EP51 - The Nurse, The Marketer, The Entrepreneur with David Sanchez of Digitalis Medical

Speaker A: Are you looking to fine tune whether for your business, your job, your team, or yourself? In each episode, we will be discussing different ideas and opinions, using real world examples to help you see opportunities, innovate, and succeed. Hi, it's Corby Fine and welcome to finetune. So, those of you that know me know that I have a very varied background. I've done a lot of things. I have coded software, I've run a 2 million customer digital bank. I've worked in ad agencies. I happened to sell a little blue pill many years ago that a big pharmaceutical company made a lot of money on. And I'm not going to use the names because I don't want to bias anyone. I always loved the healthcare space. I found the tangibility, the benefits, the outcomes were just something that spoke to me. It's been a part of my career, not the whole career, but I've always had this affinity to it with me. Today I've got, uh, an interesting guest that I think will bridge a little bit of both of my worlds, the healthcare and the science and that tangible outcome space that I really love with the digital and the transformation and the marketing side of the majority of my career. David Sanchez is the founder and CEO of Digitalis Medical and Miracle Recovery. On one side, David's helping healthcare brands boost their profits, visibility, market share through effective digital marketing strategies. On the other hand, through his miracle recovery, he actually works to save lives from addiction. Coming back to that tangible outcomes I talked about, from working as an ER nurse to starting his own recovery program, he's obviously incredibly driven and making meaningful changes in his community and in broader communities as well, at the same time helping companies big and small achieve results that they care about themselves. So I want to talk a little bit today about the general direction of healthcare, how digital and marketing and transformation are affecting that industry and really from both sides, the healthcare practitioners, the companies as well as the patients, because all of us are, at the end of the day, patients. The tools, the technologies, the transition. So, David, welcome to the podcast today.

Speaker B: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker A: Anything I missed in the background? Because it's pretty broad, you know, I want to make sure that everybody understands who you actually are.

Speaker B: It is, it is pretty broad. Yeah, it's. It's been a long journey, I'm sure. Not, uh, unlike yours. You know, it's amazing, the journey that life takes us through.

Speaker A: Uh, it is. So, so let's start. I mean, it's not every day that you meet someone who's worked both as an ER nurse and has run an ad or marketing agency. Wait. And a recovery program. Maybe just give everybody a little background on your journey, how it unfolded, how you got where you are, and maybe what do you take from being an ER nurse in that? In the chaos? I mean, I watch those TV shows all the time. That's nuts. And take that from the er. Noah Wiley, by the way. Great show.

Speaker B: To.

Speaker A: To the boardroom.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's really interesting. I would say, first of all, I have done some of those things at the same time. A lot of those are overlapping, but, uh, just a little bit about how it happened. I was working in the emergency department as a nurse. This was in 2000, uh, 9 to 2010, 2011. And that's really when heroin and spice and bath salt started to hit my area here in the Southwest U.S. i live in Arizona, and we saw people coming in from overdoses every day, people that needed help, asking for help with drugs and alcohol. And I really felt like it was my calling, like I needed to do something to make a difference bigger than what I was doing. Because so many times he would just send people home with a prescription of a drug that you know that they're going to be abusing, or just send him a list of AA meetings in the area. And so many of them, you just. You knew that they'd be coming again next week or. Or a month later, and you didn't know if that time was going to be their last, honestly. And so I ended up starting an addiction rehab center here where I live, uh, a nonprofit. And that's how I got into marketing. Because when I started that and we started helping people, I had no clue that the addiction rehab industry, that's the m most competitive specialty in healthcare. It's very competitive. And before long, I was paying an average of $115 per click. I was spending $15,000 a month just on Google Ads alone, just so people could be aware of us and see us and so we could help them. And I got frustrated, honestly, with the agency that I was working with at the time, because I couldn't see tangible results for what I was trying to do. And so I said, you know what? After learning a little bit, I'd already had a, uh, videographer, a social media manager, different people starting to build a small marketing team. But I said, you know what? Yeah, I would do better just learning this, learning how to do a better job for ourselves. And so I fired the agency that I had hired and then started my own team. And that's what became Digitalis. So really it's two companies working in tandem because still helping people recover from addiction. My goal ultimately is to save lives, then also helping businesses grow and help them to help more people. Really, that's really what it is.

Speaker A: It's amazing when we think about someone with such a need who's out there looking for help. And even on the other side where you are, it's still ultimately a business that needs to compete and attract those people.

Speaker B: That's true.

