The Charleston Marketing Podcast
Welcome to The Charleston Marketing Podcast, the podcast that dives deep into the world of marketing, with a specific focus on the vibrant city of Charleston. Join us as we explore the strategies, trends, and success stories that shape the marketing landscape in this historic and captivating coastal city.
Each episode of The Charleston Marketing Podcast brings you exclusive interviews with local marketing experts, industry thought leaders and Charleston entrepreneurs who have harnessed the power of effective marketing in the Lowcountry and beyond. From strategic communication, social media, PR, digital strategy and everything in between, we uncover valuable insights and actionable tips for our listeners.
The Charleston Marketing Podcast
Blair Primis: A Journey Through Marketing's Transformative Moments
Discover the unconventional journey of Blair Primis, Chief Marketing Officer at Flagship Specialty Partners, who transitioned from a history major at Duke University to a 25-year career in marketing. Blair opens up about his pivotal experiences at renowned companies like McCann Erickson, McKinney, and McDonald's, sharing stories from critical moments such as the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. Learn how his mentors and bosses shaped his path and the importance of following one's interests in achieving a fulfilling career.
Get ready to uncover the secrets behind successful healthcare marketing with Blair's decade-long experience at OrthoCarolina. We explore innovative strategies like online reputation management, email marketing, and SEO to enhance patient experiences and shift consumer perceptions. Delve into the impact of Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) and the essential need for staying updated with industry trends to remain competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
Lastly, Blair discusses the transformative power of dental healthcare, sharing insights on the significant emotional and psychological changes brought about by procedures like braces and dental implants. Hear about his involvement with the Forbes Communications Council and the importance of networking within professional communities. Plus, you will learn about the incredible work of nonprofits like the Isabella Santos Foundation and Charlotte is Creative. This episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspirational stories for marketing professionals at all career stages.
Presenting Sponsor: Charleston Radio Group
Title Sponsor: Charleston American Marketing Association
Cohosts: Stephanie Barrow, Mike Compton, Darius Kelly, Kim Russo
Produced and edited: rūmbo Advertising
Photographer: Kelli Morse
Art Director: Taylor Ion
Outreach: Lauren Ellis
CAMA President: Margaret Stypa
Score by: The Strawberry Entrée; Jerry Feels Good, CURRYSAUCE, DBLCRWN, DJ DollaMenu
Voiceover by: Ellison Karesh
Studio Engineer: Brian Cleary
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Welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, powered by the Charleston American Marketing Association and broadcasting from our home at Charleston Radio Group. Thanks to CRG, we're able to talk with the movers and shakers of Charleston, from economy to art, from hospitality to tech and everything in between. These leaders have made a home here in the Lowcountry. They live here, they work here, they make change here. Why? Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast Powered by the Charleston American Marketing Association. We're here recording at the Charleston Radio Group Studios. Big supporters of camera Got to give a shout out to Charleston's favorite DJ. Jerry feels good with the beats at the beginning. Thanks to all of CAMA. Gotta give a shout out to Charleston's favorite DJ, jerry Feels Good with the beats at the beginning. Thanks to all of our supporters. Mike Compton here, president of Roombow Advertising, goroombowcom, and your incoming president for CAMA, thanks for joining us. I'm joined here by a fellow co-host, stephanie Barrow. Steph, what's up?
Speaker 3:What's up guys. I'm Stephanie Barrow, founder of Stephanie Barrow Consulting, a digital marketing strategy agency here in Charleston, and I am your CAMA past president. We're excited to have a very special guest all the way from. Charlotte. He drove up to be with us today. Say hello to Blair Prentice.
Speaker 4:Hey, nice to be here, guys. Thanks for having me. Blair, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Charlotte has got the second most listeners and downloads. So we heard the Charlotte folks and I'm like I've got to get somebody from Charlotte and here you are.
Speaker 3:We are excited to have him.
Speaker 4:There it is. This is the premonition, I had an assumption that would be the case delivered ahead of time.
Speaker 2:You're the first Charlotte guest. Thank you for the travel, very welcome. Not a problem, that's amazing, so blessed, not a problem.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to go into now why we invited you to be here today.
Speaker 2:Yes, just a little bio time.
Speaker 3:All right guys. With over 25 years of experience in marketing, communications, creative direction and social networking, blair is a seasoned marketing leader who specializes in driving demand and growth of businesses, establishing best-in-class user experience solutions and standing by bestowed teams and strategies. As the chief marketing officer at Flagship Specialty Partners, blair oversees the marketing strategy and execution of a partnership that supports and empowers surgeons to achieve their practice goals and thrive in the modern healthcare market. Throughout his career, blair has built and led high-performing marketing teams that deliver best-in-class work, products and results across a multitude of industries. He has been involved in various strategic initiatives, board memberships and advisory roles that demonstrate his passion and commitment to the local community and the creative industry. Blair is an active mentor and coach, and he enjoys teaching and speaking on topics such as effective marketing leadership, maximizing team performance, change, movement and planning.
Speaker 4:Yeah, awesome it's like I wrote it myself Is that right.
Speaker 1:He did listeners, he did Amazing.
Speaker 2:So that's 25 years. I mean that I know, wow, it's crazy, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's crazy, gosh. I actually never took a single marketing or advertising class in college.
Speaker 2:Come on. So what was your major? Not one.
Speaker 4:Not one, it was a history major. I was one of those kids that went to college. Yeah, what school, I went to Duke.
Speaker 1:Oh cool, Good school.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a guy I knew from high school went before me and said hey, you know if I could give you some advice? Just find, unless you want to be a doctor or lawyer and you need post-education, post-grad education, just find the coolest professors and take those classes. Oh, and I was like all right, that's sound advice. Right, it was pretty cool. Different time too when you go into the workforce Nowadays it's like-.
Speaker 2:Right, there's no-. You better be very specialized. Is there a glass door for-.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Especially back then Right 20-some years, 25 years ago we're on age us.
Speaker 2:I know, I know how did you find out who those professors were? Yeah, honestly.
Speaker 4:So it was really just like going around and asking classmates and team.
Speaker 2:No kidding, you did your own research.
Speaker 4:Classmates and other folks that were on campus. But I wound up just becoming a history major, loving it and certainly passionate about it. But I wound up getting a minor in paleoanthropology. Oh my gosh. Simply because the professor was so cool Steve Churchill, if you're out there, steve but just a couple of really cool professors and wound up just creating this like really hodgepodge of a graduate of a graduate. Really odd thing, but my first job out of school was at McCann Erickson. So McCann Erickson.
Speaker 2:Oh, mccann Erickson, so McCann.
Speaker 4:Erickson. Oh, mccann Erickson, yeah, mccann Erickson. So like my very first job at a school was with an ad agency.
Speaker 3:Okay, interesting Literally. So how did that happen. So you're just like I have this degree, I'm going to apply for this job and just give it a go.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so interesting time. Like you know, the applicant was more in charge than we were.
Speaker 3:If you have a degree, we will open the door for you.
Speaker 4:Yes, we could kind of pick and so I really applied to wild places, a consulting firm. I applied for a job with a professional sports team and applied for this job at McKinnon Erickson and I went to New York City and did the interview and it turns out they were just really cool guys and I'll do one more shout-out telesco if you're there. But anyway, tom, uh, my buddy tom, and he hired me and I was like these guys are just really great and I had no interest in really thinking about specifically advertising. My dad spent his career in new york city. It was a media and media guy for a long time, okay, um, and so kind of exposed me to that but realistically never really thought to myself as all just go be a marketing, advertising marketing comms guy, but it was in your blood and that was now.
