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ICYMI Live in Chi (let’s run it back…)

Back in my late 20s, I was part of a secret pick-up basketball group. It was called “Hoop Club,” and every Thursday, we would meet at a gym in Dallas for a couple hours of b-ball.

Now this was back in my ad agency days, and we did a lot of traditional media buying. So we had close relationships with the tv stations, radio, etc. And it was one of our sales reps who actually invited us to play.

The interesting part of Hoop Club was that other than me, the sales rep and another dude at our agency, the group was comprised solely of media personalities.

So like, the hosts of one of the top rated sports shows in our market, the local prime time sports reporter for a major network, and so on. These guys you’d listen to or watch every day, and we’re all out there trash talking and playing ball together. Pretty wild.

And after a few games as it was winding down, someone would always say “Who wants to run it back?” Meaning “Anyone wanna play again?” And of course we would “run it back” a couple more times before calling it a night.

Fast forward a decade and shift north 1,000 miles – Michael King and I were “hooping it up” at the CareCredit booth last Saturday at AAO in Chicago. We gave two booth presentations where we dove into the hidden assets in your practice that you can use to book more surgeries right now, and set yourself up for success in 2025.

And it was tons of fun and super helpful to share these tactics with those who came to our talks, and in one-on-ones throughout the meeting.

BUT I heard from a number of folks who either didn’t go to Chicago, or they couldn’t make our pre-scheduled booth talks.

Which is why I asked Michael… “YO! You wanna run it back?” Of course he was down to keep the party going.

So for anyone who couldn’t make it over to our talk in Chicago, we’re gonna run it back. This time, virtually, via webinar this Thursday at 12p eastern, 11a pacific.

Tap here to register, or fwd this to your administrator or marketing / sales manager to attend. The more, the merrier.

We’ll reveal:

🚀 2025’s Top Campaigns – The two most effective “Hidden Asset” campaigns to run for your practice in 2025 (you can rinse and repeat both for continued success)

⚡️Creative Repurposing Content Hack – How to super-charge your marketing through “Creative Repurposing” to create 2-3x more marketing content in 1/10th the time

✨ Disney World Experience – The “Disney World Approach” to make every patient interaction memorable, positive and geared toward scheduling surgery

⭐️ Referrals and Reviews – What are the most effective ways to put happy patients to work marketing your practice

🤖 Personalization and AI – The happy medium between using automation and manual outreach to effectively connect with prospective patients (super-simple to understand, but easy to get it wrong)

➕ And Much More – Beyond all this, we’ll dive into bonus strategies and actionable insights to take your practice further.

It will be our special brand of “info-tainment,” and you’ll leave with actionable insights you can put into play in your practice.

Tap the link to reserve your spot and add it to your calendar so you don’t miss it. I’m not sure if we’re doing a recording, so please try to be there live.

You game to run it back? Hope so. And if so…

Tap here to RSVP.

Talk soon,

Troy “run it back” Cole

Those CareCredit videos I keep yapping about…

If you’ve read my last few messages, you’ve heard me tease our upcoming CareCredit Video Series on kicking butt at marketing, communication and sales.

Michael King and I got together to rap about the hidden assets in your practice and how you can “activate” them to get more surgery patients with modest investments of money and/or time.

We did this at the request of CareCredit, they recorded it, and they turned into into a video series that’s quite informative while also entertaining. (It’s what we in the persuasion biz call “info-tainment.”)

For anyone who has been losing sleep, waiting with baited breath for the release of these discussions… Christmas morning has arrived, my friend.

In fact, the CareCredit crew has released not just one but the first TWO videos in this series, which you can find here.

Give them a watch (or a listen while you’re driving or in the gym)

And shoot me your biggest takeaways. Curious to hear what strikes a chord with you.

And remember, we’ll be live with CareCredit Saturday in Chicago – 11:15a and 3:30p at their booth. So come by and say hey, take a selfie, throw tomatoes at us, whatever your heart desires.

See you there…

– Troy

PS – Shout-out to the CareCredit crew and their production partners for the great work on these. The graphics, the audio/video… they made us look pretty darn good.