Speaker A: So just like any other industry, any other organization, you've got choice. Are there any things that you learned in that process of again, getting hands on, getting on keyboard, learning how to buy, uh, your own search words, your own ads? That really was like the moment of, wow, I kind of get how this thing works. And I can apply it now not just to my business, but to others as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think the biggest thing was after starting, well, first of all, starting to do the Google Ads, I was like, wow, okay, this is working. Or this is not working. But then even more than that, when I started getting into content marketing, the organic side, because the organic side is really what I fell in love with with SEO and content marketing. Nowadays we call it omnichannel marketing. You can create one podcast and then record it on video and audio and it can become so many different things. Blog articles, social media posts, YouTube videos. And when I saw that people were actually finding our program without me paying for their views, and that's what really connected.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: This is helping people because it's giving them content online that's valuable to them, but it's fulfilling a need that they have because they need to find help for their loved one.

Speaker A: So in that experience, you obviously learned something that was working, which the whole notion of if you create the information, the content in the channels that the people you're trying to attract are.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And it's what they're looking for, they're going to find it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And they're going to come. It's that whole if you build it, they will come model. What about the inverse? What are some of those early mistakes that you figured out as you were going that maybe other organizations can learn from to say, you know what, what don't you want to do, especially as a healthcare brand because of the competitive nature and the sensitivity to it? Um, what are some of those things and maybe some of the ways in which you've helped both yourself and other clients of yours fix those problems?

Speaker B: Yeah, I've made all the mistakes, I think, trying to Think of any mistake I didn't make. I don't think there are any. Yeah, I think the biggest mistake that I made, especially early on with marketing and advertising, is if you throw more money at it, it'll be more effective. And that just did not work. I spent more and more. I did not see more results.

Speaker A: Google likes when you do that.

Speaker B: Oh, they love it. They'll, they'll, they will actually answer a phone call to help you spend more money on their platform.

Speaker A: Go figure. So, so throwing more money at it is not the solution.

Speaker B: It is not.

Speaker A: Uh, um, what about in the organic space? How does one go about really understanding what's going to work? Right. Is it just trial and error? Is there a lot of research? Is there a, ah, silver bullet? What is it?

Speaker B: Well, there's no silver bullet. And I will say that's another one of the mistakes that I had in mind was that just creating content for the sake of creating content. That doesn't work either. Yeah, it has to be content that comes from research like what you said. Really, you have to be able to see what people are searching for the most. So we call that keyword research. You have to start with the terms that people are actually searching for. And there are tools you can use for that. Many different tools. Most popular would probably be Ahrefs or Semrush. Those are two of the huge ones. But there are, there's also some, some free ones out there. But either way, you have to be able to find out what people are searching for a lot that you can actually show up in the top three positions for on Google and then create content that really answers people's questions about those terms?

Speaker A: Is there anything you think in the journey of setting up those capabilities that was very specific to healthcare? Is there anything unique about the vertical that might be a little bit different than financial services or telecommunications or utilities?