Speaker 4:Genetics 1997 so it's been. It's been a minute that I've been doing in, a minute that I've been doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah exciting, though.
Speaker 3:How long were you in new york?
Speaker 4:was there two and a half years? Um, and at the time again, like you know, it's interesting how your career kind of navigates when, when you look back, you'd like to think that you chose wisely. Was there two and a half years? And I just was so fortunate we each had like mega brands, right? So at the time McCann had Coke, gmc Vaseline, I mean like AT&T.
Speaker 3:Just the creative juices were flowing.
Speaker 4:Just the massive accounts. Late 90s, is that right? Yeah, late 90s, is that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, late 90s.
Speaker 4:So I was just exposed to really great. You hang out with people from Coke and you're like, okay, they've kind of figured out how to do this. So it went my whistle. What was your job? My very first job, I was an assistant media planner. Okay, so I worked on automotive accounts for GM. Is that data mining? No, it was essentially like here planner.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so I worked on automotive accounts for gm?
Speaker 4:is that basically? No, it's essentially like you know here. Like you know, gm at the time, uh, had a dealership in all 210 dmas, okay, and so I don't know how many there are now 211, maybe 210, I don't know something like that and basically our job was to go into the local market and literally do their spot tv and radio buys, oh, market by market. So so you had to travel.
Speaker 2:So it was a lot of work.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, most of it was just over the phone.
Speaker 2:Oh good, okay, over the phone. No Zoom. No, no, I mean email was still relatively new.
Speaker 4:Just relationships, just relationships, Work on the relationships. Yeah, and the territory I had actually, ironically, was a Southeast Atlanta, North Carolina, parts of Florida, Georgia, and so you would make a couple of trips a year down to the dealers, You'd go visit with them and go meet the local TV radio networks and you'd buy the spots. I mean like straight up buying airtime. That was my very first job assistant media planner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was wild. I can only imagine all the paperwork that you had to do too.
Speaker 4:I mean, they were like yeah, I don't know if you guys remember, like insertion orders and like avails, you had to send avails in. And I'm not even like gosh, do we?
Speaker 2:I'm not weird and still do that. Is Nielsen still around, right? Nielsen was big then, nielsen was huge then. That's all you had.
Speaker 4:And Arbitron for radio.
Speaker 3:Correct big dance, that's all you had and Arbitron for radio, right before they all came together as one big group.
Speaker 2:You don't know anything about that do you, brian.
Speaker 4:We all have gray hair. Yes, yes, yes. Except for you, I'm just trying to keep mine.
Speaker 3:I'm less concerned about color.
Speaker 4:I'm less concerned about color.
Speaker 2:I'm more concerned about volume. So you said earlier you're from Jersey. Yeah, grew up in the Jersey Shore.
Speaker 4:Went to high school there, loved it. Took a summer camp. I played soccer in high school. Went to summer camp at Duke one time and I was like, boom, this is pretty cool. And that was it. Yeah, you got kind of colors. Yeah, I like it, that's funny, so I'm remarried. I met my first wife at Duke. My brother-in-law and my sister and my brother-in-law both went to Duke.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:So my daughter of course goes to Chapel Hill. Good old Tar Heels, she loves it.
Speaker 4:She loves it, I love it, I love being a Tar. I tell her like I will wear the gray Carolina gear, but I will not wear the blue Carolina gear I like both of them are gristles. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So she's a junior and loves it. There's a big rivalry.
Speaker 3:There's not a huge lot of big rivalries. There's basically just Clemson and USC rivalry in this state. Yeah, which is strange because other big states have conferences that are much bigger.
Speaker 4:Sure, sure, michigan, ohio State, all that, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally totally Virginia, virginia.
Speaker 3:In my area it was Virginia Virginia Tech.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, duke Chapel Hill. Yeah, that was the thing. So there you go. So how did you go from New York? So you just were in New York and you're like.
Speaker 3:I don't like these cold weather. I'm moving back to the South. I'm going to North Carolina.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, no, no, yes. So I got married and my wife at the time is a physician at Atrium in Charlotte and so I was coming back to go to medical school and do some other things. So I spent some time back in Durham, Chapel Hill area for a bit. I worked for a small advertising agency there called McKinney and Silver I think they're now called McKinney and they had Audi, they had Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and a few others Worked there for a bit and then we moved to Charlotte. She went to go work for Atrium and Charlotte that's what got me kind of got me there. In between I spent seven years working for McDonald's.
Speaker 2:Like McDonald's.
Speaker 4:McDonald's, like I'm loving it.
Speaker 3:Doing branding and marketing there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so McDonald's. At the time you really kind of fell into this advertising and marketing thing. You suck to it though.
Speaker 4:God, it's wild, yeah, and I will say you know, like you know, mcdonald's can be a lightning rod for a lot of things that are negative. But I will tell you this, like it is where I learned how to be a marketer. It is, hands down, the most sophisticated, and I've not been there in many years and I'll tell you even then, I was there seven, just a little bit over seven years. It is the most sophisticated and productive marketing team I've ever seen. Now, it's massive.
Speaker 4:At the time there were a thousand people On the marketing team.
Speaker 3:Globally.
Speaker 4:Globally. There were 1,000 people in marketing. We would have worldwide meetings with hundreds and hundreds of marketers. So they had 22 or 23 regions in the United States and I was part of a team that was in the Raleigh region, which was North Carolina, parts of South Carolina and Virginia. Oh gosh, Maybe it was 600 stores, Maybe a billion dollars and change in revenue for just that region. Oh yeah, really wild. So just truly like, where I cut my teeth became sort of more of a, as opposed to being a hobby or this thing I'm kind of interested in you kind of?
Speaker 4:honed your skills and became a professional marketer because you spent seven years working with some of the best people ever to be in marketing?
Speaker 3:That was my question. So you get a history degree and you've done all this marketing and branding In the meantime? Are you just learning as you go?
Speaker 4:Are you taking professional?
Speaker 3:development classes Like how are you like mastering your craft?
Speaker 4:Yeah, great question I was fortunate to. I was actually listening to a podcast on the way down this morning where talking about, like your, how important your boss is in the development of your career. It's like the biggest life hack you can have in a career is to have a fantastic boss because they can he or she can provide so much for you in so many ways not just financially with promotions and raises and things, but giving you harsh feedback, giving you criticism, pointing you in the right direction, challenging you in certain ways, and so I will tell you that it reminded me a lot this is this morning, this is very present around me a lot of my career. I was really fortunate to have some terrific leaders who were interested in educating and teaching and guiding, which is a phrase I use a lot today. I'm sure I stole it from my mentors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mentors.
Speaker 4:But I was really lucky to have some great leaders throughout the year, throughout my years, certainly at McCann Erickson, at McKinney and then again at McDonald's, and they kind of got me into this space where you could kind of learn to do it. Yeah, I tell people oftentimes I don't have a master's degree, but I got it through the places I worked at.
Speaker 3:That's so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one thing I wanted to get is a master's. I'm still thinking about getting a master's.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think at this point I just yeah, it's fantastic and I have a good friend, two good friends actually, who have just gone back to go do that to kind of exciting to do at my age.
Speaker 1:Like wow, I can still learn.
