How to Market Orthodontist Practices

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:37 — 38.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Luke Infinger – Hip Creative

Podcast Overview:

05:59 Focused on strengths, helped achieve goals, built team, pursued freelance work, discovered agency model.
11:12 Creative people struggle with lack of control.
16:07 Juggling business and field work with marketing.
18:39 Embracing honesty and making positive life changes.
22:37 Summary: Secret shop software measures website responses.
23:26 Managing voice, text, and email communications efficiently.
29:25 Analyze, improve, and optimize online advertising tactics.
32:51 Veterinary clinics struggle with business management.
33:48 Challenges getting input, understanding and cooperation.
38:24 Address onboard terrorism within the business culture.
41:17 Pride in a job well done explained.
43:36 Focus on positive outlook, offer hope to others.
47:09 Feedback is essential in patient-client relationships.

Podcast Transcription:

James [00:00:01]:

You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. We We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Saint Prairie. If you’d like to listen to some audio episodes, you can download them at the podcast link found at draw in customers.com. My name is James Kademan, and today we’re welcoming slash preparing to learn from Luke Infinger, the CEO and cofounder of Hip creative, which is probably the coolest company name ever created. So, Luke, how is it going today?

Luke Infinger [00:00:33]:

It’s going great. Thanks for having me.

James [00:00:35]:

Yeah. Tell us what is hip creative.

Luke Infinger [00:00:38]:

So hip creative really started, just a little over 9 years ago as a marketing agency. We thought we We would be, local agencies. We’re in Pensacola coast, so serving the Gulf Coast, Southeast. But as we grew, myself and my business partner, Justin Huell really wanted to focus on really looking at all aspects of the business. So there’s 4 main components, marketing, sales, operations, and finance. And so while we started as a marketing company, we realized that marketing really just Poses problems. And that’s why, like, you hear all these stats, like 80% of small businesses fail. And so we had to zoom out and look at things much More holistically, today we’ve built a framework that is made up of 3 main components and it’s marketing, software, and coaching.

Luke Infinger [00:01:33]:

And so we package that up and it’s more or less a, a growth framework, versus just marketing.

James [00:01:41]:

So tell me, let’s just start with the marketing when you first started out. 9 years ago, it was a little bit different landscape, I guess. Internet was still a thing. So but, social media was definitely different back then. Yeah. So were you tackling the digital side, the billboards, radio, TV, a little bit of everything, or did you have a focus anywhere?

Luke Infinger [00:02:02]:

Yeah, it was mainly digital. So it was, you know, 9 years ago it was heavy with content, websites, blogging, you know, funny enough, we didn’t get into running like actual Facebook ads or Google ads till Probably 2016 or so. Okay. So we started in 2014. So that took us a little bit of time. But, yeah, I mean, The marketing now is, primarily focused in digital with certain partners. We do graphic design, so we’ll do Referral pads, billboards, posters, mailers. We’ll do some of that stuff.

Luke Infinger [00:02:43]:

It’s largely dependent on The client that we have their needs and their, their budget. Are they maximizing the digital areas that, In many cases are going to be your lowest acquisition cost. And then we can expand into some, some other areas. So It just depends. And and, you know, we try and tie everything back to goals versus just doing things to to do things. So, like, what’s the actual target here? And then let’s put a plan together to figure out how to get there.

James [00:03:14]:

All right. So let’s talk about when you started this or right before you started this, Were you working a day job as a marketing person, or what get got you into the whole marketing game?

Luke Infinger [00:03:24]:

So I tell everyone that Everything I’m in, more or less happened by accident. So I’ll kind of tell Just a little bit of the longer story. So my background is in design. I ended up going to college in Savannah, which is, SCAD. It’s a big design school, Savannah College of Art Design. Some of the world’s best designers go to that school. And after finishing up there, my degree was in motion graphics. So, you know, things like title sequences, Show packages when you watch, you know, an NFL game or, you know, NASCAR or whatever it is, the graphics that fly in or, you know, maybe the world news.

Luke Infinger [00:04:10]:

Just about every show you’re going to watch, You know, like Yellowstone, there’s an amazing title sequence. That’s a popular show. So that’s what I went to school for. And then I moved to New York and started working in a design shop, in the city. And when I realized, you know, through actual actually getting a professional job, I realized that More or less, I hated it. I was working, you know, 7 days a week, where I worked, You know, and, and largely this is a job you’re going to find in New York city, maybe Chicago, Portland and LA, maybe Atlanta. So, now that’s probably changed and most people are virtual, but you know, that’s where all the the motion graphic studios are. So we would be working, you know, 9 am, 10 am to midnight every day.

Luke Infinger [00:05:06]:

You would take hard drives home, and you would make very little money, because you know, most money in production is spent on the front end And then they go over budget. And what we do was on, you know, post production, the backend. And so it’s like pinching pennies to get the work done. And so, you know, a lot of times you’re dealing with small budgets, so you’re working for a shop that is really trying to squeeze, everything out, of its team that it can. I loved motion graphics when I could do projects for myself, but getting into the real world, it just wasn’t for me. And, a lot of things happened when I was in New York and and one of it, which was, realizing That I just needed to regroup. And so I moved back home. I’m from Pensacola, Florida.

Luke Infinger [00:05:59]:

And, really just started to focus on my strengths, Which was always kind of selling myself, and also coupled with just helping people reach their goals. So, I started to do that and get some freelance work, whether it be rebrands, websites, You know, graphics, odds and end types of things. And just naturally, I kind of started to build a team so I wasn’t bogged down in the work. And, I read a book back then, how to make money with social media. It’s completely outdated today, but back then it was like Just a light bulb for me that that went off and it really pitched a model. So the book even pitched an agency model with a company called HubSpot, which is a huge CRM. They’re out of Boston. And at the time and I don’t know how this works now, but at the time, HubSpot Had an agency program where they would even assign you a coach.