Speaker B: Yeah, with healthcare there's, there's more liability in a lot of different ways. I would say there's. It's kind of parallel to, like I say, the legal industry, because there's some things you can say, there's some things you can't say. You can't guarantee specific outcomes, you can't give away patient information. And m. There's a lot of restrictions on patented information or trade names, trademark names. And the knowledge that you have to have is very unique. I would say too, because let's say it's an addiction treatment program or even a surgeon. I'm working with one surgeon right now. He, he invented a, uh, foot procedure and it's patented and I have to know what I'm talking about with the anatomy, if I'm being specific enough to explain how we can solve people's foot problems in a certain way, but at the same time, I have to translate it into language that your everyday person can actually understand. And so I'm removing the Latin from it and um, writing things in a way that makes sense to the average person that says, I have this problem, I need a solution. Okay, I actually understand this now. I'm willing to give them a call and talk to the doctor.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. It's easy to think about some of your clients obviously being more institution based. Right. So like clinics and so on and so forth. But sometimes it's the individual physician, that healthcare practitioner who has a lot on the line, especially in the US market where you've got to compete, you've got to market, you've got to deliver good service in order for both your existing patients to come back. But for that word of mouth and that propagation of who, who you are and the things you've done to help people. Uh, so, you know, I watch a lot of network news, I listen to a lot of podcasts, and there's, there's a ton of ads on right now for reputation management services.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which for the average person, you know, sure, I want to get a job, I want to get a date, whatever it might be. Google. I mean, I tell people all the time, google yourself and see what comes up and sometimes be shocked. But I can imagine in the healthcare space that whole notion of a healthcare practitioner, a physician, a doctor, a nurse, is a chiropractor, whatever's reputation is critical.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Is there anything that you've encountered in your agency days that you know might be valuable not just for healthcare practitioners, but for really anyone who's thinking about being proactive in managing how they show up when they get Googled. The online presence that doesn't require going to some credit bureau and paying, you know, thousands of dollars. I'm not sure they work. Anyway, what are some secrets that you've learned in that space?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, what I'll do is recommend two solutions. These are some that I've tried out of the dozens, dozens that are out there. Um, there's no affiliation. I don't get rewarded for saying this or anything, but for a reputation management suite, I highly recommend Rater 8 R A T E R8. Uh, for healthcare providers, them compared to all the other ones that I've tried, they get the best results. The most quickly when it comes to getting online reviews, especially on Google. So my clients typically, I won Neurology practice. They have, I think, three or four locations in the Phoenix area, and they had a lot of low reviews online just because they didn't have, uh, an automated system to ask people to give feedback. And they are the leading practice in the entire state. They're a national leader in their specialty. They're very excellent at what they do. But they just needed a system in place because they get over 2,000 referrals per month. They volume, and it's only a handful of doctors serving these patients. And so once we set up an automated system, it just started asking people for feedback online. And within, I want to say, 45 days, their, their rankings went all the way up to almost 4.5, 4.6, just because they were just asking people for feedback regularly. And so that really helped a lot because they're getting more feedback from more people instead of just the upset people leaving a review. And so it's much better. So that's for reputation management. Another solution I'd recommend to make sure that you're listed on all the online listings. And the other solution is Semrush Local. So Semrush has a software specifically you can pay just for that. And they have two different versions. I can't remember the exact pricing, but it's more affordable than all the other solutions that I've seen. And they really cover comprehensively a lot of the different, like the top 70 different listings that are online. And they can take your information from your Google profile and propagate that throughout all of those. So it works really effectively. It's a lot easier to do that, pay 20 or $40 per month rather than to try to manually manage all those different listings.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of work. I know that. Um, it's interesting that you, you talk about the notion of asking for feedback. Yeah, it's quite noted, having implemented MPS programs in different organizations, that 9 out of 10 times unaided people will give negative feedback. And sometimes it's just as simple to ask so that you can hit those people that weren't otherwise willing or thinking about giving a positive review. I mean, when's the last time you walked out of a restaurant or a retail store or even a doctor's office, and we're like, wow, that was a 10 out of 10. I should tell everyone about that. It's, it's not intrinsic in human behavior and especially in the world of health care, where one could argue there is some level of scarcity concept to it. Right. I don't necessarily want everybody to know how good my chiropractor is because then I might, I might lose the window of like hair, you know, hair salons and chiropractors. There are certain industries that you don't necessarily want to give up. So, yeah, um, it's interesting. Just ask.

Speaker B: Yeah, just ask all the difference.

Speaker A: So here's an interesting one. It's a question I've been asking a lot of people in a lot of industries. AI. I mean, we're all getting. I mean our daily lives are changing the way we're using AI. I'm going to use AI at the end of this to create a transcript and look for some key phrases that might be marketable.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, huge time saver.

Speaker A: It's huge. Whether it's ChatGPT or Copilot or Gemini or whatever your flavor of the day is, what are you seeing in terms of the impact of that AI capability and tool set within the space that you're in? So particularly within healthcare, how are brands, how are doctors, how are your clients? And even how are you as a agency and service provider taking advantage of these tools?

Speaker B: Man, there's so many ways. It really is endless. I couldn't even scratch the surface. I, um, think I'll mainly speak to how I'm using it daily. My team uses it to basically accelerate what we do and multiply our efforts. So we have automated processes. When we do things from scheduling automation. I can just send a link to somebody if I want to book them on my calendar instead of going back and forth through text or email. Um, and then when somebody schedules a call with me through my website, this automation scheduling software, calendly, so it's called it, first of all, it sends them a reminder that we booked the call in the first place. Sends them a text and an email several days before and also a couple hours before. So that really cuts down on the no shows because people are planning on meeting with me, they just forget, you know, and I am too busy to remind them manually. So that really helps me a lot. But in getting our work done, really, we use automation softwares and a number of different ones to help create ideas. So let's say we have a client that we're going to produce a press release for to get more visibility, uh, through different news outlets. So, um, personally prefer to do a lot of different things manually just because you want to make sure when you're writing something that it's interesting. But if you've Got writer's block or you just need some inspiration? It's awesome to be able to just plug something into ChatGPT and say, hey, give me 10 ideas for how to avoid losing your hair or how to grow your hair back or something like that. I'm just throwing.