Speaker 4:I've been so lucky to have such a wide variety of clients and teammates that it made it pretty easy for me to say like, wow, I'm learning this here. I can understand that. I mean, you know pharmaceuticals, business to business, automotive, quick service, restaurant, financial services, healthcare I struggle to think of an industry I've not been a part of in some way, and so it gives me so much insight into how we do you know just you know marketing how we, how we think about it, how we do it, and it's where my passion comes from.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Really yeah.
Speaker 2:What did you do for McDonald's then? Because you, so I was um.
Speaker 4:This is 2000s yeah, this would have been 19. Uh, let me see here. I would have started in 2001, um, ish, um. Yeah, I remember exactly where I was on 11. I was at a hampton inn in concord, north carolina, at the beginning of the mcdonald's um co-op meeting right there. I was there watching it on tv, um, and I was there at michigan state. Yeah, were you yeah, and it would have been in manhattan were you.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, whoa, okay, yeah, that's a whole another level of good gosh yeah, no, kidding, right, there, I was one of those people that ran over the brooklyn bridge because I was living in wow, wow, yeah, I was, I just got chills I didn't know, gosh, that's yeah. I was in my early 20s. I I was, 100 years ago trying to do the model thing after college and had just a couple of wild, fun years in New York. Some of those moments were but I did volunteer with the Red Cross afterwards in the triage, oh wow.
Speaker 3:So I have some really cool images, but I come home to Brooklyn and have to strip down and throw all my clothes away because of asbestos and that kind of thing that's amazing and throw all my clothes in because of asbestos and that kind of thing.
Speaker 4:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:But it was awesome. Everyone goes. You're always in New York. I'm like that city holds a special place here. I love it Well.
Speaker 4:I'll tell you. If I could just dote on McDonald's real quick, I would tell you that there was a franchisee at McDonald's who had a store very close to the World Trade Center and essentially just fed all of those workers. I don't know if you recall, if you were to dig into it and look at the story he basically just obviously made food and just fed everybody in the fire department, all of NYPD, any of those emergency workers, for weeks. I mean for weeks.
Speaker 3:It was really incredible Ground zero there. We had so many people come and bring us food.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was really just an incredible, incredible story. That's a really cool city, how it came to be during that time.
Speaker 3:It's wonderful that McDonald's was a part of that.
Speaker 2:Really wild. Mcdonald's does a lot of great things. Yes, oh, I don't have any. Lightning rod for his negative. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4:Making him ever fat. I have a terrible amount of admiration, an immense amount of admiration. I'm terribly proud of my time there and the people that I met and the mentors that I had. It's really the most sophisticated marketing operation I've ever seen or been a part of. That's amazing. Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2:So you learned a lot. Yes, a ton, a ton. So you go from McDonald's to what's next.
Speaker 4:So I actually left McDonald's and every now and then you make some odd timing choices in your life and decided in 2008 to go work for a bank.
Speaker 3:Okay, not a great time Right before the housing crash, not a great time to go work for a bank.
Speaker 4:So I worked at Bank of America for about 10 months because the bottom kind of fell out of that, yeah, that makes sense. But you know everything. Maybe the universe kind of works in a mysterious way 100%, and so I left there in, I don't know, maybe February, january, february of 2009. And then, july 1st 2009, I got a job at OrthoCarolina.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 4:And I was there for 12 years, okay, twelve and a half years, and that was kind of my entree into healthcare. Yeah, and I've been there ever since, you know, 15, 17 years.
Speaker 2:Oh, no kidding.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've been in healthcare ever since, yep.
Speaker 2:In healthcare, healthcare marketing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, ironically, I've only worked for specialists which is fascinating and specifically surgeons. So orthopedic surgeons left OrthoCarolina and went go work for SCA Health, which is also just a terrific organization. They're in the outpatient surgery center business they actually manage and own the one two here in Charleston but they all work with specialists, right? Orthopedists, urology doctors, cv, gi, plastics, ent left there to go work for Flagship and we work with oral surgeons. So I've only worked with surgeons and only worked with specialists. 16 and a half years of healthcare marketing that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Again a little bit about this in the green room, but yeah, your startup's been around for what?
Speaker 4:three years oh, a little bit less. So, december of 21, we started flagship yeah, flagship specialty partners, um, and we are a we're a management services firm for oral surgery practices in the Southeast, like most MSOs, you know. We help manage the services that they don't want to and or are not trained to do. Right. So, marketing, which is my world, but HR, it, accounting, finance, revenue cycle, you know.
Speaker 2:Allowing them to do their. Go be a doctor.
Speaker 4:Yeah, go be a doctor, Go focus on the patient, go focus on your training, um, and so that's obviously a simplified definition of it. But we, um, you know we're a unique uh, we're unique to some degree in our, in our space, because, um, the practices that we work with have a tremendously broad scope of services. So, as opposed to, uh, maybe sort of a narrow field of, like, wisdom teeth and implants, a lot of our surgeons also do jaw surgery, tmj, full arch, oral facial pain, cleft, lip and palate, sleep apnea and all of the other things that go into it in addition to wisdom teeth and single implants, and so the scope of our practices is what our management team and our support center team have really been focused on, kind of leveraging. So, going back to what we were talking about earlier, it's like ironic 20-plus, 25-plus years in this business, you know what, still learning a thing or two, which is kind of nice, which is really kind of nice.
Speaker 3:Your marketing team better be on top of their hippa oh gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a hippa.
Speaker 4:Um, yeah, yeah, we're all over I can't even imagine yeah, 15, 15, 16 years of dealing with hippa. Yeah, so it's um, yeah, it's, I mean behind nuclear. Uh, health care is the second most regulated industry in the country right um, and it's also um, you know, without going too ranty about US healthcare, but you know it's not. It is as we all know, because we all consume it. It is wickedly complex.
Speaker 3:It is.
Speaker 4:And not user-friendly, and on top of that you have legal and privacy and compliance laws that make it even more complex Right Right and privacy and compliance laws that make it even more complex. And so in many cases, being on the inside so often, you sympathize sometimes with those staff and those teammates that really do want to make it easier for the patient, but they're so regulated.
Speaker 4:We have a rule that we have to follow, for a reason that nobody really understands, and you just have to do it. And so there's this interesting yin and yang where you're trying really hard to deliver quality care clearly and terrific outcomes clearly, but you find yourself frustrated by just the system, and I think this is just the healthcare marketers cross the bear right, which?
Speaker 1:is how do?
Speaker 4:you manage in an overwhelmingly complex space. What can you say? What can't you say? How can you manage in an overwhelmingly complex space.
Speaker 2:Right, what can you say? What can't you say? How can you say it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and honestly like not to be depressing or to make it sound like I don't love what I do. I've been at 16 and a half years, but you don't have to move a whole lot of heaven and earth to change somebody's experience. A whole lot of heaven and earth to change somebody's experience. You know, if we were talking about world-class customer experiences, you would put US healthcare probably at the bottom of whatever list you are creating. That's so unfortunate but so true, so unfortunate.
Speaker 4:So the reality is not that the people that work with us and the people I've engaged with over the years, they work so hard to deliver the greatest quality possible, but, from a consumer perspective, very rarely does someone say they have to go to the doctor today and they're ready for something amazing. It just is not. It's just not, unfortunately, and so we're working hard to change that. The people we hire, the teams we train, how we think about how we position ourselves and how we talk about our world, we're obviously always trying to do the best we can with some of the greatest people. How we think about how we position ourselves and how we talk about our world. We're obviously always trying to do the best we can with. Some of the greatest people I've ever known in my lifetime are in health care.