Luke Infinger [00:07:00]:

They would teach you, you know, kind of how to sell. You could even like Role play or go through sales calls with them, and they would show you price points. Here’s what you need to include. I mean, they did a pretty good job of, You know, helping, agencies, you know, and at the time we were brand new, figure out how to, to get some traction and get some Retainers that were, focused on long term goals and, and had actually pretty decent pricing. So that’s what I did. And, I rolled some clients into that automatically. And then as we grew, You know, it just didn’t make sense for us to, to stay partnered with HubSpot. In fact, we have our own software now called practice beacon.

Luke Infinger [00:07:45]:

That is a simplified version For the verticals that we serve. So that’s how I got into this whole game is, You know, just kind of by accident and putting 1 foot in front of the other, around my strengths and figuring out how I was going to add value To businesses. I’ve always, been drawn to business. And, you know, even when I was, 12/13. I had my mom driving me door to door to knock on doors and say, Hey, can I mow your lawn? I’ve actually got my Stuff here. I can do it right now, you know, convenience. So I’ve always been entrepreneurial and always known I have known that if I wanted something, I would have to go out and earn it because my parents only gave me like food and basic Clothing. I wasn’t this kid who had cars and game consoles and all this.

Luke Infinger [00:08:40]:

I have always, had to go out and get it myself. And I, I am glad, you know, in hindsight that that was the case. Because I think a lot of people don’t Experience that. And, you know, that’s, that’s why few people go into, go into business and they just go work for somebody else, you know?

James [00:09:02]:

So Totally fair. We need those people for employees. Right?

Luke Infinger [00:09:05]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I mean, you need you need all different types of people to make the the world go round. But, You know, I think that definitely helped mold and shape who I am today. So, so I appreciate that for sure.

James [00:09:19]:

That’s cool. That’s very cool. You know, it’s interesting. I guess, I didn’t realize that we ran down a similar path because I went to school

Luke Infinger [00:09:26]:

for

James [00:09:26]:

graphic design, And I got a job as a graphic designer, and I don’t even know if I was there 6 months.

Luke Infinger [00:09:32]:

Wow.

James [00:09:33]:

And I realized this is not what I learned in school. In school, they’re like, come up with a logo, and you get to do all this fun stuff.

Luke Infinger [00:09:43]:

Yep.

James [00:09:43]:

And when you’re on the bottom rung of a graphic design company, at least the one that I worked at, They said this church wants a brochure, so we’re gonna do a pro bono, so we’ll give it to the new guy. And you’re working with a committee and a church, and it’s a bunch of people that, it was a huge time waster, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t a portfolio builder because you end up making something pretty ugly because you had designed by committee. And I remember giving this specific church that I made this brochure for. It was for some fundraiser they had. And And I remember I had 2 that I was proud of, but they wanted 5 samples. So I just threw together 3 additional ones, and I presented it to them. And I said, just pick 2 and we’ll run with those. And they picked 2 of those 3 that were thrown together.

James [00:10:31]:

I thought, oh, man. I thought I intentionally made those ugly so that they wouldn’t choose them. So I picked 2 and I run down this road, and it was oh, it was gross. Gross because they just kept adding information whenever it got clogged. Anyways

Luke Infinger [00:10:45]:

I know that all too well.

James [00:10:47]:

Yeah. It was tough. Anyway, that particular business, I end up leaving, because it went bankrupt before I got a chance to quit.

Luke Infinger [00:10:54]:

Wow.

James [00:10:55]:

Long story there, it doesn’t matter. Not relevant to this podcast, but in the end, it’s interesting how you go to school for a thing. You expect your life is gonna follow this path. And then you actually get in the real world and you’re like, yeah, no, this is not what I want at all.

Luke Infinger [00:11:09]:

Yeah. So

James [00:11:10]:

they don’t teach you that in school.

Luke Infinger [00:11:12]:

Yeah, I think there’s something about school with the, the creative process, like you’re saying, and kind of the artistry element Where you can actually be the creative director, but then you get in the real world. And like you’re saying, there’s like 12 people on a committee who now want to be the creative director, but they have 0, 0 qualifications outside of we’re paying for this or we’re the client or whatever. And, I wanted to just get out of that as quickly as possible. And sadly, I can feel for a lot of creative people. Who are really good at what they do, but they’re never able to, in many cases, really take charge and ownership of the project. And, you know, you just get bulldozed because, it’s like, you know, home design or, you know, all of these things that are visual, then it just brings out tons of opinions. Yeah. You know? So I, I don’t miss that.

Luke Infinger [00:12:09]:

Yeah.

James [00:12:10]:

So did you start your own motion graphics company or how come you started tackle the marketing versus doing motion graphics on your own?

Luke Infinger [00:12:20]:

Yeah. Motion graphics, you know, it, it can only do so much, so it can play a piece of the whole puzzle. I wanted to focus on the whole puzzle. Mhmm. So I wanted to focus on, you know, why is your business not growing? And then that’s why we made the jump from just marketing To where we are today, because truth be told, I’ll ask this question to so many people I talk to, which is, be and it really comes from a place Like, something something like this, where I get in a room and most people say so we serve orthodontists and dentists and oral surgeons. So most people will say, I just need more new patients. I’ll say, okay. So before we, we talk marketing and ramping up marketing, which is what they think they need, I’ll say, walk me through your website.

Luke Infinger [00:13:10]:

And over the last 12 months, who’s gone to your website, filled out forms, raised their hands, say, you know, I wanna come in. I need these procedures, or I need braces or Invisalign, and show me, you know, a list of these people When your team, responded to them and how they responded to them and who actually scheduled and came in. Mhmm. And most people can’t answer Any other questions? Oh, well, I don’t know. Let me text, or call Sally. Oh, well, Sally says, Actually, nobody gets that information. We gotta call our website company or yeah. We think the front desk Calls them, but we’re not really sure.