Speaker A: I might be guilty of. Not the hair thing, but I'm guilty of the tact.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just throwing a random idea out there. Not targeting anybody here. No, no, we both have good hair.

Speaker A: I'm just going to leave it.

Speaker B: We've got some but. And you can be very specific. So give me 10 ideas for a press release for hair regrowth options. It'll be like, uh, within 30 seconds. Got all these different ideas. I can tell to edit it. But the great thing is is it can give you ideas and you can build off of that. But we use very complex versions of that idea for creating content for clients. And we can create hundreds of articles for a client that are very excellent within hours. And we can create a massive, um, website for them with lots of different content to cover a complete range of authoritative content for them in a number of days. And obviously it has to be, you know, tailored. It has to have human proofreading, editing and make sure that we're making everything excellent to our standards. But. But that's how we do it. That's the basic gist.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's something I wrote about maybe just two weeks ago in a post and it was really that AS AI enables the volume and the speed of creation of content, what we need to do as people is actually shift from pure creation skills to knowing what's good skills. Because to your point, when you talk about up to our standards, I'm not sure that everybody understands what that means. What are good definitions anymore? Like what is actually credible quality? Ah, something that people can understand and choose to want to consume because it is that both authoritative but credible and easy to understand. That's to me where, uh, it's not about people with AI losing jobs, it's about shifting their skill set.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. For me, when I think about that, what I ask, the question that we ask on our team is, are you proud of this? When you create a piece of content, are you proud of it and if someone reads it, will they say, wow, this is awesome. Is it shareable? Is it something worth getting excited about? If it's not, then it's probably not going to meet our standards. We want to make sure that indie content is really something that's click worthy. Also so that's where the title comes in because that's the most important thing really. If somebody sees it. Uh, if someone searches for something and see, you know, 10 different items on the first page of Google, which one are they going to click on? When something has a high, the highest click through rate, that's one of the biggest signals to Google that they need to rank that higher. So the title and then the content itself, is it easy to read? Does it flow well? Do people find it interesting and actually

Speaker A: keep reading it even for emails? Uh, I've been using subjectline.com a lot and it actually works for titles too because it takes the same kind of algorithm and literally tests you might put in an email, oh, that's cool. Before you deploy it and it ranks it and it's quite remarkable. I've never heard of that accurate. It is subjectline.com tip of the day.

Speaker B: Cool. Thank you.

Speaker A: So, um, obviously you've got an agency, you're servicing clients. Uh, how do people get in touch with you, what's your URL and what's the perfect client that should reach out to you?

Speaker B: Well, the best way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn. David Sanchez RN that's my, that's my link there. Pretty simple. Um, our website is digitalismedical.com and you know, the ideal client is, is typically between 5 million to $50 million per year in revenue. We serve some that are larger, some that are smaller, but it's typically companies that either don't have a marketing team yet, we can just plug right in and be their marketing team, or we can plug into their marketing team and help with, with any gaps that they have. The, uh, most common places would be content marketing, SEO, Google Ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads, and we can really help them take it to the next level. I think one of the biggest things that we help with, um, most companies really aren't sure how much they're paying for in each advertising channel and so they need their analytics and their reporting tightened up and dialed in. So that's where we help the most. Just do a marketing analysis to really see what's going on, see what's giving them a return on investment and focus on what's most effective.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Any last tips and trade secrets before we wrap up?

Speaker B: I would say the biggest thing where the people are missing out on right now is what we're doing podcasting. It is so effective because it, it checks all the boxes when it comes to content marketing and SEO. You're creating content that can use on different platforms. You can turn it into a written article, a YouTube video, a social media post, and you also get a link. When that publishes, it goes on to all these different websites that link back to your website and that's. That fulfills like 70% of the Google algorithm. So I would do a podcast episode at least once a week, if not more if possible. Because if you want a shortcut in SEO, that's probably the number one way to do it.

Speaker A: David Sanchez, a smart guy for being on my podcast and uh, uh, I appreciate it is amazing and heartwarming and at the same time taking those skills and then applying them to, you know, a profit generating side as well. It serves a lot of, a lot of purposes. Um, I really appreciate the tips, the time and look forward to meeting.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Appreciate it. Take care. See you later. You've been listening to Fine Tune. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to the show. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can connect with me on Twitter Fine. Through LinkedIn @CorbyFine or visit my website CorbyFine.com. Fine Tune is produced by me, Corby Fine. Thanks for listening. Mhm.