. If you know, it’s, it’s, it’s weird. I never expected to find myself in the mental health space. I got into this through sheer passion. Many years ago, I had a marketing company bill for like, 20 years. I used to help people launch anything and everything, from concept to consumer cocktail napkins and television. I started out a long time ago in telecommunications when that was just a big market to be in. We helped a lot of the carriers go from brick and mortar to web, I actually became a quite substantial commercial reseller. 

And back then, when I couldn’t find a call center to do what I needed to do at the level that that we needed it, I literally threw like 20 people in a room and taught them to do what, what we needed at that time, and wound up growing that that center for other people’s use. I went from that industry, when that changed, into, again, another surprise industry for me, which was modeling and entertainment. I was lucky, really lucky, to have a five-year partnership with Hachette Media out of New York and L magazine, and then we were doing things with young women to help build self-esteem in a subject they were all very interested in. So while all of these things were going well career-wise, I was soaking up working with influencers before it was even a word, and just doing great things. I came home, I used to go back and forth from the city, from New York, and I walked into my house one day and my daughter, who was a happy-go-lucky kid, was struggling with debilitating anxiety, and Bill, I was like a deer in the headlights, no idea where to turn, what to do, and it was my journey in finding her help that led me to see how this system was a bit broken. 

But also my mom saw a treatment called TMS. And I know, you know, it’s become a whole lot bigger now, but she saw that on Doctor Oz, and I had no idea what it was, yeah, and went to she said, You gotta get this and try, you know, see if this will help. We did, and it did, and I could not believe that nobody knew what this was. It was like a best-kept secret, right? That ship’s secret. And my daughter became my daughter again, and, and I mean, it went from having you know, emergency response at my house all the time, because she really was having panic attacks, and they knew us already. They were there so much. But when she had this, it was amazing. And back then it was a little a. Little worked a little bit for a shorter time. 

Now it’s really, really changed, yeah, but that story is what brought me into mental health and to form mental health strategies and solutions and help more people get TMS and groundbreaking treatments since then, closer to home and as close to home as possible because that’s what really changed my life, my family’s life. My daughter went on to change her college path from communications to mental health, and she wound up becoming a TMS technician and moved across the country by herself, and it changed our lives. So, yeah, that’s why I do what I do. What

Bill Fukui  5:51  

a heat that, what a great story that it’s, you know, we all, we all need to make money, right? We all get into jobs and do businesses because, you know, it’s a way of finding things that we enjoy doing and that we find that we’re pretty good at, right? That’s why you keep doing it. But it’s mainly a way to make money. But when you add this layer of belief and passion into what you know, what you do every day, it gives the grind a lot more purpose, right? Because every job has, you know, the things we like or don’t like to do. And as you kind of got into more of the mental health, and certainly, with TMS, what were you finding as a consumer right on the consumer, and going through this, there were obviously some gaps right in the system, right? So, so kind of give me an idea, or audience, an idea of kind of where you saw those gaps, and where mental health strategies can help practices kind of fill those gaps, sure.

Mindy de Crossta  7:03  

From a consumer standpoint, the mom looking to help her daughter, I found that insurance companies were not covering anything aside from depression. At that time, my daughter did not have depression. She had anxiety, but I jumped into Mama Bear mode, and along with some people who helped within the office, I won an appeal where Blue Cross did wind up covering this when they saw the dollars that were being spent otherwise on things that weren’t wrong with her, right? So from a consumer standpoint, the other thing was that doctors weren’t talking to each other and collaborating, so if I took her for therapy and wanted to approach the TMS path. 

You really needed the therapist to be able to talk to the primary care, to be able to talk to a psychiatrist, and have everybody involved. And that was also missing that kind of collaboration that really matters that we have in traditional healthcare, whether it be, you know, for heart or other issues. You’ve got your doctors talking to each other. So as a consumer, you know, I saw that that wasn’t there when I formed MHSS and we grew from two of us to 22 of us, and then and then more. We wanted to fill the gaps that other people who were trying to bring TMS into their practice. 