How to “Frack” for Surgery Patients

Being in Texas, I’ve got a lot of friends in the oil and gas business.

I find it fascinating – all the moving parts that come together to get these substances out of the ground and into usable form.

For example, one friend owns a company whose only role is to supply and recycle water to be used at drill sites. Super niche.

Last year, my curiosity got the best of me and I picked up a book called The Frackers (entertaining read). It’s about a group of folks who took unconventional approaches to develop Hydraulic Fracturing, commonly known as “fracking,” which revolutionized the oil and gas industry.

Fracking is a method of using high pressure to access oil and gas previously inaccessible in the deep shale beneath the Earth.

The original premise for even attempting to frack was: “Hey, we found out we’re sitting on a gold mine of oil and gas, but we can’t get it through conventional methods. These are hidden assets that we don’t know how to get to. So let’s figure it out.”

And through a lot of trial and error and bold decisions, the fracking process / technology came to fruition. In the relatively short time that it’s been done, fracking is now used in the vast majority of wells in the US.

So how does that connect to you?

You’re sitting on hidden assets in your practice. Your lead list, your non-converted consults, your happy patients, your website and more.

All of these can be “tapped into” just like the shale rock in order to extract valuable resources – new surgery patients. Think of it like “Patient Fracking.”

Your challenge is the same one the wildcatters had when they started to come up with fracking – “How do we get to the gold?”

Fortunately for you, you don’t have to spend gazillions of dollars and years of guesswork trying to refine the process like they did.

There’s already a playbook for this. And it’s exactly what Michael King and I discuss in our forthcoming video series with Care Credit – “Eyes on the Prize – Leveraging the Hidden Assets in Your Practice to Grow Your Surgery Volume.”

Will this revolutionize your practice the way Fracking did the oil and gas industry? That would be a tall order. But right now, when some markets are experiencing a dip due to economy, election distractions, and/or natural disasters, adding in “Patient Fracking” is a must to ensure you’re accessing all available channels of new patient acquisition.

CC will release the first few videos in this series any day now. In the meantime, Mike and I will be at AAO, at the Care Credit booth on Saturday 10/19, talking about this very topic.

Times are below, so mark your calendars. Drop by and say hey, get your questions answered, and have some fun with us.

Presentation 1

During the 11-11:30 Break

Presentation 2

During the 3:15 – 3:45 Break

And if you can’t make it or miss it for some reason, shoot me a text and let’s arrange a time to meet in Chicago. (If you don’t have my number, reply here and I’ll send it to you)

Troy “Frack-tastic” Cole

[PIC] I channeled my inner Travis Kelce for this

Before you get any ideas, yes I’m still on the Cowboys bandwagon. This is our year! 🤣

But when Jean and Amy from CareCredit asked me to join forces with my guy Michael King and do an online video series about ninja tactics for marketing and converting refractive surgeries, we knew it needed a vibe.

The series launches next week (I think), so I wanted to give you a sneak peek of the cover image:

And if that looks familiar, yes we totally did a play on Travis and Jason Kelce’s smash hit podcast, New Heights…

(Pretend I inserted a marketing lesson about not recreating the wheel, and a second marketing lesson about the power of learning from other industries and applying them to yours…)

Mike and I won’t be talking about winning Super Bowls or dating international pop stars. So if that’s your bag, sorry to disappoint. BUT we do dig deep into tactical ways to set yourself miles apart in how you market and convert high-ticket surgeries in your practice. What’s working NOW.

So keep your eyes peeled for when the first episodes drop. I’ll shoot you a link once they’re released.

A nugget for you to take and use today – Michael and I get into on the valuable concept of Hidden Marketing Assets. What do you have RIGHT NOW that you can leverage with little to no additional marketing spend, and minimal effort?

The answer is: Your list of non-converted consults and surgeries.

You are sitting on a (potential) treasure trove of surgery patients that simply need to be activated. We get into HOW you can activate them in the series, so be on the lookout.