Speaker 4:But if you think about it, we just have to move a small amount to make a big difference, definitely, and so therein lies the challenge of US health care.
Speaker 3:So what facets of marketing does your team cover? Is it? Like you know, there's so many. You're building websites. You're doing digital ads. Are you doing newsletters? Are you doing?
Speaker 4:guides.
Speaker 2:Like what are you working on, and or like experiences in the office, in the waiting room, like that type of thing. Is that part of it too?
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, yes, yes, so, yeah, so our team has. So I have 10 teammates as part of the marketing department. I was a four of them, or what we call a support center role. So I have a marketing manager, I have a graphic designer and I have a content and social teammate and then I have resourced outside resources for web engineering and for PR comms and then I have five folks on the field, and so they're actually more like a field marketer, physician liaison role where we're actually doing ground to ground dentist, orthodontist, endodontist, periodontist, pent, referral-based marketing, where we're actually making visits, setting up CE events, cme events, we're setting up educational opportunities, training opportunities, literally on the ground Greenville, charlotte and Richmond, virginia and so we handle. We like to refer to ourselves as an in-house agency where we can essentially take on anything that any practice might want or need, and if we do need to find an outside resource, we will do so, but for the vast majority of our practices we handle almost all of it Online reputation, email marketing, website design.
Speaker 3:I was going to ask you if the Google Reviews online reputation was a big piece of what you did.
Speaker 4:ORM. Oh yeah, huge issue, huge opportunity and issue.
Speaker 3:And issue yes, yes.
Speaker 4:We manage it centrally. We manage ORM centrally at Flagship.
Speaker 3:Have you found any value in PCP or Google LSA ads? You probably don't need to do a lot of that with medical.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we have a product inside of our oral surgery businesses that leans a little bit more toward the consumer. It's an elective procedure for having essentially a multi-tooth replacement, full arch restoration opportunity where we just fully recreate your smile, and so it's a little bit more of an elective procedure, that one we are doing. Google ad extensions and we're doing a few of those things in that space. Local service ads we're doing some of that. We just started. We're about two months into it or so and we are seeing some success there. There is a school of thought. It would be fascinating to huddle around with a bunch of marketers around the idea of juicing, so to speak, the idea that the paid ads can actually juice a little bit of what is the organic. Not that I have the inside look-see into the Google black box, but I have a sneaky suspicion that once you start advertising and then you stop advertising, it actually defeats your organic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it really is. I had a call with Google last week about this. It's really if you're not getting Google reviews, regardless of how good your SEO is on your website, you're not going to be placed higher on page one. So it all has to work in tandem. You have to be having a very dynamic website, that is, with all the SEO backlinks and that kind of thing, plus engage Google for their different services. However you do that, they own the world.
Speaker 4:They own the digital world right now, and I don't know if you guys have read it all or studied it all up on SGE. Yes, but like that is a search, generative experience.
Speaker 4:In fact they're now called Google Ad Assistant yes, but basically it is Google's Gemini engine will scour the web and actually now be the SERP you actually now can't even buy into the. They'll be their own answer inside their own Google entity. Then there's the three-pack, Then there's your search engine result. So like you're actually way further down the page now, and I could even go so far as to say on your phone you're a couple of screens down Right, and so it's fascinating to see how that is even changing. And so the education around content creation has flipped. To now say, like I just need to be more relevant with really long tail yes, Not to get like nerdy on this topic, but like really long tail content, because at the end of the day, I actually have to fit into Google's algorithm, not necessarily the user's intent.
Speaker 3:I'm actually changing my business model to be less content, creative, social media based and more Google based as a business offering, because you have to be in this day and age. There's so many different competitors.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I agree, I agree, it's been interesting.
Speaker 3:I'm going through all these classes through Google, I'm going to get Google ad certified and all these things. Good for you, it's just another feather in the cap, because the world is just changing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, kristen Norwood, who is my marketing manager, and I have spent a lot of time trying to study and understand SGE for healthcare as well, too and schema and metadata and all the things you're trying to do with your H1 and H3 tags and all that kind of stuff, While super relevant and you can get nerdy on, like with the flip of the switch, it just now becomes not irrelevant but really a low-ranking measure for how they're going to serve it, because they want to find unique levels of content that have themes across what the user is searching for. Gemini crawls the web. They find it and then if you guys go into Google now and turn on your labs button, if you turn on labs, you'll see this. You'll see all the search engine results that you would normally have seen for either paid and then stacked organic below it. Now it's Google's answer and it's their answer based on what Google has searched.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you're not really diving deep into Google for your marketing you'll be behind. It's almost as important as AI marketing right now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you'll be behind.
Speaker 3:This is kind of the future.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you'll be behind, Especially if you're in a search-based business, If you're in something that is, if you're not in an evergreen platform Android, or something that is episodic, which a lot of healthcare is it's really important to understand what role that plays, and so we've been experimenting lately with actually flipping the script and actually now I wouldn't dare say abandon, but we haven't prioritized organic to the degree that we are prioritizing paid Paid, I know yeah. Which, as a marketer, you never would have said three years ago.
Speaker 1:Five years ago, I mean like two years ago, it's completely changed.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you would never say that. You'd be like, well, get your organic in order. Get your organic in order, don't pay for ads until six months. Get your seo ready to rock like. Get all your measures in place, your site health, your site audit, get all this stuff figured. Now I'm like, yeah, we'll do that, but like we're gonna start ads right now one of my favorite things about marketing is that you're constantly learning or you're going to become a dinosaur as
Speaker 3:long as you know the new, new. You don't have to be the youngest kid in the block, but you've got to know the new, new. You have to be excellent at it. I love that you said that, because I know you're probably really utilizing Google my Business for the reviews and that kind of thing and the posts and the offerings.
Speaker 4:We manage it almost daily. It's a daily task and, like I said, my teammate Kristen is way more knowledgeable than I am on it, but we have a massive dashboard. We use a third party to manage it all. We can see every single Google my Business page, every single review, 105 different listing pages beyond just Google, but we can post to it.
Speaker 3:We can have content distribution on there.
Speaker 1:Can.
Speaker 4:I ask which platform you use? It's BirdEye. Yeah, I like BirdEye, birdeye yeah, we use BirdEye and, yeah, it's been great. It's been great and I think it's certainly important for healthcare, and my gut tells me anything that has a location really should be maximizing these pages. It might actually be close to the first thing you need to do. You clearly need a website or something to give you SEO right. However, it's like maybe like 1A is really got to optimize. Yeah, I feel like website and then Google and then social media.
Speaker 1:Social media is becoming irrelevant, just not irrelevant.
Speaker 3:It's trending towards trends, trends cool like that kind of stuff, but for generationally you have to show tips and tricks, probably for what you do. You probably create a lot of medical reels and that kind of thing yeah but as a whole like yeah depending on your business, it's website yeah, and that's a generational thing.
Speaker 4:Right, this would be a whole, nother great conversation we could have on marketing is around like the generational shifts you know, whereas you know, your demos. Demos, our demos are typically older. Yeah, they'll skew older, for sure, not on TikTok, I'm sure. Correct, correct. Now there's some of that, some of the med spa stuff we do, or some of the injections and things that we will do from the cosmetic perspective. There is some of that.
Speaker 3:A lot of before and afters. I bet.