Well, I also saw it from both kinds of wearing two hats, just being somebody who eats, sleeps, and breathes, marketing, and helping people scale and grow their business. It’s not just a brochure and here’s a logo. It’s really about scale and growth. I saw that practices bringing this amazing technology needed to have buy-in from their staff, needed to have the collaboration we just talked about, and needed to have what every other business, no matter what they did on the planet, those regular tools to grow and scale. So I saw these gaps, and I did not, as you said, I didn’t get into this with dollar signs in my eyes. I just took everyone and everything I knew, you know, and wanted to create a place where somebody who bought a TMS machine could go and fill those gaps.

Bill Fukui  9:49  

No, so you mentioned, you know, staff, and, you know, integrating staff into this, this process is so important. Certain and many times, the most overlooked, you know, thing that a provider doesn’t really think about is really, these are the front line people. So kind of give us a little bit of you know, your feedback or insights on really training and identifying staff and really the talents and the different things when it comes to bringing in, if they’re going to bring in TMS into the practice, or or any kind of new treatments, you know, how does, how do, how do you and your team work with practices? You know, on that

Mindy de Crossta  10:36  

Sure. So what we really like to do is first look into and I, you know, tell any office whether they were using us or not, that you’re looking at your current staff and what their where their talents lie as it pertains to bringing TMS into the practice, talking to patients, the patient journey as they go through, or the current patient identification who currently might be right for TMS, right within those four walls, before even going outside of that or simultaneously. And then what a lot of people do is that they hire a TMS tech, that’s great, and that TMS tech signed up to be a clinical person and run the machine and do all the things that they need to in training. And we, I saw that what a lot of people tried to do is take that same person with those skills and have them be the end all be all literally do everything. Let’s have her do our insurance. 

Let’s have her be some be feet on the street, maybe to connect with referring providers, or let’s have him or her go and speak to the patients about all of that. Some people actually can do that. You just need to make sure, if you’re taking that path, that you have the right person and they are skilled to be able to do all of those things. Because then what happens if they don’t, you have a high turnover, so you’re spending a lot on training, and then they, you know, really aren’t well versed in those other pieces. So we look at the entire existing staff, and we like to see if they need that. By the way, some places are running like a machine. If they don’t need that, that’s okay, just skip it. But, if so, we look at that staff and say, Wow, you have four people. 

They’re excellent on the phone. They can answer those phones really well during business hours for people who are looking for TMS. And then that brings you to what’s going to happen after that. Is everything set up so that if that person says, yes, they’ve spoken to somebody? It looks good, it sounds good, it feels right. Are they going to have a quick journey to the chair? Because that’s what you need in mental health, people are not well and they want to get well. There can’t be too much time in between. So, you know, we look at that, and then where are the patients going to be coming from? Right? They’re going to come from three places, first, inside those four walls already. They’re already a patient, perhaps med management they couldn’t tolerate, or it wasn’t something they wanted to stay on for life. So we look at, you know, we’re going to identify, and the office should identify those patients, then give them a really good, short, clear journey into getting their treatment. That’s where one group of patients comes from, the next group comes from. 

It’s just a necessary piece of being in business is running digital ads. I know, as you know, Bill, right, you’ve got to run your paid ads, and you’ve got organic traffic. We always like to explain to people that when you’re looking everyone’s confused by digital marketing, they’re confused by social media, and they’re confused by SEO. And what do these three components mean? And we simplify it like this, you have to do it. SEO is like having your name in the Yellow Pages from many years ago, but only now it’s online, and that search engine optimization is going to bring you to the top, and that takes some time. 

The next piece is your social media piece. That piece is more about your personality, your business, who you are, your successes, and things like that. But it’s not really for sales, nor should this be a sales thing. It’s not for it. To let them know who somebody is in their culture and their organization. And then we go into the buy, the ad buys, which are so important, Google and Meta, and what’s that going to do? And when people are spending those dollars, I saw those dollars flying out the window when the calls weren’t being answered quickly and properly and differently than any other lead because they don’t know the practice. They’re on the internet. It’s like online dating. 

Bill Fukui  15:41  

They’re not going to spill all their information on that first encounter, so we like your

talking about, you know, music to my ears, basically, is generating the leads, and whether that comes through organic SEO, through your Google business profile showing up in those map listings or paid Right? It doesn’t really matter. These are typically free-floating patients that don’t know you like the referrals, or the existing in-house patients that you’re, that a lot of practices do get when they start, you know, offering TMS. They’re, they’re, quite frankly, those internal or referral types of patients. They’re almost lay-down patients. They’re going to trust you. 