Luke Infinger [00:13:50]:

We don’t track it. They’ve got to call them. And so where I’m going with this is if you don’t have a process just For the referrals leads you’re already getting. Why would you go to, oh, we just need more marketing And more and more people are gonna fall through the cracks. Right. And so what I wanna do is plug the leaks, then turn on the leads. And so I wanna look at all the systems that are in place. I wanna listen to, the 1st interaction, the 1st phone call.

Luke Infinger [00:14:20]:

I’m gonna secret shop the practice. I’m gonna look at correspondence. I’m also gonna look at who is in those roles, and do they like sales? Do they like customer service? Most people, in our front desk role, do not. They’re just thrown there because they’re, you know, a Low paid employee. And, we don’t need somebody incredible to be at the front desk, but, you know, even though we’re told not to judge a book by its cover, we all do. And if you’re listening or watching, how many interactions have you had that are bad or not great? And because of that, you called somebody else. A lot of people. Right.

Luke Infinger [00:15:01]:

I do that all the time. I’m like, this person doesn’t sound friendly. Like this person doesn’t even sound like they want me to be here. You know, and I’ll just hang up the phone, and if, you know, the next person on Google I’m gonna call, and if it’s warm and inviting, I’m gonna go there. I’m not even gonna call the other place back and cancel my appointment. Right. And so there’s all these issues that can stem from the very first interaction, And most business owners are just completely blind to what’s going on. They don’t even know, what’s happening at these touch points.

James [00:15:36]:

Fair. Totally fair. You know what? You remind me of a meeting that I had years ago when I was getting radio ads. This is probably 2008, 2009. I had a small printer repair, copy repair company. And since the market had crashed, I knew that the economy was having a rough time because I had salespeople for these ad agencies reaching out to me, you know, a small company. Where before, they wouldn’t even give me the time of day, but when all the car dealerships and stuff like that pulled all their ads. They had all this time available.

James [00:16:07]:

Anyways, so I’m like, hey. Let’s let’s run with this. I was throwing some money at it, and I was in this meeting, the creative meeting, and this very smart salesperson, she’s still friend of mine today. She says, What are you gonna do if this works? And I was thinking, okay. It’s me, my cell phone, and I have 3 technicians. So if the marketing works, that means my cell phone’s gonna light up. And I’m actually in the field as well fixing machines, helping my employees and stuff like that. So a lot of these calls are gonna be missed, or I’m gonna be answering while I’m driving, which is almost as bad.

James [00:16:46]:

So it’s interesting because it made me step back and say, oh, what if it does work? Because you’re expecting that you’re gonna pay this money. It’s an investment in the back of the mind. Hope is that it works. But the other side back of the mind is like, you can say I tried

Luke Infinger [00:17:02]:

Right.

James [00:17:03]:

Almost hoping that it doesn’t work. And when she asked that, I was like, oh man, Great question. That is of, you need a very in-depth answer to that, that I don’t have. So it’s interesting that I was in that position as well, but that alludes to, I guess, some of the challenges that I’ve seen with, with clients or potential clients is they, A lot of entrepreneurs feel, that they don’t want to admit if they don’t know something. So something’s awry or someone’s kind of pulling back the curtain and learning that, hey, how come you didn’t do this or you need to do this? Those these entrepreneurs, business owners don’t wanna be told that they messed up even though they did, and it’s costing them 1,000, if not 100 of 1,000 of dollars. So how do you talk to business owners in a way that lets them know, hey. We’re gonna help you even though we gotta see some of your errors behind the curtain. Cause that’s going to be a challenging conversation.

Luke Infinger [00:18:05]:

It is. Yeah. And we’re not for everybody. But I think it’s, bringing these things to light and just, You know, asking them if they want to grow or if they want to remain status quo. And it’s a hard conversation, but we want to have those hard conversations because If you can think back in any time of your life where you’ve made positive change and big change, it’s come from a hard conversation. It hasn’t come from an easy conversation. Like, hey, Luke. You know, everything’s great.

Luke Infinger [00:18:39]:

You know, you’re, you know, way overweight, but you’re you’re showing up Once a week and, you know, just keep doing it. Well, you know, if if that is the case, and I wanna make positive changes, Probably going to take somebody getting real of me and say, Hey, you may be in store for these diseases, or, you know, you may be taking years off your life And you’re going to have to have nutrition and, you know, what do you really want in life? Do you want more years with your family and, and painting that picture And where I’m going with this is it’s going to be a hard conversation and I’m going to have to make a real decision and think about what I actually want in life. And that’s what we’re trying to do with the doctors that we serve is really getting down to it and See, you know, do they have goals, dreams, aspirations, and do they actually want to achieve those or do they want to have an ego? Do they wanna be a know it all? And and do they wanna drive the ship? Because if they do, that’s great. You know, have fun, but You’re probably just gonna be stuck on the hamster wheel. All of us who need help and wanna grow, You know, we have to take an honest assessment of where we’re at. And you’re right. That is hard. Like, I, I don’t always Love it when people point things out about me or my business, but I hope that I can take an honest assessment if, if it’s Good information and say, you know what? They were right.

Luke Infinger [00:20:09]:

I do need to do that. Even if it’s a month later, 2 months later, 6 months later, whatever it is, you know, if people really wanna grow, I I feel like you should want to be uncomfortable because comfort, it it really just keeps you complacent.

James [00:20:26]:

Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. They call it growing pains for a reason. Right?

Luke Infinger [00:20:29]:

Yeah. There you go.