Speaker 4:Oh, a ton, a ton. Some of that is certainly in TikTok, but I just saw I don't know if you guys follow eMarketer at all, but I just saw that Gen Z eMarketer is a great resource.
Speaker 2:Right, great resource, yeah, great resource.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they're awesome, awesome and there's short, sweet newsletters and great graphics. It's really quick, concise knowledge set yeah digestible better word, and I just saw that Gen Z and millennials now search on TikTok and Instagram more than they do Google.
Speaker 3:I can see that yeah yeah, we're constantly Instagramming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, I'm on.
Speaker 4:TikTok, I was searching. What are they like?
Speaker 3:I got a new face cream yesterday from France because I saw some TikTok.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh, there you go.
Speaker 3:It was like the French women look great. Send that to my house.
Speaker 2:There it is. Are you watching the Olympics right now?
Speaker 3:I am watching Are there a ton of that I'm watching a tip-tale.
Speaker 4:I'm watching a theme Timely, timely, very on theme, very on theme, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:You're funny. It's amazing about Forbes and your relationship and yeah what, what goes on there? Because yeah it's great, can you? Can you give me what Forbes is?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, so. So obviously there's Forbes magazine like the, the actually business business entity, um, then they have a massive amounts of digital products that sort of live underneath that. Um, and one of the things that they have done is they've created these councils, which are are a cohort of application-based leaders, and you know I hate referring to you know myself as an expert or guru or something like that.
Speaker 1:Thought leaders, Thought leaders oh.
Speaker 4:I love it. You apply and you get accepted. And then you kind of have a requirement loose requirement to submit and publish content based on the reason why you were accepted loose requirement to submit and publish content based on the reason why you were accepted. And so I'm a part of you know, really, really flattering to be a part of the communications council. And so I work alongside our public relations team and our content team in my office and just think through how, what I've done in my career and how we've set up teams and how I think about, you know, my organizational stack of experts and how important it is up teams and how I think about my organizational stack of experts and how important it is to pivot and things.
Speaker 4:And out of that just comes theories and ideas and thoughts and they just form themselves into articles for Forbes. And so you submit them, they go through an editorial process through the Forbes Editorial Council, they edit them, sometimes tweak them, and then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, well, I guess that's what I meant. Or sometimes I'm like, okay, well, I guess that's what I meant. Or sometimes I'm like, now you're not. Now, you're not Now the integrity of my piece has changed, and so let's try again.
Speaker 4:And so you go through a process, and so I've been very lucky to have maybe two or three pieces published and they live on Forbescom. They live on Forbescom and then they use their social channels and their email channels to the other Forbes Council members as well to promote it. But then there was also a Forbes Communications Council portal where other members in the council can communicate with one another inside that, so we can ask questions back and forth. I have people I have met obviously digitally because I don met them.
Speaker 3:So it's almost like a Slack channel or a Think Tank.
Speaker 4:It's kind of like a Slack channel for communicators and marketers where we can ask questions, and sometimes you'll publish your article. There'll be questions about it and they'll hit you in the portal and say, like hey, saw your piece about this. Why did you decide to hire a content social media person and not divide it into two? That's really interesting. I'd love to talk to you more about that. And all of a sudden you're communicating whether it's on LinkedIn or team's message or email about a decision you made or an article you wrote that you met through a community which is have you ever met anybody in person?
Speaker 4:I have two yeah Two folks I have actually met in person. They ironically both happen to be in Charlotte. One is at ally bank and the other one is at um, getting a space on the company now and I apologize, but it'll come to me, yeah, um, yeah, it'll come to me. It'll come to me, um and um. You occasionally meet them in real life, uh, but but it's interesting, it's like its own little community, so like it's a multi-level digital product.
Speaker 4:Yes, very much, so very much yeah, yeah, that's interesting because locally we have forbes books yeah, yeah, forbes books yeah, I know those guys too. They win a lot of spark awards.
Speaker 1:By the way, yeah, plug in the spark yeah yeah yeah, I get them on.
Speaker 2:I had a good meeting with them not too long ago, nice good, yeah, that'd be great, yeah, that'd be great they're, they're hustling, yeah, they are hustling. Yeah, they've got some great ideas.
Speaker 4:Forbes is doing a nice job kind of diversifying their product beyond being print media right, which is a problem which, as we know, is not a growth industry.
Speaker 3:Why I ask?
Speaker 2:what's going on simultaneously? I do.
Speaker 3:How many boards are you currently on?
Speaker 4:Well, let me see here.
Speaker 3:He's busy. He's a busy man.
Speaker 4:Five, I think Wow, five Currently, currently, I think five yeah. Interestingly enough my partner in crime. My wife, is the executive director of her own charity, so while I'm technically not on her board, just by being in the same home.
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about what she does.
Speaker 2:What is it? A little shout out to the wife.
Speaker 4:Aaron Santos is her name. She is the executive director of the Isabella Santos Foundation, which raises money for rare pediatric cancer research. Sadly, her oldest child passed away Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3:He's got eyes coming out of his heart, my eight-year-old, just got diagnosed two years ago.
Speaker 2:He's at the tail end of lymphoma.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh Okay, but in recovery Okay. Congratulations, it's great.
Speaker 1:Good yes.
Speaker 4:Well, her daughter unfortunately didn't survive. How old was she? Seven or eight?
Speaker 2:years old.
Speaker 1:Okay, gosh yeah.
Speaker 4:She died of neuroblastoma. Okay, and she left her job. She was working at LendingTree, left her job and became executive director of a pediatric cancer charity. She's been doing it for 17 years. Oh my gosh. And what's really cool about this is they are working hard to actually expand her program from Charlotte, which is at Levine Children's Hospital, to MUSC.
Speaker 3:That'd be great they want to try to do it here as well too. We know a lot of people at MUSC. We do Well.
Speaker 2:Charleston Radio Group does a telephone for MUSC. Awesome, super cool.
Speaker 4:How much money?
Speaker 2:did we raise this year, brian, $200,000 plus something like that, $270, 270 plus 270 plus Nice.
Speaker 4:That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, so they're expanding. I'd like to talk a bit about ISF. What?
Speaker 2:a terrible club to be a part of.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, Talk to ISF. But she, yeah, she's a special lady because she is able to advocate for people that won't. It doesn't help her at all.
Speaker 2:No no, not anymore.
Speaker 4:Right. And so it's a special thing to have, for 17 years, kind of have your hand out and say you know, please help us raise money for a thing that maybe in my lifetime we won't be able to fix, but somebody will benefit from this. And so she they're expanding, they're growing. So, like she got to a point, I think, in her career, where she was at a crossroads and trying to decide what's next. And in many cases you decide right either we are going to go down this path of let me slow down, let me pass the torch, let me do something different with my life, or I'm going to double down and grow. Right, and that's what she decided to do.
Speaker 4:So they're expanding her rare and solid tuber program out of Charlotte and into other markets. So Duke, chapel Hill, ecu, greenville and Charleston.
Speaker 3:Do you know how many children you've helped?
Speaker 4:Oh, my gosh, oh gosh, she's going to kill me. That I don't know the answer to this no, no, no but. I'm going to say several hundred two thousands, but really it's about the future of what the research will provide.
