The Doctor Whisperer: Paul's Marketing Journey

00:00 Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I am your host, Sharon Fekatee. And, um, with me today, I have Paul Macawitz, who is an Army veteran.

00:10 So we're always happy to have an Army veteran or any veteran on my show. So first and foremost, thank you for all that you do for us.

00:18 We can have the freedom to have this conversation today. Um, he's also an experienced marketing professional. He has a digital marketing agency.

00:26 And, um, really excited to have this conversation because we kind of live live in a similar world, but I'm sure there's many differences and there's also one thing that is for sure today.

00:39 And that is there's plenty of business to go around. Especially when it comes to doctors and lawyers needing help in the digital world.

00:47 So Paul, welcome to the show. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So Paul, you are currently in LA stuck in traffic on your way to get ready for this show and you are getting ready to move your family to South Carolina, is that right?

01:04 Yeah, I actually love my mornings. I normally wake up at about 5.30 in the morning so that I can really ease into the day to get a little reading in, a little writing in, a little meditation, workouts on some days, but also I have a three month old and I also have a wife who amazing human being.

01:23 She's in high end hospitality. So she's written Beverly Hills, working at one of the hotels in there. So she's always out early.

01:31 I'm out early. This one was kind of funny because I got my backpack with the laptop and the camera and the microphone and everything with me.

01:38 I've got a dog on a leash. I got a coffee and one hand baby under the iron running out the door.

01:42 So it's one of those mornings, but life's meant to be exciting, right? It'd be much less exciting if I was just waking up and rolling out of bed and having a few tasks to check off today.

01:54 Well, that's what I said before, hence the life of an entrepreneur. So it's always exciting. It's never boring. So you're also once a golf professional.

02:04 So that's super cool and a small business owner. So you've been in the world of helping entrepreneurs. It doesn't matter what kind, right, but the professionals like the lawyers and the doctors sometimes in this space, especially in the digital space, really, really need extra help.

02:22 So why don't you tell me your why as to why you opened your company and and how you can help all of these professionals that desperately need a digital footprint.

02:32 Yeah, I have, I have a really fun meandering career path. I always find it interesting when people like know what they want to do their entire life.

02:41 I went to college, changed my major four times as freshmen, no idea what I wanted to do. And I was working at Dixporting Goods selling golf clubs because, you know, I always just enjoyed golf and there I met our miracle decided I really had no idea when I want to do my life and enlisted like two days

02:59 later. Showed from my parents house was like, hey, I joined the military. I leave two weeks. Oh my god, the shock.

03:06 Yeah, yeah, my parents stuff that were shocked by it. My father was a military guy, so my grand father's third generation.

03:14 I'm one of six kids, so I'm definitely the wild child of the family will say. After doing my time in the military, I realized I really wanted to pursue a career in And I'm a good golfer, best golfer of all my friends, most of my clients that I go and play with them, most of all, but also unless you're

03:33 good enough in playing on Sundays, it's a very hard world to make any significant wrap anyone. With that, I got into exporting goods into management business, became a business analyst for them, did the retail thing for a few years and finally just knowing that's not my path.

03:52 My sister was living in New Mexico So I took money I had, and I just drove out to New Mexico and met a guy playing golf actually.

04:00 He wanted to start a scooter company. And I was like, I feel like it'd be a good entrepreneur. I feel like I'm very systematic.

04:06 I'm operational minded. That's why I did so well at exporting goods. And we opened up five locations in a year, throughout New Mexico, or just top up shops, printing out scooters.

04:16 Yeah, I built that entire company just using Google Forms, Google Sheets, and some scripts on the backend that would send off a notification to the GPS tracker, send up a PDF to the client, went to me, you know, let people go out and write these scooters for like eight hours, you know, be able to lock

04:31 them up at the end of the day and it was a pretty cool little business model because there wasn't much overhead outside of me traveling and sleeping in hotels and in the back of shops and in the car if I had to like I was just hustling, hustling, hustling.

