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They stole from me, and here’s what I’m doing about it

“Well THIS looks familiar…” I thought to myself.

While conducting research in a new market last week, I came across a LASIK self-test that looks eerily similar to one that our firm published last year. Upon further inspection, it’s not similar. It’s a carbon copy.

Exact same questions, same text (with my quippy, conversational tone) and even the same images. Of all the images out in the world, she couldn’t be troubled to take 5 minutes and find new pictures to swap them out.

This was a literal theft job of my agency’s Intellectual Property (IP), which happens all the time btw. Multiple times per year, we see something out in the wild that someone took from us and published as their own. It’s not a new issue.

And the same thing happens to you in your practice from time to time, especially as a top dog in your market.

So I want to take a minute and talk about what I’m THANKFUL for in this situation, and how I’m responding to it. Which may be useful to you the next time you’re dealing with this.

“Wait wait wait… you’re THANKFUL someone stole from you, Troy?!”

I’m not saying it’s GOOD, or that you should WISH it upon yourself, or that it’s OK. I’m not condoning it.

But I mean this with all sincerity – there’s a RELIEF that comes when you see someone stole your intellectual property.

Think about it:

When I look and see someone has taken our creations, carbon copied them and posted them as their own, I know their thinking is CAPPED. This shows me that:

They lack the creativity it takes to build new funnels and campaigns.
They lack the brand-building skills, since they’re just copying tactics out of our playbook.
They lack vision.
They lack the braintrust our clients have with us, to collab and formulate strategic approaches to practice growth BEYOND simple tactics. They have NO ecosystem AROUND the self-test – the reviews, the brand, the patient experience, the content – to actually make it effective.

All they have is one tactic out of our massive playbook, which will only take them so far (and may even take them BACKWARDS if misused).

Taking someone else’s IP and using it as your own is like me saying, “Wow, Steph Curry sure is good at those long shots 10-feet behind the 3-point line. I’m gonna use that same tactic in my pickup basketball games!”

Meanwhile I don’t have any of the years of experience (brand, processes), the team, or the complementary skills (strategy) that makes him effective in the first place.

I’m just taking one tactic in isolation and putting it to use, and I’m not even using it the right way (because I don’t know how). Won’t get me far, will it?

Stealing IP is tying their own hands behind their back. They handicap themselves as soon as they take something and pass it off as their own. Even if they have a good strategic approach generally, deep down they know what they did, and that will haunt their subconscious daily.

And lastly, as long as you’re always iterating, anything someone takes from you will be outdated soon anyway.

We’ve already made new updates to this particular self-test, just like you should be doing with your funnels, creative, copy, positioning, sales wordtracks, internal processes and more. You’re always skating to where the puck’s gonna be, while they’re always trailing you.

So did I care someone stole our self-test? Honestly yes, for 5 minutes. It’s frustrating. But am I thinking about it? Writing this piece is the most I’ve thought about it since I discovered it, but otherwise I’m not sweating it for all the reasons outlined here.

In closing, I hope this thought process helps next time you face the same situation.

Do you agree with how I’m looking at it? Or do you think I’m a total moron for approaching it like this? Either way, reply and let me know!

– Coach T-Cole

PS – To be clear, there ARE certain times to confront another practice about their theft marketing. Maybe they copied an element (like a self-test) you developed and are currently running, and they started using it too. Or they’re making a false claim about their experience, being the first / most to do XYZ, that you know AND they know is NOT true, etc.

In those situations, usually still no need to get lawyers involved. For my clients, I’ll just call up the other practice (or their marketing folks), have polite but assertive words with whoever I need to talk to, and get it handled / changed / removed.

This “IP Enforcer” service is one of the many perks of our Marketing Advisory Program, which has been closed for 6 months, but has ONE spot opening up in November.

If you think you might be interested in 1-on-1 guidance and strategy for your marketing campaigns, training your marketing team to think like an agency, and setting yourself up for a banner year in 2024… email / message me “Banner!” And I’ll get you more info. 💪🏻

It’s me, Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me. (apparently)

“Geez, you’re part of the problem!”

I told Susan I wrote the following essay to send you today, and that 👆 was her immediate gut response to me. Apparently I’m promoting Taylor Swift’s dating rumors, which are none of our business and why should we care anyway?

Well COLOR ME GUILTY. Because you can learn from this for your practice, so let’s get into it…

—

CONFESSION: I’m borderline fascinated by this Taylor Swift + Travis Kelce romance.

