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In this episode, Dr. Barbara Hales interviews Bret Gregory, founder of DrTalks :
- Bret shares how his decade of running a marketing agency for doctors showed that virtual summits and podcasts are the strongest long-term patient-acquisition strategies, with summits often generating 20,000+ email leads and significant new-patient revenue.
- He recounts his entrepreneurial path, including selling a corporate wellness business after his brother’s terminal cancer diagnosis, attempting an eco-wellness community in Costa Rica, and learning online marketing to survive the 2008 downturn. Brett explains why doctors make in-demand podcast guests, how DrTalks helps doctors get booked for free using AI, and why nurturing an email list with a weekly newsletter is more valuable than social followers.
Connect with Bret Gregory:
- sign in/up https://drtalks.com/
- LinkedIn Bret Gregory
Connect with Barbara Hales:
🐦 Twitter: @DrBarbaraHales
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist
🌐 Business Website: TheMedicalStrategist.com
📧 Email: info@TheMedicalStrategist.com
▶️ YouTube:@barbarahales
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/barbarahales
Books:
TRANSCRIPT. (238)
Dr. Barbara Hales 00:02
Welcome to another episode of marketing tips for doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales, and today we have a very interesting person with us by the name of Bret. Gregory
Dr. Barbara Hales 00:19
Bret was giving that little pause there for excitement. What I wanted to tell you about him, which makes him so interesting, is that he is a healthcare investor and has invested in several health and wellness startups. So I’d like to say that over his 30-year career, he’s founded and built not one but four successful startups in the health and wellness sector, two of which empower doctors to build their brands and businesses through innovative approaches. His most recent one is called Doctor Talks. You can reach that through drtalks.com.
Bret Gregory 01:11
Thanks so much. Barbara, I really appreciate you having me, and it’s wonderful to have a physician who is helping other doctors. It’s really exciting for me to have a conversation with you. I founded drtalks.com about six years ago, right when the pandemic started. And prior to that, I had a marketing agency for doctors for about a decade. And that entire time, while we were helping doctors, we were doing all sorts of marketing strategies, lots of social media. We were doing campaigns, emails, webinars, you name it. And then what I noticed is, over that decade, the marketing that worked the best, the long-term marketing that worked the best for doctors was very consistently virtual summits and podcasts and putting on a virtual summit where one doctor might interview 20 or 30 other doctors, and then we would launch that summit virtually. And every time we did that, they would grow a 20,000-plus-patient email list and convert it into a million dollars in new-patient revenue per year. And the only thing was, it was very hard. Took a lot of work. It was a lot of effort. And the same thing with podcasts. Podcasts took, they took a while to get going, but once they got going, they ended up being some of the best long term marketing strategies for doctors. Well over that decade, I was wondering, how come no one has ever created an entire platform dedicated to this? It’s kind of like YouTube for doctors. And after asking myself that for over five years, I finally said, Well, you know what? I’ll create it. And so I went out, maxed out my credit cards, borrowed $50,000, hired a few employees overseas, found my first 10 customers, and we launched in March of 2020, right when the pandemic started. I didn’t know what was going to happen. No one did, of course, but it turned out helping doctors with their online businesses was perfect timing. The pandemic gave us a tailwind, and now, six years later, we’ve grown into the world’s largest streaming platform for integrative and functional medicine doctors who want to reach our 11 million patient web visitors. And so we’re really on a mission now to democratize the Creator economy for doctors. What that means is we want to help you, doctors, make money off your information. I believe that doctors have been squeezed from so many different places, and now it’s time for doctors to monetize, to be able to get paid for their information while they’re helping people with their knowledge. So that’s the mission of doctor talks.
Dr. Barbara Hales 04:04
That’s really great. But before we continue on this topic that you are clearly passionate about, what I would like to do is to turn the dial and go back to the beginning, because and you know other doctors and other you know, possible entrepreneurs here that you are an investor, that is something, I think, that you know, other than being envious, strike strikes the the question or fear in people. Well, isn’t it scary to start with something like that from the beginning, you know, and worry whether it’s going to fail and is going to lose all his money, or, you know, like, like, how that works. So take me back to the beginning and say, you know, most people would take the safe route. So, you know, they. Start a business, or they would, you know, work in a, you know, in a business that was either, you know, like, joint-vented with someone else. So let’s, let’s start from the beginning, because I know there are people here listening to this saying, like, what you know, like, how does this happen? So tell me how it happened. Like, why is it that you had all the confidence to, you know, be an investor and, you know, like, how that all came about?