04:45 Really learning how important one social media was and your online presence because if I didn't build that website and I didn't have a decent social presence like how people are going to find us, you know, some signs on the side of the street, maybe.

04:58 I mean, so I really had to start wrapping my head around exactly how to do it and I found that I really had a passion really just how important awareness is and how to capitalize on that awareness.

05:11 Have that eyeball for a moment and how can you get that conversion? And that led to a job in New York City, which I grew up in Buffalo, New York.

05:19 So New York City is always, and I'd love to live there for a little bit, you know, check it out.

05:23 And a buddy of mine called me and said, hey, my roommate's moving out. You've been talking about moving to New York for years.

05:29 Like, why don't you just do it? And I just on another whim, like, I passed everything off to my business partner and he was taking the scooter company and started to run that.

05:37 I went out to New York City and worked with a company called Main Street Hub, which a decent amount of people should probably know who they are.

05:44 They were the largest social media management reputation management company in the U.S. From what year was that? Oh, maybe do some math here.

05:53 I'd say probably right around like 2015. Okay. So when I went out there was like a 15, 16 employee into an office, two blocks out the Times Square.

06:04 Living in Manhattan, you know, in my late 20s, early 30s here, really just having really enjoying life, but also it's just awesome, awesome, awesome.

06:14 Again, yeah, that's the East Coast New York mentality. It's one thing that really throws me off being out here in Los Angeles is, you know, everything is out.

06:21 It's my own good. I'm like, no, we do see you get to South Carolina. It's happening after day. You know, that's gonna be interesting.

06:30 But being in New York City and and being an early employee at Main Street Hub, about two years later, when I was ready for, to take a different career choice, there was over 300 people on that floor.

06:43 And I was managing about 60 people. And it was all about how to run your social media. So we worked with small businesses, mostly restaurants.

06:51 I was the golf guy because I had all these golf courses that I couldn't worry about. When I was running their social media, reputation management, so getting good reviews, who's answering reviews, kind of managing that process.

07:02 And some mobile websites, but, you know, that company grew very, very fast. They sold to GoDaddy a few years ago.

07:09 So they're no longer around, but I took kind of the experience that I learned there and how important looking good is online.

07:17 And I met my teacher wife in New York, and she got a job opportunity in Miami. And I was like, no, I didn't be out for a few years, could check out the list.

07:24 I love beach weather. I love some tropical atmosphere. So we took off and moved to Miami. And how I got a job in Miami was by finding another marketing company that was a little bit more of the technical side than maybe like the social media reputation management.

07:41 That's not that difficult to manage for somebody. But giving it to, say, website design, SEO, paid ads, a little bit more of the meat potatoes of what digital marketing is now.

07:53 And how I got that job was by looking at their online presence and being like, you guys are 3.5 out of 5 on Google and your digital marketing company.

08:01 Like why aren't you answering these? Why aren't you getting more reviews? Like, what do you do with every chapter of your clients?

08:05 I ripped them apart pretty bad in a few emails and then even into the interview process. To the point that the CEO was like, I kind of need like a harness like you know here to kind of keep us on the straight and there help us build that out.

08:19 So I went over there as the director of business development really cleaned up what they had as far as processes like they didn't really have a CRM they you know they were kind of lacking in a lot of things but they were a big company like doing a lot of clients which was crazy to me but yeah company

08:34 that was mostly working on like spreadsheets and you know cold calling all day was you've had that large of a market share.

08:43 Eventually my wife got her dream job. I'm here in Los Angeles in high end hospitality, and I pitched to the owner of that company, let me go open the West Coast office.

08:53 I came out here, hired a few salespeople, and I took a promotion to the VP of client success, so that I could really kind of build up the processes to ensure our clients were getting good reporting, and we were really communicating with them on the level that we hadn't been before.