They immediately know you, trust you, and, quite frankly, like you, right? So those are going to be, you know, ones that don’t require a whole lot of you know, when you say answering the phones properly, they’ll put up with a little inconvenience the other things, whereas marketing-driven consumers are very different, right? We all know that their expectations are different, their ability to choose other options. You know, the sky’s the limit, right? You’re not the only game in town. Whereas referrals feel a little more like, you know, I, I’m gonna I’m gonna stick with you. They’ll stick with you. Give us an idea, when you’re answering digital leads properly. What? What does that mean?

Mindy de Crossta  17:09  

Yes. So what that means is, first answer them quickly, because right after they’ve clicked on you, they’re already looking at your neighbors. They’re looking at you first, and then they’re looking at the three behind you or near you there. So you want to answer those quickly. Quickly used to mean one day, not anymore. Quickly means five minutes to you know, a couple of hours at best, and honestly, it’s better, the sooner the better. So that’s the first piece. The second piece is having somebody with the ability to give a very clear, quick, and concise description of the modality of treatment. So in this case, if we’re talking about TMS or now, you know, private and ketamine have, really whatever I come into the picture. 

But all, all parts of mental health, whatever that ad was for, they need to go right there into that and very concise and quick explanation of that. And once they’ve done that, they need to qualify that patient, a potential patient, right? They aren’t patient yet. They’re just people like you and me looking for help. So they need to qualify them, if insurance is in the picture, have they tried the two to four meds or whatever is required of them from that insurance company? Um, they are you. You may not want to tell them the frequency of the treatment right away. 

I will tell you that 90% of people think I can never do anything five days a week for six to eight weeks. And the fact is, they can, they will, and they’re crying when they have to leave their TMS family because it does become if you’re in the right office, like a family, and then device companies you know, have stepped up, one or two in particular, but where they’re really helping with the marketing of these practices that are within their community, and it’s really important for those practices to answer those calls because there’s marketing dollars being spent on their behalf. So again, it’s answering them right, doing what’s legally necessary and what you need to say. And that’s one of the biggest gaps that we saw, which is why I took my call center all those years ago and developed it, and brought everything with me for mental health care. 24/7, all in the US, in and outbound, with people who could speak concisely, and keep the calls for support as affordable as possible, and go from there all the way to the booking, all the way to intakes, if necessary. It’s best however somebody’s going to do this, whether it’s with someone like us or whether it’s internal, it’s best to do as much as you can on that first call. That’s what I would say.

Bill Fukui 20:19  

And the other thing too, that, and I completely agree with all of that, but you guys added a different layer that I saw with one of our first mutual clients, and that was in the tracking. We wouldn’t get on calls with the client you know, your agency, my agency, the client we would be on on a call going through leads. And I was kind of amazed that the detail as to what your team was, you know, sharing with an agency like us, we need to hear that too. We need to get that kind of insight on what’s working. 

What’s not just leads itself doesn’t always mean that they turn into patients, right? Exactly the format in which we’re spending money to generate leads, which ones convert the best? Right? Which ones we’re getting the most you know, treatments or people to accept treatments. Which modality makes the most sense, and it boils down to the intake that you guys are tracking, I found that to be the one differentiator I found with other services.

Mindy de Crossta 21:31  

Yes, we found, and Bill, you know, we love working with your agency, because you’re bringing in those leads, and those leads are good and qualified leads because you’re running the ads the way that they need to, and that’s your expertise. And we find that a lot of times when people are running digital if they’re working with you, or if they’re working with somebody else, whoever they’re working with, they’ll, they’ll come to us, and we’ll hear this over and over and over, we spent X amount of dollars in digital. We didn’t get anything, anything, and I could tell you, because we track all the way to the chair, and we understand why you need to know how many impressions, how many visitors, and all of that, of course. 

But what we look at are, how many consults we get, how many live leads are qualified, and how many wound up in the TMS chair or Academy, wherever they’re going when that happens. And you can look at the path and deliver that information so we stay involved or in the whole thing so that you can zig and zag when you need to on the ads because we can tell you firsthand. 