James [00:20:30]:

Yeah. Interesting. You know, it’s funny. We’ve conversations with people that are selling, I guess, marketing ad reps, and I try to convince them to talk to their clients about our call answering service with the idea that when they jump, boost their marketing, throw all this money at marketing. Presumably, it’s gonna work to a point, and new potential clients are gonna reach out, and we can be the ones that answer, presuming that these companies don’t have anyone to answer. Or like you said, the grouchy people answering.

Luke Infinger [00:21:01]:

Yeah.

James [00:21:02]:

Or something like that. Some of the verticals that we take care of. The people that do answer their phone, if they do answer their phone, it it just sounds like you’re interrupting their life. It’s not a they don’t hear cash register ring ring when that phone rings. They hear No. Interruption, and you get Grouchy as far as

Luke Infinger [00:21:20]:

that goes. Yep.

James [00:21:22]:

So tell me you got the marketing thing. At what point did you evolve that into adding these other steps to that or these other opportunities.

Luke Infinger [00:21:31]:

Yeah. So we started to, create, a lot of training, around 2019. It wasn’t really structured, though, when we started creating it. It was, like, Interviews with top performers, in the space about key topics. We had this idea about a Software. We were manually secret shopping people, using, like, Google phone numbers and things like that. And so really it was during COVID. So when most people shut down, you know, our, Our customers, or we call them partners, shut down for 60 days.

Luke Infinger [00:22:10]:

Some people longer, 90 days. But that gave us enough time to really work on the business and roll out these ideas. So we rolled out our software called Practice Beacon. They can go to practice beacon.com, look at it. Essentially, it’s just a very simple CRM. It’s keeping up with the new patient journey. Again, we serve doctors, so They’re trying to reach patients. You can make phone calls out of it, text messages.

Luke Infinger [00:22:37]:

And then we also launched our secret shop Software, which is proprietary. It’s actually patent pending. So it will go on someone’s website and fill out a contact form with tracking information and measure response times. You know, did they call, leave a voicemail text, send an email? And then, you know, if they did, what was the cadence with that? And when did it occur? In most cases, If any follow-up happens at all, it’s, like, a day later, and it’s, like, 1 phone call. And so Wow. Yeah. That that’ll You know, if you pull up your phone right now and just go to missed calls and you see the red numbers, which are the missed calls, and you’re not gonna have names saved to those, I don’t know about you, I never call those people back. I rarely check my voicemail.

Luke Infinger [00:23:26]:

When my voicemail says, Oh, it’s 95% full, I’ll go in and delete some. And then I’m even finding myself you know, I’m getting these, these text messages, and they just again, it’s not a saved number, so And it it’s, like, this long, so I just ignore it. In many cases, I delete it. And so what has to happen is call, voice mail, text message, and email in clusters. It’s a hybrid follow-up process. It is kinda how our system works. Some of this is automated. Some of it’s manual.

Luke Infinger [00:23:57]:

But, You know, if you get a phone call and a voicemail, you miss it, but then you get a text message. Hey. That was me who just called you. This is Luke at hip creative. When’s a good time to chat? I send you an email too maybe, and then I follow that in 2 hours. Obviously, I change up the messaging. I follow that again in 24 hours. Well, by then somebody’s going to connect it and go, oh, this is that website.

Luke Infinger [00:24:21]:

I went, I do need help that that’s who this is. Let me, let me text them back.

James [00:24:27]:

So this is triggered by that person. Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:24:32]:

Yeah, exactly.

James [00:24:33]:

So they raised their flag and said, Hey, I’m interested. And then you’re saying great. And it takes them a little while to actually respond to you.

Luke Infinger [00:24:42]:

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that’s, that’s when we go in and say, Hey, were you aware of this? Would you like help with this? You know, what’s, what Is a good response time to you? What’s your process in office? And again, doctors in this case, it’s doctors but it could be The tool could work for anybody. They’re they’re kind of shocked that the follow-up is this poor, especially if there’s no follow-up, which In their own clinic. Yeah. And their own their own clinic.

James [00:25:10]:

Practice. Okay.

Luke Infinger [00:25:11]:

Yep.

James [00:25:12]:

That’s funny kind of because I’m not surprised at all.

Luke Infinger [00:25:18]:

Yeah.

James [00:25:18]:

Not even a little bit. Not even which is funny because that’s what the norm is. Right? We live in this beautiful communication age where we have 50,000,000 different ways to communicate with people, and that is only making us worse at actually with people, and that is only making us worse at actually communicating.

Luke Infinger [00:25:32]:

Totally.

James [00:25:33]:

That’s kind of ironic. Yeah. It’s funny.

Luke Infinger [00:25:36]:

And and to go back to, you know, sales and customer service, largely the issue is there’s just no training. You know, there’s 0 training. It’s like, here’s how you answer the phone. Here’s a basic script. If they need emergency Dental care, they need to call this number. If they bring up, Medicaid, you know, you say it’s all this, jargon versus, you know, here’s how you need to understand people. Here’s how we wanna serve people. Here’s the type of service.

Luke Infinger [00:26:10]:

We want to bring to the phone call. That stuff’s more important. You can go over the nuts and bolts, like once they show up, But if they don’t show up, then you have nobody to help.

James [00:26:21]:

Right.

Luke Infinger [00:26:22]:

You know? So, people really need to, think about this and think about how do we make it easy for the consumer? So many businesses are trying to make it easy for the business. Well, we need to get, you know, these 400 questions answered or else cancel their appointment. I’m not going to answer 400 questions.

James [00:26:42]:

Oh my god. You remind me of this conversation I just had with an employee of mine. So we call answering service. We put together a flowchart for every client and client new client had sent us a doc with a bunch of information about how to answer the phone. This is what we’re doing. Right? And then we created the flowchart, sent the flowchart to the client. Client sends us back an updated doc saying, Hey, I forgot some of this stuff. And so my employee said, I’m gonna send an email back to this client, asking them to highlight the changes they made.