Bret Gregory 05:33
Sure. Well, I started out as an entrepreneur. Very early in college. I started my first business, started a painting company, and then right out of college, I went into the Employee Benefits business, and I started my own company there, and that was from about 1996 to 2006 I did corporate wellness programs, and I also started a radio show at that time. And what I accidentally discovered is that by interviewing real prospective customers, I was interviewing CEOs of companies in San Diego and interviewing people who could refer us prospective customers, we ended up building a really significant business in the corporate wellness sector over a 10 year period, and that was my my first business, sadly, in 2006 my 34 year old brother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, stage four non small cell carcino carcinoma, and he ended up passing away nine months after that, And that just changed the trajectory of my life completely.
Bret Gregory 06:44
Thank you. I appreciate that. But I tore off my suit and tie. I sold my business. I had about $3 million I moved to Costa Rica. I purchased a 164-acre property to develop an eco-friendly wellness community that helps as many people as possible change their lifestyle habits and heal from within, to the best of their bodies’ abilities. Now, I’m not a doctor. I know nothing about I don’t pretend to be one. I do understand marketing and sales. That’s really where my experience lies, but I was really focused on helping as many people as I possibly could, and I wanted to use that as my brother’s legacy. Well, I went and purchased this great piece of property down in Costa Rica, right across the street from the beach, and a new hospital is under construction. Now it was a great time to sell my corporate wellness programs business, but it was a terrible time to invest in a speculative real estate development because we closed in 2007, right before the 2008 global financial crisis, and I was really worried. I thought I was going to go bankrupt. I very quickly learned online marketing. I learned how to build websites, drive traffic, build lead magnets, grow an email list, and in just about 12 months, we were able to do about $1.4 million in sales to customers we met on Facebook, and this was now in 2009 2010 it was just enough to avoid going bankrupt, but it wasn’t enough to raise the money that we needed to raise to develop a large eco friendly wellness community. So I had to put that project on hold, move back to San Diego, and that’s when I started. It was called “attract customers now,” where I helped doctors grow their practices. And I did that from 2010 to 2020, and that’s when I learned about the different techniques that can help doctors grow their practices and attract patients online.
Dr. Barbara Hales 08:54
Did you use that property for wellness retreats?
Bret Gregory 08:58
That was the goal. Unfortunately, we were never able to really recover from the global financial crisis, and that was the whole idea and goal. We wanted to build a wellness community for retreats. We just weren’t able to do it.
Dr. Barbara Hales 09:14
And that’s unfortunate, because it seems like such an absolutely beautiful place.
Bret Gregory 09:19
It is truly, truly beautiful. Feels very magical, feels very nurturing and healing, and that was the idea.
Dr. Barbara Hales 09:29
So I understand that one of the ways you recommend physicians, you know, become visible to their prospective patients is by putting out podcasts. Do you recommend they guest-podcast on other sites before considering creating their own?
Bret Gregory 09:51
Yeah, well, guesting on podcasts has become the hottest new way to attract patients online right now. Wow. And one thing: since I started drtalks.com about six years ago, I’ve worked with 1000s of doctors. There are probably 3000 doctors on the platform today. We’ve got lots and lots of Doctor-hosted podcasts, and I’ve coached. We’ve produced over 7500 podcast interviews on doctor talks. And one thing that I see very consistently is that doctors don’t always realize that they make fantastic podcast guests, and that podcast hosts love to interview doctors, and you don’t need to pay anybody or anything to be booked on a podcast as a doctor. As a doctor, your information is valuable to podcast hosts. You’re a sought-after expert, key opinion leader, and the podcast hosts want to interview you, so we’ve made it really easy to help doctors get booked on a podcast. And yes, I definitely recommend guesting first before you just run out and start your own podcast. What the doctors I’ve worked with find is that when they become guests on a podcast, they love it. They usually, you know, it’s unexpected how much fun it is that they really enjoy it. And then, of course, the side benefit is that they get the word out and educate the public, which is something that pretty much every doctor I know wants to do, and they can attract new patients online, as well as new clients and customers for their business.