Hey, a couple of these might have thought this was research. Yeah, let’s look and see if there’s something there. But most of the time, I would say 90% of the time, we find out that digital is fine. What’s happening is the journey to get there. They weren’t answered. They weren’t answered in time. They didn’t even know the lead was there. It was a form fill, and somebody wasn’t looking at the form fills. It’s so much of that, that process, once you know the ads are right. We’re getting the leads. Why aren’t they converted exactly right? 

So we see that that piece, when you’ve got the expertise and you’re running the digital and you know that the keywords are right, that the ads are what they should be, then you look at, okay, why isn’t this person winding up getting the help that they need and need to move forward, right? And we find that it is all in those details. Mm, hmm, how quickly that is answered, and that journey that they’re taking to include how long they have to wait from the time of their first appointment when you get them in to if they’re doing a mapping or an EEG, whatever that may be, they need to do that quickly because that person doesn’t even want to get up out of bed, let alone go in do that and then wait for that, then you can lose them.

Bill Fukui  24:16  

Yeah, you know. And you mentioned the, you know, the phrase patient journey, right? That’s a word or a phrase that gets tossed around a lot, especially, you know, in medicine today, right? Practices are becoming much more, you know, conscious or aware of the fact that we gotta start looking at, you know, how our patients go through this decision-making cycle. But give us kind of your insights or perspective on what this journey is, and really speaking the language you know how important it is to speak the language of somebody going through this journey,

Mindy de Crossta 24:57  

absolutely and just. Just before I do that, I do want to answer your previous question, which I don’t, which I didn’t. The tracking of this is so important, because we track every single lead, and we know what happened with every single lead all the way to the chair. So for example, if you’re running a campaign and you’ve got 40 leads coming, and we are going to know what happened to all 40. 

We’re going to say these eight made an appointment. These were not properly set up for insurance, and they, you know, couldn’t otherwise afford so we gave them resources of what to do, where to go, because you don’t want to leave people hanging right and then these are all in a nurturing state. They didn’t say yes right away, but we’re going to nurture that person and see, you know where they land and the numbers that we give, and we give them every two weeks or every month, but we go over them weekly. That’s the importance. You need to know what’s going on weekly, so that you from digital can make changes if you need to, and the office can make changes if they need to. So I wanted to be able to answer that as far as the importance of what we’re looking at, how to speak to patients right from when we’re doing it, or if we’re training in the office too, or if an office is training their staff to do that, it’s just really important to speak to a patient and meet them where they are, in their language, about TMS. 

So if somebody you might be talking to a potential patient, and you’ve gotten to know them a little, and they have a pretty big science background. Well, if they do, you should. You should talk to them like that and give them a little more of the details because otherwise, they might be a little more skeptical. But if you’re talking to a lay person, and they’re not, you really want to have your staff and the people answering your phones do so with a very clear explanation, and it might be as simple as you know, TMS is amazing. It utilizes an MRI technology that brings magnetic pulses right to the spot in the brain that controls the mood . 

You know, again, there’s a ton of different ways to say it. And then you can talk about what it treats and what insurance covers and what they don’t, and the financial end of how each office would like to part, you know, how they’re going to participate in payment plans, but it’s a concise approach, and also showing people testimonials, showing people that other people have gone through this, and making sure that the staff is really warm and very cognizant of building a real relationship with this potential patient. You know, these are people that just wanted help on the internet. They don’t know the offices yet, you know. And then also to follow whatever their device company needs them to do. That’s also very important that you know, whatever the device company needs them to do so that they are presenting what’s done and how it’s done in the right way.

Bill Fukui  28:51  

Yeah, so, you know, you talked about a lot of things in that, in that response, I’m just, I’m going to ask, you know, one, one thing that kind of, you know, maybe pops out to me, and when we’re talking about the ability to kind of, maybe not be chameleon-like but just to listen right when you’re on the phone or you’re, you know, engaged with a potential patient, it’s not just having a script that’s the only thing they just rely on and and and say the same thing to everybody else, I think, with, I think with mental health patients in general, right? It’s the institution that they want to avoid. 