James [00:27:16]:

And I said, no. You’re not. You’re gonna go through that document, and you’re gonna create a new flowchart. And she’s like, but We don’t know what changes they made. I’ve said, you’re starting from scratch. Our job is to make their job easier. Our job is not for them to make our job easier. If ever the case, they have no reason to pay us.

Luke Infinger [00:27:35]:

Exactly.

James [00:27:36]:

And you could tell the employee was like, Gah, I know you’re right, but I hate it kind of thing, This internal battle that I’m like, I know that it sucks. Right? I know that we should have been able to see there’s a few things that could have been done where we could actually see changes and all that jazz. We can’t. You’re starting over.

Luke Infinger [00:27:55]:

Mhmm.

James [00:27:55]:

That’s our that’s our game. That’s what we sell.

Luke Infinger [00:27:58]:

Yeah.

James [00:27:59]:

So it’s interesting. 1, I kinda felt tiny bit bad that I’d tell the employee to do this. But the other thing in the back of my head was, why do I have to tell the employee this? Shouldn’t the employee just know that their job is to make it easier for the client, Not easier for us. But, I mean, it’s

Luke Infinger [00:28:20]:

Most people don’t.

James [00:28:21]:

It was bizarre. It It was bizarre that there was even a thing like, woah. Woah. Woah. Pump the brakes. There’s no way that you’re asking that client to do more work. No way. Yeah.

James [00:28:31]:

No way. So I get it. I completely understand what you’re saying. So you have the software and you have the The marketing is the idea that with the software, you can find where the cracks are in the marketing or where their marketing is actually working to the point of actually getting forms filled out and people knocking Yeah. Knocking on the door or raising the flag saying, Hey, pay attention to me. I have money to give you. And then the practice is just oblivious to it?

Luke Infinger [00:28:59]:

Yeah. It’s it’s really a place to measure what’s going right and what’s going wrong. Because, you know, some practices just knock it out of the park. They’ve already got a great team. There’s great leadership in place. You know, that’s that’s a easier situation where there’s a flat organizational structure. So it’s the the owner, which is the doctor, and then everybody else on a flat line, and there’s little training. Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:29:25]:

We we’re looking at it through the lens of, is this working and where are the training opportunities? But anyone can get better. So even the ones who are doing 90%, you know, we can still look for those those small tweaks. So, yeah, it it tracks all of that. So we can even, zoom into Facebook ads or Google ads or website form submissions And see how to scale what’s actually working. But then, again, oh, here’s this messaging, and and Luke told Harrison, hey, Harrison, if you’re interested in coming in, just call me. Well, no. We we just wanna call them. We don’t wanna tell them to call us.

Luke Infinger [00:30:05]:

So, Yeah. It brings up all these training opportunities. I mean, even dropping pricing, treatments $8,000. Let us know if you wanna schedule. Well, You sell it as a payment plan though. So shouldn’t we talk about the payment plan, not the total price right now and see if they’re even interested and that’s even doable? So really the the 3rd component is I think the most vital, which is all the curriculum and coaching. So we have 4 books. The first one’s on the front desk.

Luke Infinger [00:30:33]:

The second one is on the sales position, which is on the, it’s called the treatment coordinator. The third one is is on leadership and really how to scale, and the 4th one’s on mindset. And then we’re taking those books and turning them into training courses with Quizzes, course materials, and then we have tons of white papers and, training videos outside of that as well. And we do live training. So we have 21 days of onboarding for our partners. And, You know, as they come on, they’re getting training on Zoom calls. Their teams are now we don’t do any clinical training. So, you know, we’re not orthodontists.

Luke Infinger [00:31:13]:

We don’t know how to move teeth. We’re not Going to train on that, but we are going to train on what they did not go to school for, which is business, and in sales and marketing. And, then we launch and hopefully the team follows the process. If they don’t, we have our own follow-up team. So our follow-up team will call prospective patients, and schedule them for the office. So at that point, We’re handing them scheduled appointments versus leads. Okay. But some offices, you know, just aren’t aren’t set up for that, meaning maybe they’re a big office and they have a call center of 10 people.

Luke Infinger [00:31:55]:

Well, we need to just work with them to follow the process because, you know, it doesn’t make sense for our our follow-up team to get involved. So it it’s really just dependent on the practice and what they need, And that’s why I think it’s so important to look at things more holistically versus just this blanket approach for everybody. While we do have a framework that includes these things, you know, not every practice may need all those things. Some practices are gonna need more coaching in certain areas than others. And so, yeah, I think you just gotta get to know your clients and understand what it is, that’s holding them back from growth and their goals and, and focus on those things.

James [00:32:41]:

Fair. Totally fair. I wanna talk about working with people.

Luke Infinger [00:32:44]:

Okay.

James [00:32:45]:

So you you work with, orthodontists, dentists, and stuff like that.

Luke Infinger [00:32:50]:

Mhmm.

James [00:32:51]:

We I’m curious about this because our practice, we deal with, we’re targeting veterinary clinics. Mhmm. One of the things that we found is that veterinarians practice owners are very good at helping their animals, or I imagine just like your orthodontists are good at fixing teeth, whatever. When it comes to the back end stuff, they’re a mess. Their mess just scatterbrained, and they’re so focused or so driven by their goal of helping people or helping teeth or pets or whatever it is that they’re they’re taking care of, that they’re very, it’s very challenging to kinda pin them down and say, hey. Let’s meet for 20 minutes, a half hour, and knock this stuff out. Or you It’s interesting because I guess sometimes we feel like we’re not talking to them on the same level that they can understand. Just as if they were to try to talk to me on a veterinary level or orthodontist level, Right over my head.