In case you are living under a rock (or just have better things to do than follow football and pop culture – props to you if so):

The #1 entertainment artist on the planet, Taylor Swift, is dating one of the best Tight Ends on one of the best teams in the NFL (the Kansas City Chiefs) – a guy named Travis Kelce.

I mean, the rumor is they’re dating. I haven’t talked to either of them to verify. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m not a big fan of the celebrity gossip stuff. I don’t keep up with the Kardashians (though to be fair I occasionally peek in on my favorite drummer, Travis Barker, who is now married to one of the reality TV queens).

But there’s something more happening with this football-popstar relationship, and it directly relates to your practice growth opportunities (so keep reading)…

—

Hundreds of millions of people watch the NFL every season. It’s not exactly a struggling enterprise.

And Taylors new beau, Travis, is one of the most popular players on one of the most popular teams.

AND Taylor Swift is now worth over half a billion dollars following her sold-out ERAS World Tour, the hottest concert ticket of the summer.

So what I’m saying is all parties involved are doing pretty dang good for themselves.

But even so, what happens when you send the world’s biggest pop-star to watch one of the nation’s most popular teams that plays in its #1 most popular sport?

The numbers speak for themselves.

The simple fact that Taylor Swift attended the Chiefs – Jets game on Sunday resulted in:

27 million viewers, making it the most-watched Sunday show since the last Super Bowl
An additional 2 million female viewers
Approx 30% increase in age 18+ female viewership

(More stats in the article here)

This is fascinating because those are big numbers. People who wouldn’t spend a dollar on anything football related are buying Travis Kelce jerseys. They’re tuning into games.

BUT WHY? To get a glimpse of T-Swift’s reactions? One would assume so, since the cameras cut to her on average once every 10 minutes during the game last Sunday.

Regardless of why, the big point is: even if you’re highly branded in your market, super successful and busy as all get out..

MOST people still don’t know who you are and/or don’t have any current interest in you.

Which means there’s still a TON of opportunity out there for you. How do you get in front of it? One way to do that is via collaborations like what we’re seeing with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

Now, there are plenty of internet rumors that this whole “situationship” is a PR stunt by the NFL to increase viewership. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. But one thing’s for certain – The NFL is taking FULL advantage of it.

You can find clips all over the internet of players from across the league (not just Kelce’s locker mates) being asked what they think about the Travis / Taylor relationship. There was even a “Swiftie” video intro to the game on Sunday, hosted by Carson Daly. So kudos to the NFL for being on top of this and leveraging it for all its worth. Brilliant move.

Back to you. How can you apply this concept to your growth?

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We’re talking about collaborations with somewhat complimentary businesses to your practice.

Who could you collaborate with?

Obviously many who are reading this already collaborate with their local optometrists to get (and give… You send patients too, right?) patient referrals. That’s an easy one.
Plastic surgeon – ex. they’re doing mommy makeovers. Mommy deserves clear vision too. Include yourself in that offer. Provide an offer for complimentary BOTOX in your post-op packet for RLE (reading vision is fixed, now I can see those darn wrinkles!)
Local BMW / Mercedes dealer – These dealerships often have a VIP gift packet they provide with their new car sales. Get your practice in that with some kind of offer or package unique to these buyers.
Realtors – Realtors are the best connectors out there. Do you have a realtor patient whose surgery you’ve done? Collaborate with them to send you more patients. Give them a promo/gift they can provide new home buyers.
Others that come to mind are local pro / college sports teams and even teacher associations.

Now, it’s one thing to do a collaboration. But to leverage it, you need to do what the NFL is doing – create content and promote the collaborations!

For example, LaserCare Eye Center here in DFW does a great job of leveraging their sponsorship with the Cowboys. It’s all over their site, their social, their commercials. It’s everywhere.

(Not all these 👆 collaboration ideas make sense to promote as broadly as an association with the Dallas Cowboys, but hopefully you get some ideas from it.)

Promoting a collaboration > a collaboration simply existing.

In conclusion, whether you’re a Swiftie or not…. Whether you’re an NFL fan or not… it’s worth keeping an eye on the impact this relationship “collab” is having on the NFL (and who knows, maybe it ends up being beneficial to Swift as well?).

Aaaaaaand once you start generating more leads from your collabs, you’ll need to convert them to consults and surgery. And that’s where our transformative team sales coaching comes in.

We turn MDs, ODs, counselors and schedulers into Swift-like superstars so they’re confident to “take the stage” with prospective patients and convert them to premium surgeries for you.