It’s the institutional, you know, the perception that I want kind of an I want us to, you know, connect here, right they want I think people want that. I think that’s what’s missing in a lot of people’s lives, and when they reach out, that’s the differentiator. There’s such a great opportunity to see. Separate yourself from all the like you said, when they’re on their website, they’re already looking at 234, other practices. The experience that they have with your practice initially sets the tone right. So when you’re responding quickly, and you’re when you do respond and can talk to them in a way that, you know, meets them where they are, right? Exactly. That means you gotta listen right? Yup. Listening skills are so important when it comes to, you know, meeting them at that place. 

Mindy de Crossta  30:38  

Yes, absolutely they are. It’s so important, and it’s also the art of the balance, right, of keeping the call concise, but that’s just for affordability, right? You’ve got, you know, a lot of clients with a lot of calls coming in for us, Bill, we always act as an extension of the practice. We are never a third party, and I think that’s really important. So when people are working with us, they’re not calling a call center. We don’t even call it a call center. We call it solutions. And we do that because we are always an extension of the practice. 

We know exactly where the practice is, the landmarks around the practice, and the people in the practice. We work hand in hand with them daily. So we are literally a part of that practice. That’s important, because if you have a third party reading a script, it’s not great, just as you said, and the listening, the way that we do this, is to yes, we need to know what they’re struggling from, what they’re suffering from, and we make sure that we are warm in our responses to all of that. Our common goal is to bring that person under the office’s wing, have them put their arm around them, and bring them in so that they feel they are now in a safe, great place for treatment. 

So it’s really taking those skills, knowing the space that we’ve been in really well for 12 years, and being able to keep the professionalism, the warmth, all of it together with the goal of booking a consultation. Because no matter what somebody is calling about, they may go into a lot of Bill about their situation. That if they would, and you would let them, the call could be 3040, minutes could be, yeah, right. You can’t do that. We like to keep the calls, and we have mastered the art of keeping those calls where they need to be, but we go all the way into intakes, even for IOPS and all substance abuse. Now they are longer. 

They know they’re going to be longer, and we are dealing just as they would, within their parameters of what that call should look and feel like, but you’re absolutely right. It needs to be there. Yes, we have scripts as guidelines, but our people have been doing this for so long. They are just their guidelines. They really are. They’re listening and they’re they’re talking back and forth,

Bill Fukui 33:26  

yeah, and a question. And I get this from a lot of practices when it comes to like you said, many practices are already just crazy busy, right that front desk and the phones, it’s like, it’s half the time when we would Secret Shop practices, you wouldn’t even get a live person, right? You would, you would get recordings. 

And you know that impersonal experience, or phone trees that I finally push up buttons, and I get, maybe get to someplace, and then I have to leave a voicemail message, right? I mean, we understand that those things happen, especially in the mental health, you know, industry, right? Because they’re just, we’re just busy practicing, right? So how do you distinguish between, say, existing patients, right, that may be calling about, you know, rescheduling, or all this other stuff, existing treatment not responding or having complications or whatever, from those that are, say, marketing, right? Sure. So practices go well, I can’t, you know, I can’t replace my front desk people kind of for those practices that are really busy. How are they? How do you guys work with those kinds of practices?

Mindy de Crossta  34:48  

We work very differently with those practices because we need to. So their TMS line will be separate, although, on the ones that we handle, all of their calls. So the first question we ask is, are you an existing patient that goes one way in our four walls? It could be a warm transfer to their office, or we still handle those calls for them, but it goes one way. And if they’re not an existing patient, and let’s say you’re running a TMS ad, or private ad, or whatever the ad may be, we usually have a separate number, so we know that all of those are coming there, and that’s how they need to be answered. 

What happens is, if a scheduler at their front desk answers an internet ad, that’s where it falls apart, because those calls require an advocacy approach, and it’s and it’s not the person’s fault, by the way, at the front desk, she’s got three phones ringing, and she might be working with four or five providers, or whatever she’s doing, and she simply does not have the time to sit back and say, Oh, wait, this person needs to be hand walked through this process because she’s scheduling patients and they’re that’s the key difference. 

This is not a regular, scheduled patient call. This is somebody who saw an ad on the internet and needs to understand better what the process is going to be, and with just enough information to have them come in. Once they come in, that’s where the practice and how their foundation looks really comes into play, because the places where you’re going to lose a patient, are many once on the call, and if you gained them on the call now, they came in and perhaps somebody at the desk wasn’t as warm as they should be. Didn’t Know About TMS. 