09:07 work. And I did that for a few years and realized, you know what, I'm kind of tired of making money for other people.

09:13 Like I've got all the skills, I've got all the knowledge I've been doing that's been building other people's companies for years.

09:18 So I had to go out and do my own. So I had a little bit of a genuine wire moment.

09:22 And I was like, you know what? I'm doing my own thing who's coming with me and you know, one of the guys that, you know, I think that you and I could do something and there was three, four months working on the couch in my house, you know, figuring out the business and exactly what we're going to do.

09:36 And now two and a half years later, you know, we're a pretty successful digital company. And it all kind of comes down to I really wanted to focus on the full scope of digital marketing.

09:46 I came from a social media reputation management company, went to a website design, SEO paid ads company, but there weren't any companies that are really doing a good job of using all those different aspects synergistically.

10:01 And like, you know, how are you getting a review? Are you highlighting better view in your social? You know, are you taking reviews and building out your testimonial pages and be sure they have the keywords and, you know, what type of experience are people having when they get to your website and all

10:12 these different aspects that there's there's really good companies that do like individual little things, but there wasn't one that really focused on all.

10:19 And so I spent about two years with the development company in Canada building up the stashboard that was like the dream dashboard I always wanted you know that it Functions so much like who's sweet or buffer for your social media It's got a reputation management API connection with your Yelp page your

10:36 Google business list thing and like your right MD and your vitals page So you can see all of your reviews in one spot and those word clouds So you can see like oh, maybe this perception's name is much and more often positive ones You know, maybe the stock is mentioned in more negative ones and like, 

10:51 you know, it's easier to kind of get a full high level view of your business when you're seeing what this feedback is actually telling you.

11:00 And then it also allows you to track your ads a little bit better so you can see, you know, kind of how your social media ads are performing versus your Google ads versus your YouTube ads versus your display ads.

11:10 and get a little bit more of an apples-to-apples comparison with all of your different advertising. So it hooks all of those together.

11:16 It's also got a cool feature to generate reviews. So SMS messaging, per reviews, or email follow-ups after an appointment in order to generate more reviews.

11:26 And then we take care of the social media. So now we utilize those reviews to build awesome content that's a client testimonial video or even a static image that's highlighting some of the big value propositions.

11:39 We want to point out this company as much as they had a great experience. Great. So let me jump in here for just a second.

11:45 So I own a media company and we do organic social media. So this is, you know, one of the things when I'm talking with clients, prospective new clients, you know, I'll meet with somebody tomorrow that I probably mention your company because we only do organic social media.

12:01 And I think where a lot of confusion Well, I know with where a lot of confusion lies with a lot of the attorneys and a lot of the physicians is they really think that everything is the same.

12:14 You know, if you are a social media company, you do websites and you do SEO and you do Google analytics and you do.

12:24 reputation management. And so, and as mentioned before, there are some companies that just do one thing individually and you have it all in house, right?

12:33 So I have a few questions about that that I just want to make, you know, clarify for people because these questions come up a lot.

12:39 I got a long email yesterday about somebody that wanted me to help them with their social media for, you know, a campaign in politics, right?

12:50 So it would not suit my organic social media company because organic means it's going to take a long time. That's what organic means, right?

13:00 And then there's paid advertising and there's Google and there is so much. So all that you have mentioned for the doctors or the practice management people that might be listening today this I think is my own value add for everybody that is listening or watching is that you really have to know what everything

13:21 means before you start looking. and paying a company to do something. You have to understand the strategy. You have to get referrals from the businesses that you're working with all of that, right?

13:36 Because you being an operator just like myself, the reason that I get hired in the medical profession to help doctors navigate and help them through their businesses is because I've had over 20 years in the medical industry.

13:47 But, you know, I've also been a very huge advocate for digital footprints. And you have to have it today. Like if you are not on Google, like you don't exist, right?