Want to sell-out your surgery days like T-Swift and the Chiefs sell-out stadiums? Then reply “Swift Me!” And I’ll give you more details on a few ways we may be able to help you.

No cost, no obligation. Just reply, I’ll ask a couple questions to figure out where you are, and l’ll let you know what might make sense. Then the football is in your hands.

It’s a simple process. Wayyyy easier than sneaking out of a football suite in a popcorn container…

– T-Col(e)lab

If you’re into podcasts & booking premium procedures, this is for you

I love love LOVE rapping about premium patient conversions. So when my guy Guido Piquet (Ops King at Mann Eye Institute and co-host of the Ophthalmology Business Podcast) asked me to chop it up with him for an episode, of course I was in.

He and I jumped into the 4 most common “limiting beliefs” that are capping your premium conversions.

We covered a lot of ground, dropping pearls as we went. And we had a blast, which you can hear in the energy in our voices. We address a number of pressing questions, including…

Is sales a natural born talent or a teachable skill?
How can you turn “non-sales” folks into conversion superstars?
How much time do you need to spend with patients to convert them to premium? (pressed for time? you need to hear this…)
Why are most of the ways practices do “patient education” actually a waste of time and working against your conversions? (and what should you do instead)
How can you toot your own horn but still make it about the patient?
And more…

NOTE: Don’t be TRIGGERED by the word “sales.” Call it communication. Call it leadership. Call it whatever. What we’re talking about here is how to empower patients to make the decision that’s right for them. If you’re on board with THAT goal, doesn’t matter what words you use to describe it.

Take a listen on your commute or during your workout today, and if you found it valuable, let me know. (If you hate it, let me know that too. Haters are always welcome…)

The amazing Audrey Williams is managing director over at Ophthalmology Business Academy, and she gave me handy links to ALL the different podcast platforms. Pick your poison below…

Website Link : https://bit.ly/3Rl0tOr

Episode Link : https://bit.ly/48dzTNm

Apple Podcasts : https://apple.co/3PjzkZG

Spotify : https://spoti.fi/3Rfuf7q

Google Podcasts : https://bit.ly/3RkVPjz

iHeart : https://ihr.fm/3PC7Rnz

Also, do me a favor and take 60 seconds to leave Guido and crew a 5-star review. They’ve put together a valuable podcast here, and your review helps more people hear it.

You can leave your review here – https://trustmary.com/form/aNhC84RvW

Talk soon,

T-Cole

PS – If you have a podcast, or you’d like to collaborate on a webinar for your audience, hit me back and let’s rock. I come bearing high energy and gold nuggets, so if that’s your style, let’s do it…

Discounts vs. Offers (and what you should do)

“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” – Don Corleone, The Godfather

Had a conversation yesterday with a practice about their marketing, and I asked them “What kind of offers do you guys promote?”

The response: “Oh, we don’t do any discounts.” (which isn’t what I asked, but I understand why they responded that way)

When you start talking about discounts, promos, offers, specials, the water gets murky quickly.

So let’s clear it up today. Because these are not all the same things. 👆

To keep it simple, we’ll talk about Discounts vs. Offers.

What is a discount? No surprise here, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A discount is when you take money off the retail price of your service.

A discount is a “price reduction” to the general public, and a “profit reduction” to you. This is because rarely are you able to cut costs when you discount, so the $$ reduction comes right out of your bottom line.

So that’s a discount, and it’s no surprise some practices don’t want to do them. I’m not a huge fan of discounts on surgery. At the same time, they may be necessary to garner attention in your market depending on competitive activity, etc.

But a “discount” and an “offer” are not the same. In fact, a discount is a type of offer, but there are many others.

An “offer” is simply a presentation of deliverables in exchange for a set investment level.

When your car dealer says he will give you $X for your trade-in, got you X% financing, added a year to your extended warranty and threw in a full tank of gas… he made you an offer. Notice I didn’t say anything about a discount.

Offers can consist of many elements, including:

Special financing rates
Upgrade to a specific laser
Upgrade to a specific lens
Inclusion of drops / post-op products
Inclusion of pre- and post-op visits
Lifetime vision warranty / enhancements for life (or for X years)
Automatically entered to win X prize when you have surgery
Package surgery with desirable products, like complimentary designer sunglasses

Now that I’ve given you some examples, you can probably think of more.

“But Troy, we already include some of those in our surgery package.” Great! Break them OUT of the package, and then have your sales team work them back IN as part of the offer. Build the offer in front of the patient.