They had to go through three people to get that explanation. Again, that’s another place, right? So you are just for people listening, or anybody that’s building a practice, or if your practice has been built and you’re replicating right, there is where you really want everything to be stellar, and everything should just run the way that it should. That’s where we come in and help fill those gaps. If something’s not broken, we don’t fix it. If it is, we come in and decide, like working with MHSS is easy. We either teach somebody, or we’ve built people in-house infrastructures if that’s what they want. And they want to own it all and have it in-house. We will build it. And here you go. And we’ve done our work, or we do it for them, sometimes a combination of both, where we were talking about the leads. 

I wanted to jump back to that for a second, because we covered where two types of leads come from, right? Covered that they come from their internal and they come from digital, and the third place they come from, however, practice is doing it, are from referring providers, not just needs to get covered for them. So we look at that when we look at that practice and what’s going on, are all the bases covered?

Bill Fukui  38:24  

Okay? So you actually do that and that’s what I do, a question that I do get from practices, especially when it comes to more specialized treatment, whether that’s, you know, TMS or SPRAVATO or you know that they may not have, you know they may not have. Consumers may not know about TMS, right, right? But then, when the patients are in another practice that may not offer TMS, right, but they know about it, right? And they, you know what, I’m going to connect you over with this particular practice. They do offer TMS, which you know they could. So do you form, and help them get those relationships with these other providers that may refer out, or how would one go about doing that? 

Mindy de Crossta 39:22  

Yes, we do, or we even teach them how to do it, so whichever. But you know, it’s funny when we do go in, and sometimes they have a staff and they say, let’s let you know these three people make those calls. It’s a really grueling bill. It is there, especially since COVID, because people are working remotely, offices have moved. They’ve changed locations. There are no more feet on the street as they used to be. Or there is a little bit, and I’ll show you what we do for that, but, but it’s mostly you’re going to call and have doctors. Meet each other, and the importance of those doctors bringing their staff to those meetings, I can’t even tell you, because the doctors are busy, so we set up a 20-mile radius around every office that we work with. We call a 20-mile radius all different modalities of medicine, whether it’s primary care, OB-GYN, functional medicine, therapy, or social workers. 

We’re calling and we’re setting up meetings between Dr Jones and Dr Smith and their coordinators and any pertinent staff virtual or perhaps they want to go visit, yeah, you know, visit the offices, and we are staying in the middle, talking to them monthly, because that’s what’s missing. We have the consistency of setting up meetings with referring providers, and then, once you’ve built that pipeline of relationships, staying involved with them monthly, so that you keep that because the doctors don’t have time, their staff doesn’t have time. But again, we’re an extension of them. 

We’re not a third party. So I really love working with practices that welcome that kind of thing. And if somebody wants to build it internally, and it’s like, here, teach my staff this. I have really good people. We do. It’s just that they wind up giving it back. It’s only because it’s, it’s a business in and of itself, really, you know, you. know, you touch on something that I think a lot of practices either don’t recognize or they forget? 

Bill Fukui  41:30  

Number one is you can form those relationships. You can have lunch, and you can have a great experience with this referring, potential referring physician, or practice. But like you said, not everybody’s ready to send you a patient today, right? Not everybody has in their lap five people that they’re going to immediately refer to you, because now all of a sudden, they know about TMS, right? You gotta wait for those opportunities, for those providers, for the opportunities that land and they know, all of a sudden, you’re top of mind, if you don’t stay on top of them and be top of mind about these situations and opportunities to help patients they forget. 

Yes, we want to break the habits. Everybody has habits, right? So they’ve had the habit of getting these patients and doing something else other than sending them to you right by you staying in front of them. Now, all of a sudden, you have the opportunity to break the habit of just doing the things that they’ve always done, but you have to stay in front of them. Yes, because all back and doing the same thing. 

Mindy de Crossta 42:59  

Yes, it’s so true. And then even having an ambassador and a liaison in that office, maybe they’re dropping off more materials because we’ve told them they’re out of the brochures that we originally sent, or they are collaborating with that liaison. You get a patient right, and perhaps it’s from even another office, primary care, whatever it is, that true collaboration, again, is going to come full circle to the real relationship that these doctors are building. And you know, that’s not a sprint bill, it’s a marathon. 

