[INTERVIEW]
Ronda Nelson:
I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. This is something that is being said about you right now — that wellness practitioners, specifically chiropractors, are considered the easiest people to close. And I’m not a chiropractor, but I have personally hired more than 20 different people to manage my marketing, and every single one of them was a mistake. Let’s talk about it.
Well, these marketers, they are getting saucier and saucier as the day goes by. They’re getting more sneaky, more conniving, and more ruthless in the way that they are approaching us to purchase or sign up with them to do their marketing. Let me give you a little bit of backstory. So, many years ago, I was approached by the very first marketing person that I had ever really had come in contact with, and it was back when social media was just kind of starting to come around and people were looking for ways to be able to make money online, and ads were starting to monetize on Facebook.
And what happened was this person came to me, and I didn’t know anything. Like, I don’t know how all this works. And this woman came at me and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, there’s all these things that you can do. We can optimize this. We can do this. We’re gonna put this out here. We’re gonna create a profile for you.” And granted, a lot has changed since then, but the point I wanna make is that I didn’t know. I had no knowledge of this marketing space. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know anything about it. I trusted her.
So after I agreed to sign up with her — and back in the day, because it was kind of a new frontier, it was a little pricey. Like, you know, we used to pay $10,000 to get a website built because the technology wasn’t there. Now it’s not like that, but back then it was. So these marketers, they came in — this particular woman, and it happened multiple times — and she came in, she makes all these promises, and I said, “Yeah, that sounds great. Like, yeah, I want more people in my practice. I think that’s great. Thank you so much,” and I’m so grateful. And I start paying the money, and nothing’s happening. And she says, “Well, you know, it takes a little bit of time. We just kinda have to get the ball rolling and we need to get this set up and that set up.” And I did all the things, all the things she was asking me to do. Three or four months goes by, nothing. Yeah, there were some pretty pictures, but nothing. My phone wasn’t ringing anymore. No one was coming in. No one was telling me about it. Nothing. And I said, “I’m done. I’m gonna let you go,” and I fired her.
Now, there was no contract, but I let her go. And I thought, “Well, that was a waste. She just must have been a bad apple.” So it wasn’t long after that, and the next one comes around. This one had a little different sales pitch, a little different offer, a little different suave with me, right? Little bit of swank — “I got you. I’m gonna take care of you. I’m not gonna let you down.” Same thing. Here I am, over 20 years later and 20 people down. That’s an average of one a year. I went three or four years there in the middle and just said, “Forget it. I’m not even gonna do this.” And I just got taken by another one about three, four months ago because I believed them.
Now, I don’t think that I’m a gullible person. I might be an emotional buyer — I’ll admit to that. But I don’t think that I’m necessarily a gullible person because over the years I’ve figured out this marketing thing. But I wanna tell you, there is one thing that you have to know about yourself besides the fact that you’re probably really gullible when it comes to these marketing people, and the key one is social media. That’s the thing.
The other one that’s starting to happen right now with the rise of AI is they’re coming at practitioners — any business owner, really. I mean, you could be a gas station or an attorney, I mean anybody — and they go online and they find websites that are outdated. I’m generalizing, but “they” as in the marketers, right? They will find a website, they’ll go to Claude, and they’ll put in all your information from your Google Business profile, everything they can find on your existing website, and ask Claude to create a brand-new website for you. Like, it’s pretty. They duplicate it, and then they show you what it is. They send you the link and say, “Hey, I built this website for you.” And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, it’s 57,000 times better than mine.” And of course, they have a package for you. They’re gonna host it. They’re gonna charge you $250 a month. Don’t even get me started on that. That’s a scam too, these website hosting companies. Scam, scam, scam. So that’s the new thing that they’re doing.