James [00:33:48]:

Right? Didn’t go to school for that. Not my jam. So but we’re trying to talk to them about business or marketing or phone answering, whatever. They just they kinda I don’t wanna say that they don’t care, but they just I feel like they don’t understand it, so it’s challenging. So what you are doing, you need a lot of input from them and a lot of like, even just finding a password to get into their scheduling program or whatever. Sometimes for us, that’s been a challenge just getting that down. Cause they’re like, I don’t know who has that. We just click enter and it’s and it’s there.

James [00:34:19]:

So how do you get around that or work with the doctors in that regard?

Luke Infinger [00:34:23]:

Well, I mean, in some cases, we don’t. You know? Like, it’s, yeah. That that’s a huge problem. Dan: In, in many cases we do, and it’s just continuing to get in front of them and remind them of the goal. Hey, you came to us. This was the problem we’re trying to solve the problem. We need your help. And it is a lot, you know, there’s a lot of stuff That is going on.

Luke Infinger [00:34:49]:

There’s a lot of stuff they have to do. There’s a lot of stuff they’re responsible for, and I get it. Like, We want to make it easy as possible, but, it’s it’s complicated. You know, there’s a lot of moving pieces. There are a lot of logins and passwords, and there’s, you know, 10 different pieces of software tied together. And it’s just the nature of the beast. I think just trying to keep it as organized as possible for them. You know, we’ll even say, hey, you know, let’s just get on a Zoom call and just Spend lunch going through this.

Luke Infinger [00:35:27]:

But that is the most painful part, you know, is is getting access to accounts and worksheets, and Nobody wants to do that stuff. It’s not fun. I would encourage people if if, you know, they’re not doing this, use something like Team password or or something to even if it’s a spreadsheet, just to keep things organized, because that is gonna make your life so much easier through business. You know, it’s, it’s crazy how many people don’t know their passwords to things.

James [00:35:58]:

Bizarre. Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:35:59]:

Great business. It really is.

James [00:36:01]:

Yeah. One of the things, I guess, continuing to talk about the people, you got the doctors, the business owner, whatever practice owner sold on it. Now you got the rest of the people that are in the chain or in the pyramid pyramid. And I imagine every once in a while, you run into some of those that are not necessarily sold on it.

Luke Infinger [00:36:21]:

Correct.

James [00:36:21]:

So they’re told by the the owner, the doctor, whatever, hey, this is happening. But I imagine sometimes you get some pushback from them. Can you tell us about that a little bit?

Luke Infinger [00:36:30]:

For sure. Yeah. To be in their shoes a lot of times it’s oh, great. They found the next shiny object. Yeah. The, you know, this’ll be over in 30 days and it’ll be just like the last one. And I think you go in saying basically that, like, hey, I don’t know the past, but, you know, if this is you and and this happened or you feel this way, We want to be totally different. We want to be, on your team.

Luke Infinger [00:36:57]:

We want to be an extension of your business. And it’s really about having empathy. If we go into it, having empathy and putting ourselves in their shoes, they’re, really going to Buy into the process, if there’s a chance. In some cases, they don’t. And we’ll talk about that, too. But also letting them know we’re going to make their job and life easier. You know, we are going to help them win. We are going to encourage the Doctor to roll out a, bonus and incentive plan.

Luke Infinger [00:37:33]:

You know, just all these things that are really, wins For them and make it easier and better for them. When they’re and we’ve we’ve come into this on the flip side. There’s just people with really bad attitudes. Can you, can you believe that

James [00:37:50]:

there are

Luke Infinger [00:37:52]:

Bad attitudes. And so with time, we will, make sure we know who has bad attitudes and we will let the owner know. And, somebody told me this probably back in 2015. Really smart guy. His name’s David Stoughton. I believe he is in Australia and he owns, a group of plastic surgery clinics in Australia. Brilliant guy. And he was telling me about people like this in the practice.

Luke Infinger [00:38:24]:

And he said, Luke, we call them onboard terrorists Because they’re blowing things up. They’re blowing the business up from the inside. And we have to eradicate that. If we want to grow, if we want to have good service because they’re gossiping, backbiting, they’re, being rude to patients, whatever it may be. And you have to get that out of the business because it’s cancer. In some cases, it’s the owner. In that case, if you’re a team member watching or listening, you should just bail and, you know, go, go find another job. But in a lot of cases, team members take the business hostage And they say, doc, if you do that, we’re gonna do this.

Luke Infinger [00:39:09]:

Mhmm. If you do that and force us to do that, then we’re gonna have a mutiny. And we hear this several times a year. Hey, Yeah. I need to back out of the contract because the team’s not going to do it. And it’s It’s already so hard to hire, and I think I have to go through that again. And so, I know this is an issue and I should Be a better leader, but, I gotta, I gotta bow out. Hey, that’s fine.

Luke Infinger [00:39:36]:

I mean, like I said, we’re not for everybody. We wanna attract the people who really wanna roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty with us Because it’s it’s done with you. Anything that’s good, it’s gonna be done with you. Everything’s not gonna be done for you. That’s just not life. Imagine, you know, going through your day and every single thing is done for you. Not possible. Even the super productive people like Elon Musk, Warren Buffett.

Luke Infinger [00:40:05]:

Yeah. On a large scale, it’s automated, but they’re still doing, you know, a lot of stuff for themselves, and they’re still working full time jobs. You know, you hear about all these young people who just wanna automate everything. It’s like Warren Buffett still works 50, 60, 70 hours a week.

James [00:40:22]:

Mhmm.

Luke Infinger [00:40:22]:

You know? And how old is he? True at Cathy, the founder of Chick Fil A worked till he died, which was 94 years old. You know, the way culture, is shifting and training us. Isn’t really true. Like, we can’t just press a button and Chat GPT does everything for us. Maybe it’ll get to that point. But you know, it I think largely, you know, it’s About doing the work and putting in the time and committing to things.