Yes, you’ve got, you’ve got to commit to a program like that for a year and build it, and what’s you know, you’re going to find your references that are really solid, and it is a true relationship. It has to be fostered. Yeah, and so we, we step in, and we stay in that piece as long as we’re needed once they’re consistently referring and not all do bill they don’t. So we set realistic expectations of what’s going to come out of that. But when you find the ones that do, and they do and they will you, you know, we’ve kind of cracked the code on keeping that alive and making sure that they’re sending a steady stream. And sometimes it’s reciprocal, right? Sometimes, you know,

Bill Fukui  44:29  

so no. And I think when you’re saying reciprocal, I love I think that’s another thing that practices overlook. So two things, number one, the goal of a lot of this networking and referral building, is it’s not like this is not a numbers game. This is about finding out of the diamonds in the rough, out of all the providers that are potential references, you’re going to get those four. Five, or six practices a year that send you multiple patients, right? That’s what we want. We don’t want even just the, just the one-offs, and then they send you on and then you’ll never hear from them again. The idea is, you’re, you know, with what you’re talking about, you’re going to find those gems of constantly, you know, yes, ongoing referrals and that relate, building that relationship and that, let’s face it, with most practices, you don’t have the time, or they don’t even have the time and resources to do that for hundreds of practices, it, it is building those really solid foundations that create a steady stream of predictable, you know, leads and revenue and patience. 

But I also like the second part of that is, I like the reciprocal I, I can’t tell you how many times there are some practices that are TMS only, right? They have these TMS centers, they do all this. And one of the things that you said, you gotta quickly qualify them, and if they haven’t, you know, had multiple trips, maybe they haven’t had any, you know, med management, you know, prescriptions for depression, or any other you know, qualified you know, symptoms, but then they just let those patients go, right? They just let those people off the phone, hey, if they’re not, if they’re not a patient for us, they can be a patient for somebody right, right? Can be a patient for one of my referring practices that don’t offer TMS, right? I can send them to medical management, and now the flow of patients goes the other way, right? It’s reciprocal, right? So in that kind of situation, every lead that a practice generates can be a potential, you know patient for somebody, right? Yes, now or later.

Mindy de Crossta 47:03  

And sometimes, you know your TMS works really well with therapy. And if somebody’s not doing that, and you can have your patient who also was looking for a therapist, and you’re, you know, that’s where, again, that reciprocal nature comes in, of course, only in a legal and not an illegal way, a legal way. But, you know, they’re doing that because it’s right for the patient and right for the patient. 

The other thing that comes to mind when we talk about the referring provider relationships, you know, we find a bill that every office is different. Some offices, when they bring TMS in, have doctors that are really wonderful presenters of TMS and how it works, and other offices have doctors that are amazing doctors, right? You want to go to them because they’re the best, but you might not want them to present the TMS, and they’ll admit that’s not my thing. Like, you know, I’m great with my patients, no one likes that, but so it’s really important for every office, and that’s another thing that we really look at, who wants that meeting set. It might be a coordinator with the doctor that’s presenting better. It might be one of the therapists. 

It could be anybody, but you want to get the best presenter of the information. Also, that makes sense to the audience, right? So we are very specific in the audience we’re bringing, we will talk about and we also get people into schools now with adolescent coverage, right, right? That’s important. So if somebody’s meeting with a team of School Psychologists, you want the right person there meeting with that team, right? If it’s one doctor, and they’re a substantial practice, then you want the right doctor with that doctor and their coordinators. So, we’re very specific in trying to ensure the success of the program. And there are all these intricacies that really matter for that no, that it’s not a one size fits all, no.

Bill Fukui 49:22  

And I like the idea that you know, you don’t always have unlimited at-bats. Those opportunities, you know, they present themselves. You have to maximize the opportunity in situations like you’re describing. Yes, yeah. So super Hey, we’re coming up on, gee, I can’t believe it. We’re, like, almost an hour into this, and we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of stuff, and I probably would say it probably makes sense for us to have a follow-up, you know, webcast, on some topics we didn’t even, I haven’t even touched on yet, right? So I’d like to maybe do that. But if you can do me one favor out of all the things we talked about today, if there is one thing you know, if there’s one thing that you could leave with our audience today that would help them with, with helping more patients. What would be the one thing that you know you would want them to walk away with?