Speaker 4:And I only know this because I hang out with her. But the irony of this is that lymphoma and even, like you know, leukemia lymphoma, for example because it is ironically has a higher cure rate. It gets funded more because they can see success. If you get my point, I do High failure rate cancers like neuroblastoma, ewing's, sarcoma, glioblastoma, some of these others, which have 30, 20, 25, 40% survival rates. It's hard to fund them because they are not successful. So you have this chicken and egg scenario where if you don't provide the funding, they can't do the research to raise the level of success. And so she is very much an advocate for literally focusing on just rare and solid tumors. So it's a very narrow ask. But to say that 15, 16, 17 years ago she raised $10,000. And today they raise close to $3 million.
Speaker 4:Nice Is really quite a testament to her and her team and her vision and just her fortitude. She's a tough lady and I think by default kind of has to be. I get to see the moments where she isn't always this tough and it's tender and sweet. But you know she gets up there and rails on why you need to do this. That's amazing, love it.
Speaker 1:And it's pretty cool. Yeah, anyway, that's the kind of person.
Speaker 4:Isabella Santos Foundationorg. I'm going to follow her.
Speaker 3:What was that. How do you get it?
Speaker 4:What was it dot org?
Speaker 2:yeah, yep, yep, we're gonna look that up. Yep, we're gonna give um.
Speaker 4:Charlotte is creative yes, oh my gosh, this is so cool. So, um, we have a chapter of creative mornings. We were talking about this in the green room, so well, creative morning.
Speaker 3:I love so cool have you been to creative?
Speaker 2:I have been.
Speaker 4:I want to go to next week oh my god uh, coming up in two weeks yeah it is, yeah, so we have a chapter of Creative Mornings and two. Actually, this is such a great Charlotte story. So two guys, matt Olin and Tim Miner, who grew up in Charlotte together, went to Chapel Hill together, have known each other since they were young, got the application for our local Creative Mornings and became the rights holder.
Speaker 4:I'm not sure what you call it of our chapter of Creative Mornings and out of that they left their day jobs and created a nonprofit called Charlotte is Creative that is designed to advocate for artists broad term here, artists in Charlotte, to get them paid for the work that they do. So this is fine art spoken word, music, street painting, tattoo.
Speaker 3:So is it.
Speaker 4:Charlotte is Creative.
Speaker 3:Dot org.
Speaker 4:I believe. So yeah, dot org or dot com.
Speaker 2:Like an agency type of thing they're essentially an advocacy group.
Speaker 4:They raise money. They have several programs. They do a creative entrepreneurs initiative where applicants come to CIC Charlotte's Creative and apply to be a part of their program.
Speaker 1:This is so cool I'm looking at it now when they provide programming. Yeah, it's really a remarkable Grants workspace that kind of thing.
Speaker 4:Grants. They do a thing called HUGS, which are called Helpful, unfettered Gift, where you give somebody $250, $500, or $1,000 to just get your idea off the ground. Whoa, you know what I need? I need a new laptop for my business. Well, here you go, here's $1,000. Go buy one, wow. Hey I need a new set of paints, I need to be able to set, I need rent for a studio to do my artwork and we help kickstart this and get it going.
Speaker 4:That's cool. So I happen to be on the board there. I've known those guys for a long time. I'm flattered to be a part of what they're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 4:Two things about Charlotte is Creative. Real quick. That I will say. That I think is special is Charlotte is just the right size market with just at the right time, with the right growth that an organization like this can actually help us be known as If you are a creative, love Charleston, but if you are a creative, we want you to think about Charlotte as a place to come live, of course, because we're not just a banking city or we're not just where the Panthers are, or we're not just an energy town NASCAR, nascar we're actually a place where creatives should find a home.
Speaker 4:So what's beautiful about this is that they're actually walking the walk. It's very easy to be like come check us out because we have this vibe. Yes, you have to kind of prove it, shoot Right. I would say the same thing. Charleston is food and drink town and they walk the walk. Yeah, I mean, it's literally some of the best stuff, and so they can market that right. So we want to market ourselves as a creative destination. We have to have the infrastructure to actually deliver on it.
Speaker 3:So that's my stump speech on why I love it. I have some friends that move from this area to Charlotte and they're in the marketing industry, but they're not fine art artists. Do you still need people to come help and volunteer?
Speaker 4:Absolutely Always help and volunteer and I'm not, ironically, like. I love to play creative director, but I am a really bad creator. I mean, I am terrible in that space, but yet I love advocating for the creative thought and marketers and designers and communicators, those that can write and tell a story. They are artists in every stretch of the imagination, just as much as somebody that plays guitar or paints a canvas Really cool, and so it's spectacular.
Speaker 4:And so they've created this wonderful ecosystem of professionals and fundraising and support and it's incredible they have programs almost every week where they're doing something all the time.
Speaker 3:The next time I come to your city. I'm going to just pop in one of these just to feel inspired.
Speaker 4:It's really just amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm inspired just by hearing you put out their mission statement.
Speaker 1:It's a very similar mission statement to AMA. We're trying to build the infrastructure.
Speaker 2:But now when I say, oh shoot, we've got to walk the walk, you're right about food and hospitality. Yeah, totally, we're trying to make this more of a marketing creative hub. Yes we are Almost like, like earnest did with the tech yes with the, with the tech corridor, and he's crushing it right right with his teams. Um so no, it's just it's. I love sharing ideas and I think that's why part of this podcast it's brilliant here, is.
Speaker 2:I love it is how we can learn from charlotte. Charlotte can learn from charles, absolutely sure. That's why we have so many lists from charlotte, from charl, totally.
Speaker 1:Where am I right now?
Speaker 2:But I just wanted to iterate, like the steel sharpens steel type of thing, where we can view all you offer from us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, couldn't agree more. Do we have a?
Speaker 3:South Carolina Arts Council. We probably do.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I'm sure that I work with a lot of fine art artists here in Charleston who some of them are in the galleries in the Charlotte area. I'm going to tell them they just need to. This is so cool. What a creative and yeah, I mean Community.
Speaker 4:Yeah, tim was a corporate marketer for many years, lover of music, mad as a musician and a copywriter and a wonderful creative in his own right, and the two of them are just the perfect pair to kind of bring this kind of idea together and I think Charlotte is kind of the right size. I would say Charleston the same. You know this would be hard to do in Chicago or LA or something. It would just be difficult to have. A grassroots-centered organization that has impact across the city. You could have microcosms of it in some of the bigger communities. My daughter, who lives in New York now, will go to the original Creative Mornings in Brooklyn occasionally.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 4:It's the amazing the OG Creative Mornings but it's in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3:Who cares? I love Brooklyn.
Speaker 4:What I mean is it's in the portion of the city where the one spot where it is and I love Creative Mornings and Creative Mornings. Brooklyn is rock star, but it's not the New York Creative Mornings, it's like the Brooklyn. We can do it in Charlotte and actually have impact across the city. In theory, similar in Charleston.
Speaker 3:As a creative, you get so burnt out of your own ideas, especially if you're marketing the same thing year after year. It's so important to have some sort of community like this, the partnership that you were talking about the partnership is awesome you got to have a partner.
Speaker 2:You can't just do it yourself. It's really great. Building the teams is where I found you in your LinkedIn article about how putting together the marketing team and how to put together the right marketing team. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's the biggest kind of takeaway in this type of our podcast here for marketers to learn how to build their team and when is it right to build your team? How to go about doing it yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 4:I never really thought about it until you're kind of forced with solving problems for an organization, realizing that you're in this spot of we have an agency or we don't have an agency, or do I need a teammate internally or don't I need a teammate internally. And then, before you know it, like I said, you kind of look back on your career and I'm like well, look at this. I've actually now stood up and managed teams three or four times in my career. Maybe I actually have a little bit of a muscle memory on this 25 years later.