James [00:40:52]:

Yeah, it’d be a scary world if we have chat GPT or whatever AI do it all for us. Yeah. I feel like the creative stuff would just go down the drain. Great cubes everywhere. Yeah. It’s interesting how I meet a lot of people even interviewing people to be employees. How many people just want? Very happy to take the paycheck, but not interested in doing anything for it.

Luke Infinger [00:41:17]:

Oh, yeah.

James [00:41:17]:

And it’s bizarre because from my point of view, there’s a pride in a job well done. Mhmm. That I feel like maybe these people never knew that or they never discovered it or they’ve never done a job very well, so they haven’t had that pride. I don’t know what situation is Yeah. Was very interesting. You know, I mean, after you create something super cool when you’re in school or with your business or you help a client, There’s a feeling that goes way beyond the money. I mean, it’s just a cool feeling, like, you’re making the world a better place, or you added something Some kind of cool energy or something, whatever. I don’t know if I’m clearly not explaining it well.

Luke Infinger [00:41:57]:

Yeah. Fall in love with the process. Yeah. And I think it should be, about the journey. And it’s easier said than done. I don’t every single day, I’m not just It’s like, oh, that’s amazing. You know?

James [00:42:09]:

Yeah. Rainbows and moonbeams.

Luke Infinger [00:42:11]:

Yeah. 8 8 bad calls today. Amazing. You know? But I think on a large scale, you should really love what you do. If you zoom out And and a lot of times it’s about outcomes. I had this really tough call. I didn’t want to get on the call, but the outcome ended up being incredible. The owner, doctor, whoever I’m serving, you know, was able to have an moment.

Luke Infinger [00:42:37]:

And I really think we helped him. And then That’s what you love. And like, that’s why I show up every day. And you may, you may go through a 100 bad calls to get to that one, but that one key keeps you going. You know, if you’re a salesperson, how many nos are you going to get before you get a yes. But that yes. Keeps you going and, and you love that feeling. You can look at sports.

Luke Infinger [00:42:59]:

You know? I remember as a kid, I loved Brett Favre. He threw just as many interceptions as touchdowns. Did he focus on the interceptions, Or did he love the touchdowns? Right. You know? And so I think it’s just, you know, convincing yourself to be, a glass half full type of person versus half empty. And it’s, it’s just working on that every day because, and you can even ask Siri, this Google, whatever, how many or what percentage of thoughts are negative and it’s going to come up 80% of thoughts are negative.

James [00:43:34]:

Wow. Is it really?

Luke Infinger [00:43:36]:

Yeah. So, and I know I verified even this the other day. I’m like, I think that’s it. Let me end it. Sure enough. Yeah, that’s it. And so if that’s the case, it’s not only with ourselves, it’s with everybody we talk to. So we need to be thinking if, if that is true, how do I try and shift everything to be more positive? Surely, it’s not gonna happen all the time, and there’s there’s a time and a place to be negative if something really bad happened, but how are you gonna turn it into a positive? But I think, by and large, people want hope.

Luke Infinger [00:44:14]:

People want to know that, you know, things can get better. And so If you can focus on the positive, I just think for yourself and for other people, you’re gonna make a a way bigger impact.

James [00:44:28]:

Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:44:28]:

So that’s what I’m trying to do real time all the time and it’s hard. And some days I, I fail at it completely.

James [00:44:36]:

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I find myself same situation. Right? You try to get yourself into a positive mindset. You can get more done. You can help people more. It kind of spreads, but there are other times when you almost get tired of that pushing for positive fight.

Luke Infinger [00:44:54]:

Oh yeah, for sure.

James [00:44:55]:

You’re almost just like, you know what? I’m going to be a little grouchy just for an hour here. Yeah. Yeah. I’m just going to

Luke Infinger [00:45:01]:

part This, troll on Instagram. Yeah. They they trolled me one too many times. Here we go. Fair.

James [00:45:07]:

Yeah. Totally fair. It’s it’s funny. Especially in a the cancel culture type thing, I suppose, if you’re doing it on social media or something like that. Yeah. Tell me about the the actual meetings when you’re meeting with the doctors or the clinic owners, practice owners. Is this a routine once a week, once a month? Or is it like we met once and now we got it from here kind of thing. Tell me about the logistics of how you get all that kind of stuff set up.

James [00:45:33]:

Because you’re talking about people that are Busy. I mean Yeah. Presumably busy.

Luke Infinger [00:45:38]:

Yeah. We like to have a call once a month. We don’t force a call to happen. Some people, yeah, they’re just killing it, and they just keep renewing, and things look great. We did just introduce a role. It’s Called the practice advisor role because now that we have all this coaching and training and curriculum, we wanna make it stick and integrate it in the practice. Those calls will happen once a month and it’ll be sequential. So it’ll be building off the last call and saying, okay, did we do this? Did this happen? Did we accomplish? What’s your feedback? Okay.

Luke Infinger [00:46:13]:

Now let’s work on the next thing, which is this, and you just continue unlocking things as you go. But yeah. I mean, again, it’s it’s looking at each practice more holistically. If somebody’s just crushing it and knocking it out of the park, We don’t necessarily need to have a call, but let’s at least check-in. Give us some feedback. Let us know how the month went. Let us know what you guys are seeing. But We tell people this all the time.

Luke Infinger [00:46:40]:

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

James [00:46:42]:

Mhmm.

Luke Infinger [00:46:43]:

So don’t come to us a year later and say, oh, you guys didn’t do this. This never happened. This never happened. This never happened. It takes 2. Right? And I’m I kinda mentioned this earlier. It’s done with you. Let us know what you need.

Luke Infinger [00:46:58]:

We’re not mind readers. Somehow we still haven’t figured that out. Maybe one day we will, maybe when Elon rolls out in their link, we can just Literally read everybody’s mind.