Mindy de Crossta  50:30  

It’s difficult to say just one thing, but I will say that if you run your practice the way any business runs its business to grow it, which will allow for more patients to get more help, it would be to really utilize that type of system and what that is, and it’s what we do. And again, I didn’t reinvent the wheel. It’s been here for a long time, but what we do is, you want to look at what you look and feel like to the public online and off, so your marketing materials and what you look like on your website is your journey, short and concise, to bringing somebody in from a person to a patient, or are they reading resumes, tons and tons of stuff, and they’re getting lost. 

So you want to look at that. Once that is handled, you want to turn on what’s called a digital faucet, and they come over to you, Bill, and here’s what we’re going to run, and you’re doing all that research in the market and running it right then you’re getting the calls answered, whether it’s in your four walls, or our four walls, or whoever’s four walls are getting those calls answered in they’re getting answered quickly and concisely and properly, and those patients are being brought in, and then you’re going out into the community, out into the community, any way you can, the way I just described your staff, our staff, somebody else’s, however it is, you’re out there in the community, and then testimonials, testimonials, testimonials that you’re going to repurpose, that that’s it. 

That’s how you grow a business, that’s how you grow a practice, and that’s how to give those patients what they deserve in care. You want people to be singing your praises, left and right. So that’s, you know, that’s, that’s all I can say. It’s not a one-and-done. It’s not one thing. Um, there are so many things, but those, those five things that I just encompassed, really, are what makes something run, run, right? 

Bill Fukui 52:43  

And you know, yeah, get the patient, I think, just, just like, like you were saying, run it like a business. And make sure you really look at that process. And when you want to call that the patient journey, that we’re meeting, those people at the places that we need to and helping, you know, the community around us, right? It’s yes we surround ourselves with, whether that’s potential patients, existing patients that are referring to us, or the providers that that we can reciprocally refer to and help each other and help each other’s patients at the end of the day, absolutely.

Mindy de Crossta 53:17  

And Bill, I’ll say this too, just on a personal level, every office, you know, I think people lose sight of how awesome they are and how and what they’re doing. I really did that office like that and saved my kid’s life back then and now. You know, she still goes, she goes for boosters out in California, she goes to where, you know, it’s an amazing thing when you can do EEGs now and really see that, you know, they have personalized TMS that, that, you know, there’s so much out there. 

But the bottom line is, and on a personal level, every staff member needs to remember that what you do is amazing. And when I am out to dinner or at a barbecue or wherever, and I tell people what we do and why I do what I do, people really still don’t know what this is. So everybody in every office should talk personally when they’re out, forget about just telling people what you do in the business, in your own personal life. If everyone talked about TMS and any new groundbreaking treatments, we’d all be better off for it, because, again, people are amazed, amazed by it when they hear it.

Bill Fukui  54:40  

Yeah. And I think the other thing too is they’ll feel good about that themselves, right? Yes. Start feeling like you’re helping people. You have to develop a belief in what you do. And I would say for most of these practices that get exposed to these types of patients and see the results that they get, how could you not want to talk about it? Up that. I mean, yeah, because we’re all human, and we all want to feel powerful, nothing more powerful than sharing knowledge, sharing experience, and things that people just don’t know about.

Mindy de Crossta 55:12  

Yeah, we’re in awe of the practices we work with and the practices out there, because and they and again, they lose sight of it because they’re in the middle of it, they’re in their trenches, but we don’t, they’re amazing. So I would just, you know.

Bill Fukui  55:25  

That is, that is a great way to end our session today. So go out there and change the world, right?

Mindy de Crossta  55:33  

Yes. So thank you, Bill. No. Thank you. I appreciate

Bill Fukui  55:37  

all time, and we will schedule another one because I think you bring a lot of insights that a lot of practices haven’t really thought about. So thank you again, and have a great day. Mindy, thanks.

Mindy de Crossta  55:49  

You too. Okay, bye, bye.

Outro  55:51  

Thanks for joining us. For the med Shark Insider with Bill Fauci. Join us next week for another dive into all things medical marketing. All episodes can be streamed at www.medsharkdigital.com/medshark/insider.