Speaker 4:Yes, I actually have some sense of how to maybe how to go about thinking about it. At least, not that my idea is always the right ones. The history major.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 4:The history major, yes, but I find, especially in creatives right, that the first thing I would like to do is, like I hire for mindset and not skill set, Sure, and so what I'll say is we need to fit as a team. We need to complement one another's way of thinking. You know, not to belittle the skills of the teammates that we work with and our partners and things, but, like if you're applying for a job to be social media manager, my assumption is you know how to do it. So I now just want to make sure we get along and that we can communicate well and that we're collaborative and compatible, and I will interview for those, as opposed to being like show me your portfolio of stuff.
Speaker 4:Of course I want to see your work, but at the end of the day, it's really secondary to the mindset of it. So I would always just start by saying, if you're entertaining the idea of adding a team member or building a team or creating a team and there are gobs of tools that you can use for this Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, Big Five, StrengthFinder, DISC there are a number of free 99 tests that you could have your teammates complete, complete one yourself and then compare the two and make sure that you're compatible. You are a thinker and you are a motivator, so you need somebody that is detailed and data-driven. You don't need another maybe thinker and motivator. Now, all of a sudden, you're both up here and no one's doing the thing.
Speaker 4:Right, Right, or nobody spellchecks you or actually can Details the details of this random vision you have, and so I'm the big fan of thinking through how you do that. Then I think, once you have that in place, I just straightforward try to hire the single best talent I can in that market, and it is I don't care how old you are, I don't care candidly in some cases now where you live. It's great that we can see one another and be together, but with hybrid work and technology today, hey man, you're in Chicago. Cool, great, let's do it.
Speaker 2:Right trust technology today. Hey, man, you're in Chicago, cool, great, let's do it Right. Trust, you're going to get the work done.
Speaker 4:You're going to get the one right Accountability rules right, I trust you until I have a reason not to, exactly Right. If I don't, then we'll talk about it. Otherwise, go get your work done where you get your work done. So I have a teammate that's here in Charleston I should say we're in South End and I just think you just go and you find the best talent you possibly can. And so if you know that's a cultural and mindset fit, you've already now narrowed your search down to some degree and you go and you fill in those spaces. And then I sort of thirdly think about really, what are those disciplines that you might necessarily need to add, and what order do you need to add it If you're a really high design intense team like hire a graphic designer first, right, you know, which is actually what I did. My first hire was, ironically, a designer. We had seven or eight brands with all different pieces of collateral, with all different looking logos.
Speaker 4:Some of them didn't have Pantone colors. It was like, straight up, like Microsoft Paint Stop and like junk. And so we just had to. No disrespect to their original creators.
Speaker 2:They got it done, but hey man it was like not scalable at all.
Speaker 4:So we had to have a designer come and help us do that work, and then we moved into finding some additional teammates for our field team being on the ground. Then we moved to a marketing manager, then content, then social, and then here's where we are today.
Speaker 3:So you have 10 people right now 10 people now, how big do you want? To grow your team to be.
Speaker 4:It really depends on how we scale as a company. If our platform continues to affiliate with more groups, we will face a growth challenge where we will just be at. Everyone will be at bandwidth, and if they're at bandwidth, our capacity is limited, so we will just have to decipher what the next step is. I'm a huge fan of using 10-hour, 15-hour-a-week teammates to fulfill projects and support.
Speaker 3:And I love that's an interesting business model.
Speaker 4:Well, and I love thinking of them as candidly like an interview and I love that's an interesting business model Well and I love thinking of them as candidly like an interview, like if you're going to come work with me for a month for 10 hours a week on a long-form content project, do a deep dive on a patient experience or some sort of patient success story and show me your work. Now you've just done like a 40-hour interview. I love that, which is really great. So the minute we do have to expand our team or increase our bandwidth and capacity in some way, you would likely be the teammate.
Speaker 2:we would go to that was.
Speaker 4:My next question is where is?
Speaker 2:your pool of candidates that you're going from, but you're building your own, yeah.
Speaker 4:So I spend a lot of time. I know a lot of people in the market and I'm certainly getting older and so there's more I don't know now than I used to, but I have a pretty good network of people and I will reach out to others for recommendations. Hey, do you know? A really great social media team made a really good designer. But it's just people sometimes that you meet and then you find that mindset match up and so my designer I just met. She was on our, on our business prior to me getting there and we just hired her full-time. My content and and social person I no joke met at a Carolina Panthers game.
Speaker 3:Just sitting beside you having hot dogs.
Speaker 4:She happened to be interested in marketing and we started talking and one thing led to another. I was like, if you're looking for a job, ironically a couple weeks later she's like I am looking for a job and she got hired. That's it, because you're passionate about what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you kind of share what you do.
Speaker 4:You're putting yourself out there building those relationships, yeah, and then there's a lot of recruiting firms and staffing agencies that we try to partner with and use when we need it. You started off with how many brands? We started off with really two, two founding kind of brands Circa, really, january of 22,. Basically, oh, okay, and we're now up to essentially 10. We have consolidated some of those names just for geography purposes, but we have 6 brands today, but really 10 affiliations, yeah that's neat, awesome, you got a full house yes, that's a lot very busy, very very busy.
Speaker 2:What's cool, too, is I always say I mean as an advertiser we're not saving lives. We're not saving lives.
Speaker 1:We're not really changing lives.
Speaker 2:We're not saving lives, but you guys are yeah. Because I've worked with agencies or you know people like practices, like yourself and myself. I wear braces, you know. Just on the small yeah yeah, yeah, and it changes your life. You don't have them on today, do you? Yeah, I do. But it completely changes your life. You don't have them all today, do you? Yeah, I do yeah, but it completely changes your mood, right? So you're changing lives, and changing lives because they can smile now without any changing, not even kind of like thinking about it, it's really incredible.
Speaker 2:It's crazy because I never thought, like my, my teeth would be, like you know, affecting my mood, but apparently it was you know, it's amazing like like's amazing, I'm not. I don't know how much more confident I could have been, but you know what?
Speaker 1:I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, he's there first.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, no, I I um. So I will tell you that until I um, you know I've been in healthcare a long time and until I made this switch from the medical side of healthcare over to the dental side of healthcare care, I never really understood that either. I never really thought about it as something that is so transformative in people's lives. But it really is, and what's fascinating about it is if anybody ever needs surgery and unfortunately requires a surgeon's assistance and unfortunately requires a surgeon's assistance, it's all very important, clearly, but other things where you can wear a piece of clothing or you can hide a scar or you can manage a bandage of some kind, if it's up in your grill, it is just for everybody to see and is incredibly. The human condition just struggles with that in some way. And as I've gotten to know our surgeons and our prosthodontists and the patients that they take care of, I cannot tell you how transformative this is in people's lives. Yeah, and we have a product that I was mentioning before that's called Envision.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Envision dental implants and it is a full-arch solution for patients where we essentially just replace all of your teeth do jaw surgery, realign them, put anchors in and we then build you new teeth. Full life transformation, yeah. People that couldn't eat steak, People that had never been on a date.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:People that had never been on a date, people that have never done A date. They've never been on a date. They can't get a job.
Speaker 2:They struggle to have an interview on a date.