Also – this video series is leading up to AAO, where you can join Michael and me LIVE at the CareCredit booth for rapid fire Q&A, maybe some arm wrestling and other shenanigans.

More details on that in coming days…

– Troy “Kel-Ce you in Chicago” Cole

PS – Are you going to AAO? Hit me back and let me know, we can connect and I’ll buy you a cocktail or an ice-cold cherry Pepsi (Travis Kelce’s favorite drink, according to his comments on the podcast… ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )

House DJ shares tip to increase cataract conversions

Like many folks, we’ve cut the traditional cable cord and gone full on streaming. (And yes, we have about 3-too-many streaming services. Trying to pare down at the moment…)

As you probably know with Smart TVs, you can download certain “apps” to watch various programming – Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+, etc.

One app I’ve always found interesting is the Red Bull TV app. For whatever reason (probably because Red Bull pays a LOT of money), the app comes pre-installed on my Roku TVs.

The Red Bull TV app offers a mix of extreme sports videos, live music events and more, all free. It’s worth checking out.

I don’t frequent Red Bull TV, but I’ll check it out from time to time just to see what other crazy things they’re getting into. And the other night, I stumbled upon an interesting interview with a world-famous house DJ from Germany named Steffen Berkhahn, aka “Dixon.”

(If you don’t know who that is, you’re in good company. I hadn’t heard of the guy, but apparently he’s a big deal in that niche).

One part of the interview that really stood out to me was when the interviewer was asking him about his approach to the show. Does he have a certain playlist of songs he uses, a specific vibe he’s going for, etc.

And his answer surprised me. Probably because I think about rock bands I enjoy, and they typically go out on tour with a fairly static setlist that they perform night after night.

But Dixon described how he would change his sets depending on the audience.

For example, if he’s playing a 90-minute set at the Leeds Festival in England, he’ll primarily play a mix of the hits. That audience isn’t necessarily a hardcore house music type of a crowd, so he’ll hit them with the energy and the songs they know.

But if he’s doing a 4-hour set at a club in Ibiza, he’ll still mix in a few hits, but have a much more wide-ranging set of tunes. Because he has the time and attention of an audience that’s more attuned to the house music scene.

Depending on where he is and who is in front of him, he changes his presentation to best suit the audience.

Interestingly, this ties into the very reason we call our coaching community the Green Room.

Because whether you’re going to see Taylor Swift at a stadium or Stephen Wilson Jr at an Oklahoma City bar, you can bet they’re spending time in their Green Room before the show.

In the Green Room, they’re rehearsing, having meetings, getting nourishment, planning the performance, venting frustrations, having fun, getting pumped up!

Every time you step in front of a patient – either on the phone or in the office – you’re giving a performance. And your team needs their own “Green Room” where they can prepare to give the performance of a lifetime. (which is exactly what we’ve created)

And just like Dixon adjusts his performance to his audience, your team needs to adjust theirs depending on who is in front of them. Yes, there are core pieces of info that need to be conveyed (the Hits)…

But different people need different info / education / reasons / emotional appeals to make them feel comfortable pulling the trigger with you.

So as you start the week, make sure this is happening in your phone calls and consults.

Rock out this week,

Troy

PS – Our DISC for Doctors coaching program is tailor-made to help your team understand who is in front of them, what their priorities are and what their communication style is. No guesswork.

The practices that have gone through it tell us what a profound difference it makes in sculpting their Patient Journey to different personality styles.

I can personally attest to our specific DISC approach making a huge positive impact in my communication not only with clients and patients, but with my wife Susan, my kids and even friends/extended family. Suz leveraged it for years as a pharma rep, calling on doctors and earning a number of top sales honors at Alcon. So it works well for OD Liaisons too.

She and I even did a fun, interactive presentation on DISC for Doctors at Outliers this year, and it triggered many ‘a-ha’ moments around the room.

Once our cATaract Conversion Masterclass wraps, we’ll be diving into a new DISC for Doctors coaching cohort in our Green Room Community. Ping me for details on either or both of these immersive programs.