But a lot of these people that are doing social media marketing — and I am making a generalization, and I will fully admit that I am not pointing fingers at anyone except the 20 people that I worked with — but I think in general, there are people that love to play what I call playing house on social media. You know, it’s like Barbie and Ken. You’re just playing house. “Oh, it’s so fun to just be on social media. I just love this so much, and I’m gonna get on Canva and I’m gonna create all these really great posts, and you’re gonna just love them.” And I’m being overdramatic, agreed, but the point is that there is some strategy involved.
This is what they do to me — they go open their Canva account and they just start throwing posts at me. “Well, what do you think about this?” And the colors are wrong, the messaging is wrong, the vibe is wrong. The creator one time, she created a bunch of posts for me. If you scroll through my Instagram feed, I’m ratting myself out — you can tell when I hired someone, because they don’t look the same. I’m just being honest. I’ve not done this all the best way. But here’s what you have to know: they just go in and do what they like. She made these posts for me, and they were in pastels and mint green and kind of a muted orangy, warm, dusty rose kind of color. Not me at all. Zero like me, zero. I don’t have any of those colors in my wardrobe. Not even on brand. But it’s because they’re playing house with social media.
And if you’re gullible — like I know you are, and I am evidently, because I’ve been duped by this more than once — they come in and go, “Oh yeah, I’ve got history with this, and I can do these ads, and I can do this, and I’ve got all that. Oh yeah, oh yeah.” It’s easy to say “oh yeah,” but when the rubber meets the road, did you deliver a strategy to me? Did you deliver a social media plan to me? Have you done your work, or are you just giving me AI slop?
So what you need to know is the word’s already out for all of us that are in the wellness industry. And listen, I’ve got egg on my face because I’ve hired these people — I keep believing them. But what you have to know is it doesn’t matter what you do. It does not matter whether your discipline is chiropractic, acupuncture, pharmacy, nurse practitioner, health coaching, nutrition — does not matter what your training is. I don’t care. If you’re in this space, all of us, we have a target on our backs, and I know this for a fact.
And the reason I know this is because I also have a marketing company, and I don’t talk about it much and I’m not going to talk about it, but I have a business partner who is very, very high up in Google and very knowledgeable about how this goes. He’s taught me a lot. And he tells me all the time that if someone has a product to sell, they’re going for chiropractors. I’m sorry — I’ve heard this from three different people who didn’t know each other. If you’re a chiropractor, I love you so much. You are my people. But they’re just using your name, taking your name in vain, I guess. They know that if they can get a list of chiropractors and they can start making cold calls — and I’ll lump us all together — all those of us that are in this alternative medicine wellness space, we’re busy. We don’t know what we’re doing, as a general rule, and we’re like, “Yeah, we need the help,” and we say yes, and then we get burned.
Even worse is when you get under contract with someone and you’re paying two, three, $400 a month, and they promise you the moon, and you’re getting slop, and it’s just what happens. It’s the industry. It’s just what happens.
But here’s what you need to know: it does not matter who you are, what you went to school for, what your little diploma says — don’t care. What you have to know is you are a marketer first. You, my friend — you, the leader of your business — you are a marketer. You don’t have a business if you can’t market that business, if you can’t talk about what you do, about the problem that you solve, who you serve, why you serve, what your story is — not just, “I graduated with honors, and I was summa cum blah blah blah.” Nobody cares. What you have to do as a business owner is be a marketer first, a practitioner second. Sorry. Don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s true.
You have to know what your marketing agenda is. And this business of, “Oh, I just wanna serve everyone” — yeah, well then you’re gonna stay poor. Unless you’ve been in business for 30 years and you just have this super amazing reputation in a town and everybody knows to come to you. That’s different. But if you’re starting out and you’re building a practice, you cannot serve everyone. Next week, I’m gonna talk about somebody in Clinical Business Academy that did just this — she decided who she was gonna serve and how she was gonna talk about it. I’m not gonna spoil it. You’ll have to listen next week to find out.
But you have to think like a marketer first. No one else can do the job for you. If you outsource your marketing — whether it’s updating your website, whatever — website builders are builders. They’re just builders. Can you hear that I’m saucy about this? I feel like I’m getting older, and I think I’m getting more saucy. I think I’m getting more of an attitude. I’m not… I don’t know. I kinda like it.