For example, you would go from “This comes with 2 years of free enhancements”

to “I’m also going to include 2 years of enhancements as part of your surgery package. Normally this would be an additional $X00, but we’re including it at no additional cost to you.”

See the difference? The first one is just listing a line item. The second one is you actually building an offer. And you don’t have to change all your materials to do this, you can simply change your scripting.

(We’re diving more into this in our coaching group this week, so our surgery schedulers have a great feel for how to present the features of surgery packages more like an “offer”)

And if you DON’T already do some of these in your surgery packages, now is a great time to start.

Why use offers in the first place?

Sets you apart from other practices
Gives you creative ways to pique your prospective patients’ interest
You can put time constraints around them, always creating urgency
Gives you new ways and reasons to reach out to non-converted prospects
ETC ETC ETC TONS OF REASONS

Cool? So if you haven’t been using offers because you don’t discount, I hope this essay has given you new ways to introduce offers into your practice. And if you’d like to collaborate on creating an offer for your practice, hit reply and get the convo started.

Troy “Offer on the Table” Cole

PS – Speaking of offers, we do have an OFFER right now for one of our E3 coaching programs. This is specifically for practices who KNOW their team would benefit from communications / conversion coaching, but they feel like they need to wait for the “right time” – either too busy, trying to hire someone right now, not sure if their current team is the ideal fit, opening a new office, etc.

If that’s YOU, reply and let me know WHY now is not the right time, and I’ll share more details with you. It’s totally NO pressure, NO obligation. I just know a lot of practices are in this boat right now, so we’re doing something to help them get the coaching they need so they can stop losing consult and surgery opportunities NOW.

Why TCU Lost (learn from this and WIN in your practice)

My alma mater TCU… the school that made it all the way to the National Championship last year… got wrecked by the Colorado Buffaloes in our season opener this past weekend.

You haven’t seen the Buffs in any rankings lately, because they won only ONE GAME last year.

But the Buffs picked up a not-so-secret weapon in the off-season. A new coach. Deion Sanders.

The one they call “Coach Prime.”

This dude is someone you might call a polarizing figure. From the legendary tales of how he performed at the NFL combine prior to being drafted, to his flashy playing days (some of which were right here in Dallas), and now to his coaching of college programs, Coach Prime is a unique flavor.

Fun fact: TCU was favored to beat Coach Prime is his first game as the Colorado head coach by 21 points.

I was highly skeptical we could win by 3 touchdowns. And I was concerned – knowing Prime’s reputation – that the team he put on the field would give us a run for our money.

Indeed they did, and ended up beating us by 3 points. His son, the Colorado quarterback, set a new school passing record by putting up 510 yards on us. What an embarrassment.

Now look, there are a bunch of different factors at play here for why we lost. First game of the season, bunch of new players, new coaching staff, etc. But Colorado was in the same boat.

So what made the biggest difference?

When I saw this 20-second video on Twitter just before game time, I knew we were in trouble: (click the image to watch, or click here)

The ONE THING Colorado CLEARLY has… more than TCU and probably most other teams… is they BELIEVE.

And Belief Trumps (almost) Everything.

Prime’s players BELIEVE in the mission he put forth. They BELIEVE in his leadership. They BELIEVE in each other. They BELIEVE they can go out there and hang with any team, despite having gone 1-11 last year.

These guys BELIEVE. Here’s another vid that dropped right after the game. Check it out and just TRY not to get excited. (tap the image to watch, or click here)

This make me wanna tryout to play for Coach Prime RIGHT NOW. Look at those guys. They are BELIEVERS. They are READY to go out and tear somethin up!

They don’t care who they’re playing, what adversity they face, how challenging it’ll be. They’re on a mission to do what they need to do.

—

Expectations for Colorado have been low all summer. But I anticipate Coach Prime and his crew are gonna prove a lot of folks WRONG this year. And it’s all built on that foundation of belief.

You lead a team of people in your practice. Are they believers? Do THEY believe like YOU believe? If not, it’s time to make them believers, or bring in new believers.

Belief is the cornerstone of everything we coach with our clients. Lots of different ways to create and strengthen belief, but the bottom line is – belief is a prerequisite for sustained winning, growth and resilience (which is crucial when the economy gets a little wonky).

Build BELIEF on your team. (And hopefully TCU will do the same so we can make it a halfway decent season…)

– Troy

PS – It’s almost cataract season. You need to make sure all your bases are covered so you’re set for OPTIMAL premium lens conversions, which means we need to talk. (Belief comes into play here too…)