James [00:47:08]:

Scare the hell out of me. Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:47:09]:

Yeah. But give us some feedback. You know, it’s like when when a patient comes in, don’t you need to do x-ray? Trey, don’t you need to do imaging? Don’t you need to ask them questions? You know, don’t you need them to come back in 4 to 6 weeks and see how things are doing? And, You know, is a wire poking them back here? You know, what’s going on? Is there pain? We need the same thing from, You know, our client. And so I think it’s just about having a real relationship and in any real relationship, There’s gonna be communication. And there’s just no way to put this on autopilot or again, get a robot to do it. You’ve you’ve gotta have that communication, and you’ve gotta fill that energy, and it’s a dance.

James [00:47:57]:

Mhmm.

Luke Infinger [00:47:57]:

Right? So that has to happen, I think, for any relationship to be successful. I don’t care if it’s a client, your kid, your friend, your wife. There has to be This back and forth in communication for it to work.

James [00:48:14]:

Fair. Totally fair. Yeah. It has to be Challenging, I imagine. But do you do you set the tone right from the beginning and say this is gonna happen?

Luke Infinger [00:48:23]:

Oh, yeah.

James [00:48:23]:

As long as you understand this, we’re cool. If you don’t understand this, it’s probably not a good fit.

Luke Infinger [00:48:29]:

Yeah. They even initial like a commitment section. We have commitments. I think a lot of people probably don’t read it, but they initial it, and we’ll tie it back to that. Hey, I don’t know if you remember, let’s pull this up on screen and read these commitments. You initial, do you remember doing this? Do you look at the 1st commitment? Oh, yeah, you’re right, Luke.

James [00:48:49]:

Oh, we’re

Luke Infinger [00:48:50]:

just busy. It’s like, hey. We’re all busy.

James [00:48:53]:

Right.

Luke Infinger [00:48:53]:

You know, I I have several businesses. We’re talking about 1, but I I have a few. I have hundreds of clients. I can’t get on a call with a client and say, hey. Sorry. I’m busy. I’ve been busy. You know, like

James [00:49:07]:

No one else is. We’re all just waiting around. Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:49:10]:

Like, okay. But I hired you, you know? So that’s that’s just not an excuse for me.

James [00:49:17]:

Right? Fair. I love it. Luke, how can people find you?

Luke Infinger [00:49:22]:

So if people wanna reach out, the best way is to email me. It’s luke luke@hipcreativeinc.com. That’s hipcreativenc.com. That’s going to be the best way. If you want to check out our website, it’s hip.agencynot.com. It’s not hip creative. It’s just HIP.agency.

James [00:49:43]:

Tell me really quick before we take off. Cause I got to ask, Tell me about the name.

Luke Infinger [00:49:48]:

So the name started, when we started the company, it was myself, Justin Huell, and my wife, Catherine. And so it was Hewell Infinger Price. My wife was the price before, obviously, she married me. My last name’s Infinger and then Justin Hewell. So it just happened to work out. It’s, it’s a really cool, brand, Hip. Yeah. And, people love it and ask all the time what’s it mean.

Luke Infinger [00:50:13]:

Since then we’ve kind of reinvented reinvented the name, mainly for our internal team around our core values, which are hunger, integrity, and passion.

James [00:50:23]:

Oh, that’s cool.

Luke Infinger [00:50:24]:

Yeah.

James [00:50:25]:

Hunger, integrity, and passion.

Luke Infinger [00:50:27]:

Yeah.

James [00:50:28]:

That is cool. Well played. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you very much, Luke. I appreciate you being on the show. You shared some great insights here, and I get the take way that I have here is getting those commitments from our clients because that’s it’s so interesting. I don’t know if you end up in this situation or we end up being the fall guy for a lot of stuff that when we, like, we document everything, and I have my crew is like, this wasn’t our fault, but we’re getting blamed for it.

James [00:50:57]:

And sometimes I’m like, it’s kind of what they pay us for. Yeah.

Luke Infinger [00:51:01]:

I mean, yeah, I mean,

James [00:51:03]:

if you’re,

Luke Infinger [00:51:04]:

If anybody is struggling with that, I would even bring up just, like, a templated contract on and share screen and say, hey, just before I send over the contract, Let’s just review the commitments together. Go through each one. Are you good with this? And then again, remind them of the destination And that way, like, there’s really nothing they can say at that point. Right. Because you’re wanting a shift to happen.

James [00:51:27]:

Mhmm. You

Luke Infinger [00:51:27]:

know, if you’re just brought into something let let’s just say a team member is brought into a company, and we’re we don’t talk about our core values, our service values, The goal, your performance, KPIs. We don’t talk about any of that. We just plug you in. Versus we talk about all those things and you commit and say, hey. I’m in. What’s the difference in performance? It’s the same person, but their performance is gonna be drastically different.

James [00:51:52]:

Because they wanna match what they just told you.

Luke Infinger [00:51:54]:

Correct. And so we want to do, we want to do the same thing with our client. We want them to commit to it, buy in. Yes. This is what I want. And then we can tie it back to that all the time.

James [00:52:05]:

I love it. That is super cool. Luke, I appreciate you being on the show.

Luke Infinger [00:52:09]:

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

James [00:52:11]:

This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle, stories, and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. We are locally underwritten by the banks of Sun Prairie. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and, of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends. My name is James Cateman, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls on Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at calls on call.com. And, of course, the bold business book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Lukas Infinger, the CEO and cofounder of Hip Creative. Luke, can you tell us that website one more time?

Luke Infinger [00:52:59]:

Yep. Hip dot agency.

James [00:53:00]:

Hip dot agency. Couldn’t get simpler than that. I love it. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night. Podcast link found at drawincustomers .com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome.

James [00:53:12]:

And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.