Anyway, instead of just letting the website person do their thing — website people build websites. They’re not marketers. They don’t know what content is gonna convert. They don’t know what the call to action button should be. They’re just gonna put it there, and you don’t know either because you have never learned, and you just go, “Oh, that looks pretty.” Well, since when did a website have to be pretty to convert? I would argue that it doesn’t. When the messaging is right, it doesn’t matter.
So your first job is to be a marketer. That’s all. You have to think like a marketer — marketer first, practitioner second. But what happens is we often flip it. We’re like, “Well, I’m an acupuncturist, so I’m gonna talk about acupuncture and how acupuncture helps with X, Y, and Z.” That’s… I’m not saying that’s wrong, but are you just talking to the air? Like, who are you talking to? Are you talking to women? Are you talking to men? Are you talking to people with Hashimoto’s? Are you talking to people with pain? Are you talking to people who have been in car accidents? You have to decide who you’re talking to. Otherwise, your words just float out in the universe and they have no place to land.
We need to find a target. You need to create your words so that they land on that target, and the person whose ears make up the target can hear it and go, “Oh my gosh, how did you know? That’s exactly what I lay awake thinking about at night.” Or, “That’s exactly what I need to have fixed — I need my headaches to go away, my hot flashes to go away, I need my joint pain to go.” Whatever it is, whatever your specialty is, you have to think like a marketer. Who are you talking to? Who do you want to attract?
And if you’re still in the lane of “I don’t wanna say no, I’ll take everyone” — let me know how that’s looking in your bank account. It’s probably a little bit to be desired, I would bet. Unless, again, you’ve got a really established practice, you’ve been doing this forever, you’ve been in the same location, same building, same people, everybody knows you — totally different.
But if you’re growing and building and you’ve been less than 10 years in, and you still don’t know who you’re talking to, your bank account is gonna tell the story of how well your marketing’s working. Really, that’s a reflection. You’re a good marketer? Your bank account looks great. If you don’t know how to market, your bank account’s gonna struggle. Your personal income is gonna struggle. Your business doesn’t have any buffer — and that’s because you’re leading as a practitioner, not as a marketer.
So I think we start a collective movement and we say no to all the marketing people. We collectively say, “No.” No to running Facebook ads. No to doing social media posts. And did you know that AI will do all of this for you now anyway? Those people are gonna be out of jobs. So they’re probably a little bit desperate right now, and they’re calling, calling, calling. I know in the med spa, we get anywhere from four to six marketing phone calls a day. They wanna help me with my Google My Business. They wanna help me get bad reviews off. They wanna help me with my social media, SMS marketing — and I’m gonna say no to all of it. Because when you structure AI in a way that’s gonna do that work for you, it’s a home run. You don’t have to pay anybody, and you get it done automatically. It’s great.
[CLOSING]
Ronda Nelson:
So I really wanna leave you with this — I didn’t mean to, like, all you chiropractors out there. Hope we’re still friends, because you really are my people. I do love all of you. But you are gullible, and I guess I am too, but all of us are. So I think collectively we have a just say no movement. Just say no to the marketers. Just say no. It’s easy to say, “No thank you,” and hang up. “I have it handled,” and hang up. Done. We don’t say yes.
And then we’re gonna think first about who we’re gonna serve. Where do the marketing words need to land? What ears are they gonna land on? And is the brain of the person who hears those words or reads those words going to resonate with it and go, “Oh yes, that’s it — yes, you are my person.” That’s what we want. Marketer first, clinician second.
Did I ruffle your feathers today? I might have, but that’s all right. I love you so much. I’ll see you back next week. If you want — and I would love it if you would — click the subscribe button. We’re pretty new over here on YouTube, so click subscribe, make sure you get notifications when new things are posted, and I can’t wait to see you next week.
[END]