Speaker 4:They can't get a job, they struggle to have an interview, pulled our strings over there, all of these things where they cannot do in life simply because of what you just described. They may not have realized there's another thing out there for them. I like to describe them. You'll love this. It's such a marketer phrase. They are problem aware, solution unaware. If we could introduce a solution to them, this is some of what we have to offer and, interestingly enough, the practice and the service that we offer is a really high-quality, high-end product that we offer that lasts a lifetime.
Speaker 3:It's a lifetime solution. Are you telling me stories through video and, if so, how can I watch these at home tonight by myself and have a good cry?
Speaker 4:Yes, so, like this is going to be such a such a selfless plug. But envision dental implantscom is our, is our brand, and we've got you know, 25 or 30 videos on our YouTube channel where you can see this and we're literally talking about, you know, now, being we're doing. We're doing a lot of like SEM, we we first we had to get ourselves in order here, right, you guys know this intimately. We had to build a website, stand up our social, get our content ready, do all that first. That took four to six months. Now we're in the process of actually going to market with it, right?
Speaker 4:So we started some SEM and we're now investigating things like billboards and television, connected TV, connected TV sponsorships. Connected TV, connected TV sponsorships we really need to. I like to think about marketing as like a vertical. Look down on a map and, right, sem gets you those laser beam points, but there's lots of open space. So now you have to layer on audio TV sponsorships so by the time you stand over and look down at it, the entire map is covered. So we're adding the layers now, the layers are coming in, so that's sort of our next, our next phase. So we are excited to leverage some of those stories for that, because it's really about, I mean, you'd like you would be an ad candidly. Yeah, like it. This is it changes people's lives.
Speaker 2:We work a business similar to yours out west and the interviews that we did were amazing and he was an older gentleman, like he's probably in his 70s, you know and he's still life-changing, this big smile he's like I can smile every day now it's amazing steak a whole thing.
Speaker 4:It's incredible, so it is incredible, so good work yeah, yeah, thank you, yeah, and I'm just the, I'm just the storyteller, it's the, the surgeons and you and your wife.
Speaker 3:You're touching a lot of heartstrings.
Speaker 4:Oh, oh, my gosh yeah yeah, yeah, and I'm just like you. I'm just the marketing guy, like it's the doctors and the surgeons that do this amazing work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you're choosing to put your time into something that really matters? Yeah, no, and I appreciate that. That's huge.
Speaker 4:Thank you, yeah, I'm along for the ride. This is fact. It's a little known secret about Charlotte that maybe we all should shout more of. There are world-class surgeons in Charlotte, north Carolina orthopedists and GI doctors and urologists and now I know oral surgeons. I mean we have some of the foremost knowledgeable oral surgeons in the United States in Charlotte, north Carolina, and you wouldn't openly think about that. And I think one of the things we have to do is do a better job educating consumers as to why oral surgery matters in their lives. They just don't think about it all that often. It's so episodic. We take our 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids to get their wisdom tooth popped out and then sometimes you never think about an oral surgeon ever again. But the idea that these broad-scope surgeries somebody that deals with headaches and jaw pain because they have TMJ we can fix that Non-surgically too. Sleep apnea if you adjust your jaw, it helps you sleep better and you wouldn't normally think about that. I didn't know that. Right, because you're opening your airway and now you sleep better.
Speaker 3:I, I didn't know that, right, because you're opening your airway, and now you sleep better. I have a friend who gets Botox injections in her jaw for.
Speaker 4:TMJ.
Speaker 3:What is TMJ.
Speaker 4:It is essentially like a I'm going to botch the phrase temporomandibular disorder joint disorder. Oh, okay it is like a yeah, it's just a condition. It's a condition that ultimately winds up in this area where we can do joint replacements. We'll actually replace the two joints to have a surgical solution for it, and our surgeons offer all of that expertise.
Speaker 3:Some of that can affect your hearing and everything right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, it's really phenomenal how connected it all is. The way I like to think about it is really with the exception essentially, of, like your actual eyes and maybe brain surgery an oral maxillofacial surgeon can do anything up in this area sinus, nose, ears, underneath jaw teeth, bite bone, it's. I mean, there there are. I have been um pleasantly like blown away by the level of skill and acumen that our surgeons have that, like I said, like before being really involved in the dental world, I don't know that I had a healthy enough respect for the level of skill that they that they have. Um, you know, these are 10, 12, 13 years of training, uh to to do this work.
Speaker 2:It's spectacular, that's great's great, great Good. That's so cool Doing big things up in Charlotte.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will be watching those videos tonight.
Speaker 2:Please, please, yeah With the box issues apparently Please do so. Please do so.
Speaker 4:That's awesome, I love your marketing opinion on them as well too, so send me thoughts and ideas.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, sure sure. But Charleston, is there any growth, any kind of ideas in the future? You said you had a couple of meetings today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's the growth?
Speaker 4:looking like yeah absolutely. Yes, we're always looking to grow and always looking to add partners to our platform. It really just depends upon how interested the oral surgeon is being a part of our platform and how much our team is interested in partnering with them. So we're always looking to grow and expand. Charleston is certainly an area that we're interested in. We're in columbia, we're in greenville, we're in all the areas around clemson and spartanburg and so, logically, yeah, charleston is seemingly next uh, next uh destination.
Speaker 3:We're looking forward to having you yeah, you have to let us know next time you. I'd love to meet your wife. She sounds like a remarkable person.
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, yes. My guess is, we'll be back in a weekend very near.
Speaker 2:Oh good, perfect, you can't stay away from Charlottesville. No, it's too tough, I can't stay away from Charlotte.
Speaker 3:I go there quite often.
Speaker 4:I'll be there in August for the Imagine Dragons concert. That's.
Speaker 3:Yeah, amelie's favorite band. I'm pulling her out of school. Thank you, principal Henderson. Yes, pulling her out of school. We have VIP tickets. Oh amazing To do Imagine Dragons. That'll be great, that'll be really great.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we were here almost like once a month. No joke. My wife and I absolutely love it and, yeah, spend a ton of time here, so I'm sure we'll be happy to get together again. We'll have a hangout. I love it. Yeah, please.
Speaker 2:We'll do it again. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 4:Oh, my pleasure. No, this was great. This has been fun. Thank you, yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2:And the travel here, the three-hour drive oh gosh, no, it's all good Before we leave. And the American Marketing Association, if you want to be a sponsor of our guests or if you want to be a sponsor or a guest. Thank you. Reach out to podcastcharlestonamaorg. I'm assuming that email works. It does.
Speaker 1:Are you getting?
Speaker 2:emails from there no.
Speaker 3:We get a lot more DMs.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, that works.
Speaker 3:We get a lot of DMs saying, hey, we'd like to be on the podcast. Where podcast? Where can they find us, steph? Uh, you can find us at charleston ama, on instagram and facebook and linkedin and, of course, you can find us on youtube buzzsprout, uh, apple podcast, spotify, anywhere. Basically, you listen to your podcast. That's where you can find us.
Speaker 2:What a pleasure, blair, yeah same yeah, thank you guys very much.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure, we do this again. Yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to and I can't wait to visit charl too.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of great people up there, please.
Speaker 3:If you're ever in town, let me know I'm going to come to one of these creative.
Speaker 4:Please do Before you head in.
Speaker 3:Let me know. I will text you and tell you I'm coming. We'll meet up. That sounds like my jam. That'll be.
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