13:59 It's just fun as well, pack it up, especially through the pandemic, right? They've all had to switch to telehealth. They've had to make a lot of different transitions.

14:08 So I really want to kind of narrow down a little bit, like what type of company do you best serve?

14:17 And how do you attract those companies? because, you know, being in business as long as I have, knowing that there really isn't an understanding a lot of business owners when it comes to social media, Google, you know, and it can be very confusing, right?

14:35 Like a doctor, great example, like they're phenomenal at saving our lives. But do we want them posting on social media?

14:42 Not so much. So maybe you could just break it down a little bit and just tell me how, you know, how do you dismantle all of that for the clients that you're going to end up working with?

14:55 Because I already know how overwhelmed they are and a lot of them pretend that they understand what you're talking about Paul, but they in fact do not.

15:03 I would say you're certainly hitting them out and having most certainly don't and I think that's the difficulty in the digital marketing area.

15:12 I mean, Main Street Hub was a great company, they provided a great service, but I mean, unless you're really getting to know that client, it's very difficult to portray them online, you know, and the churn in digital marketing is insane.

15:28 That's one of the reasons why when I started my company on being a former army, or being an army veteran, like the very first thing I did was we lived by the army values.

15:37 It's selfless service, like you are here to serve them. If they're making money, we're making money. Don't sit here and think about the amount of time that you're having to put into this or, you know, looking at a clock and thinking about this is going to take me two hours.

15:48 Think about the value that you're actually providing to this client more so than that. Things like honor and integrity and just, you know, answering every email within 24 hours.

15:58 I mean, the amount of horror stories that people have additional marketing companies, it really blows my mind. And I came from two of them that were, you know, very successful companies, is both in 500 fastest growing companies.

16:09 And their term rate was six months and nine months. So that means yes, you're getting lots of clients, you're providing some value.

16:16 But if you aren't building that relationship or really getting to know that business then in a meaningful way that you can portray them online, you know, really what's the long term value that you're providing?

16:28 You know, maybe you're making them look nice for a little bit. And then there's a lot of digital marketing companies out there, you know, you pay for SEO.

16:33 And then if you leave that, and they take on your content back. Right. I mean, just absolutely horrible. Like, to hear somebody's stories.

16:41 So one of the things that I did as we were building this was, you know, imagine doing that to somebody.

16:47 Oh my gosh. I mean, it is, let's take a pause with that. I mean, I have had clients that have been burned before that say, so all this content that you're gonna build for us, you know, what happens to it?

16:57 I'm like, what happens? Well, here you go. And here's the password. And I think this is all for you. What, what even good would it do for me?

17:03 what what could I possibly do with it so it's um and and and with websites too you know they're going to take your firstborn um yeah or you don't even own the website you know you're releasing the website and as soon as you leave them they're like okay where should we transfer this and they're like what

17:22 do you mean transfer like what are we doing now yeah everything we do we we probably believe that it's your business on ours you know we we are a service to you every bit of content I would have done a website, every social post, optimizing your Google business listing, your email page, whatever we do

17:37 is yours forever. I just recently, I've only lost two clients in the three years. And I don't think I, yeah, I don't think I have them.

17:45 We're really all in much of my fault. One of them I think is coming back here, you just reached out to me the other day.

17:50 So, but even in the handoff, you know, we have technology that really allows you to own your information if those necessary sets are taken.

18:04 So I wear a Google word space. So everything is a shared drive, it's all this organized, but I'm working doc as the passwords and we're pretty organized and I drill it into my team all the time, if we're not organized, we can't serve our clients properly because we have the waste time doing these things

18:22 . We could get into a little bit, but I'm doing a program right now with the flow collective, which is Stephen Kotler, and it's all about getting into flow states and how you can, you know, traction can be a good thing or a bad thing, like if you put traction on something that's wasting your time, you

18:37 know, you can keep yourself from doing those things, but when traction is hindering you from, you know, being able to find a password quicker, or, you know, being able to log into something, and, you know, two subterrification is great, but it's also good because sometimes it's like a I'm in a task, 

18:51 just going to log in to something. So when that client left us, and I had to hand everything over to them, it only took me like 20 minute focal.

19:00 And they're like, it's so nice that you're actually doing this. Like, we're not even inclined anymore. You're taking time to get this stuff to our new guy.

19:06 And I'm like, well, for one, it's all organized. It's not like this is some huge task that you're giving me.

19:11 Here it is. I even talked with the new company for about 20 minutes afterwards, like tell them some of our processes, how we do things.

19:18 And he's like, man, like, I'm an average actor, just remarketing a couple of, like, telling me what their secrets are.

19:23 I don't like it. There's so many businesses out there. Right. Then he doesn't give a, Yeah, if I can make you a little bit better, and you're helping, you know, I like, don't you see like a nice enough guy?

19:32 Like, you didn't see like a, like a, like you know, he was trying to swivel people out of them and hear anything.

19:36 So if I can help him out in a way that's gonna, you know, I work really hard on that client for a year and a half, like, don't think that all, I have no, they have an animosity towards them at all.

19:45 They want to try something, try something new, like, Like, um, here's everything. Here's the keys to the castle. Like the ground running.

19:52 I want you guys to succeed. They're really nice guys. I really dread working with them. But, uh, I guess the circle is kind of back to what you were asking earlier is, you know, how do you help a business really understand these different aspects and to utilize them properly.

20:08 I really equated to going to the gym or like I use a lot of golf analogues maybe because like a lot of the doctors I work with golf or the attorney's golf that it's kind of a nice.

20:17 A nice and nice certainly have with them, but I talked it was it's like going to the range you know if you're pushing regularly on social media.

20:24 If you're putting hats on out regularly on your website generating lots of reviews and your answering them and really you know conveying that in person customer service online as well.

20:33 You know, you were just slowly giving people more and more emotional connections that they can have with your business. And what most of the talks I do about is called the zero moment of truth or Zima.

20:45 And it was a concept I came up from Google about 10 years ago, so it's not like a brand new thing, but it's.

20:50 The pandemic certainly made people start paying more attention to it, but marketing the traditional marketing, which my education is actually in.

20:57 It was always like awareness first moment of truth, which is the shelf. So you know, I see that serial commercial and I go to the store I remember that I grabbed that that mox is serial and then the second moment of truth is the the experience So I love that serial want to tell my friends about it or

21:13 I hit it that serial on which up online and you know click away and tell everybody a horrible But now since we all this technology you just write out our fingertips all the time.

21:22 There's this zero moment of truth So I still have to be aware that you exist and that's really where paid ads I think is the most effective isn't the awareness side are you know you always want to be you know thinking of conversion Right, that's that's why you build a landing page or a squeeze page because

21:38 you want somebody to they get to that page And they want an option that's you know contacts border you know fell for like you don't want them to me Enter too much after you kind of got down awareness, but still awareness is this huge and that's mostly what I use social media ads and them and display 

21:53 ads and YouTube ads for is not necessarily like the retargeting is nice and it's really intelligent to retarget and it's a good practice.

22:01 But I like making sure that my clients are really well known in their area. And so, you know, even a 15-second video, just introducing themselves kind of pointing out one or two of the value propositions of the solutions that they provide.

22:16 Yeah, most of the doctors I work with are like the functional medicine or alternative medicine rejuvenated to maybe because I'm not a huge fan of medical system myself being like a veteran I go to the VA hospital it's like the saddest place on her my life.

22:33 It really shouldn't be my wife and I we had our first kid end of January but she caught COVID two days before her water broke.

22:41 Oh my god. And so yeah we had a midwife we were supposed to have a home birth to all this, but now in the middle I was like, well, you have COVID, I can't come over there shooting a wolf and a baby, she's like, I have a husband, like I can't deliver me a baby in this way, like you guys have to go to 

22:55 a hospital. In Los Angeles, I ended up having to call six different hospitals at about two o'clock in the morning to find one that even let me in the room because she had COVID, I hadn't, I hadn't come back positive yet.

23:06 And obviously I got it, you know, in the hospital, but it was, it was the sixth hospital that finally said, like we, like the parental relationship.

23:14 but you guys being together through this process is way more important than, you know, whether somebody heads up a sickness, you know.

23:21 So what you think of how serious COVID is, or isn't like, I'm a 35 year old guy, my wife's 35, you know, we're young people in good shape.

23:30 We just want to be together to have our baby. And it was amazing to me how there was just like very, just a lack of common sense.

23:38 I guess would be my feeling on it. And I always used, you know, acupuncture and chiropractors and functional medicine and finding, you know, ways that I can better my health without, you know, getting a bunch of prescriptions.

23:51 So I mean, I'm really take aspirin. So leaning into that side of the medical, I found I just really enjoy working with those people.

24:01 And also those people really, they care about their patients a lot. And one of the the things that is fun for me is highlighting the real value propositions that they serve.

24:13 So like I have one client that just works on sexual health for men and women. Is she, she's just so well-known.

24:19 She's a ball of energy. She's like, she's probably like her early 60s, but it's so fun to see her light up when I'm like, tell me about the problems you solve.

24:30 You know, tell me about the things that interest you and how we can like, you know, build these correlations. I have one doctorate for like four months, just trying to really figure out what his thing was.

24:40 You know, he's like, I, you know, I provide, you know, this sort of stuff. I'm like, well, great. So those fit get the doctors in your area.

24:47 You know, what's that thing about you? It's like, oh, well, you know, I also do this. I'm like, well, great.

24:51 So, I forgot. I agree. That's a man. I'm like, great. Everyone has been saying that. Or at least I'm going to tell you, they just do.

24:56 I was like, what's that thing about you? And finally, I got him to really open up and talk about how much he loves Harry Potter with his kids.

25:04 They go to the Harry Potter world and they dress up and they get the robes and the wands and they do all the things.

25:09 I have not big Harry Potter fans like that. I get into it too much. But we utilize some of the information about, to really, he's kind of like the Harry Potter doctor now on his Instagram and Facebook.

25:20 And people, they have this emotional connection to him now. And before he just looked like everybody else, but now he's something else.

25:28 And it's something that he's passionate about who enjoys and he shares with his children. So I mean, it's a different aspect of his life that we're able to incorporate into his marketing.

25:36 And that I think is the true answer to your question is finding what it is about you that's unique and, you know, accentuating that creativity about you.

25:49 It really makes me sad when people come to me like, oh, my competitors doing this, I want to do that.

25:53 I'm like, okay, We can do that, but let's do it your way. You know, let's find what the angle is on you that we can accentuate so people build that emotional connection.

26:02 Yeah, I can agree more. I think that everybody needs to put their brand out there and they need to make sure that it is unique to them.

26:10 Never want, I mean, wanting to be like somebody else and competent, knowing your competition is always nice, but it certainly shouldn't run anybody's business.

26:18 But I hear that a lot, especially in the medical industry. But Paul, you know the attention span of most people listening to a podcast today is about the size of a flee.

26:28 So with that, all of the information to get in touch with you and your company will be in the show notes, I so appreciate what you're doing to help highlight these doctors, especially in the alternative world and functional medicine and chiropractors.

26:42 I think it's fantastic. Everybody that has a business today, whether you like social or Google or online or not, If you're not there, you almost don't exist anymore.

26:53 So I would highly recommend that everybody takes a look at Paul's business and like I said, all the information will be in the show notes.

26:59 Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much, Anna, great time. Thank you. So don't forget, if you mentioned that you've seen the show or listened to it on the podcast, mention Thai technology and you will get three months for free.

27:17 They're the best. .

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