Dr. Barbara Hales 11:40
So, as a representative of drtalks.com, do you have all the podcasts on the doctor talk site, or are you helping doctors get onto other people’s podcasts?
Bret Gregory 11:55
Both? Yeah. So think of doctor talks as YouTube, but with all the content creators being doctors. So, when I say YouTube, it’s the world’s largest podcast platform. So YouTube is far larger for podcast consumption than Spotify. It’s far larger than Apple Podcasts. And so a lot of people who have podcasts, almost everybody that has a podcast puts their podcast on YouTube, and 1000s and 1000s of doctors that have podcasts also put their podcast on Doctor. Talks: It’s free to have a channel on doctor talks, just as it is on YouTube. So there are so many podcasts out there that doctors can get booked on really easily. And we’ve created a system that lets them set up a free expert account and start messaging and connecting. We have an AI that connects them directly with podcast hosts, and they can start pitching themselves. And we’ve made it really easy for them to pitch themselves and get booked on a podcast. It’s easy, it’s free, and it’s a lot of fun.
Dr. Barbara Hales 13:08
That’s great, and certainly financially, it beats paying for ads and hoping that people will see those ads
Bret Gregory 13:16
much it’s much better than paying for ads. It’s much better. There are podcast booking companies and agencies out there that charge, you know, 2000 to $5,000 a month to book people on podcasts. Well, we can do that for free. And like I said, we’ve got hundreds and even 1000s of podcasts. If you’re a doctor, it’s free. You can create a free expert account on drtalks.com and start getting booked right away. And the one question that you know some of your listeners may have, because I’ve heard this from many, many doctors, when I am always encouraging doctors to be a guest on podcast, is sometimes they say, why would anyone want to listen to me and aren’t there already so many experts talking about menopause or hormones or peptides or whatever, whatever your expertise is in. And let me tell you, you are still that key opinion leader. You’re still that sought-after expert that the podcast host wants. You still have so much to offer. If you can help one patient, you can be a great guest on a podcast, and I just want to encourage you to give it a try, because you’re not only probably going to love it, you’re going to help people, and you’re probably going to start to attract new patients, clients, and customers
Dr. Barbara Hales 14:39
are physicians who are functional into functional medicine, or maybe non-traditional medical care. Welcome to your show as well.
Bret Gregory 14:50
100% yes, so any doctor can make a free expert channel on doctor talks. Uh, the great thing about doctor talks is that there are 11 million patients visiting the web. Most patient web visitors come to look for alternative treatments. They, you know, usually want to figure out, how can I use diet, lifestyle, exercise, and how can I work with a doctor that’s going to, you know, work with me. Listen to me. A lot of cash-paying patients on drtalks.com, and so it can be great for integrative Functional Medicine and even traditional doctors.
Dr. Barbara Hales 15:30
That’s great. Now, I did notice when I looked at the site that in addition to podcasts and videos, you also have summits. So maybe you could tell the audience here the difference between a podcast and a virtual Summit?
Bret Gregory 15:46
Sure. So, virtual summits and podcasts are similar in many ways: there’s usually one host, or a host and a co-host, who interview other doctors. But the summits tend to focus on one subject. So we just recently completed the Reversing Heart Disease Naturally Summit, hosted by Dr. Joel Kahn, a cardiologist, and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a nine-time New York Times bestseller. They interviewed approximately, I want to say it was maybe, I think they did 20 interviews each. So they did approximately 40 interviews, and almost everyone they interviewed was also a doctor, but it was all about how to reverse heart disease naturally. And so they record all those interviews, and then we do a summit launch. And so, usually, all the experts on the summit will send an email to their patient email lists, inviting them to watch the summit for free. So the summits are free to register for and attend. And our summits usually have between 20,000 and 40,000 attendees, and they’re all virtual. They’re launched over approximately a five-day period, during which everybody comes together to watch the summit for free. And we have summits on lots of different topics. We’ve done summits on Alzheimer’s and diabetes and Hashimoto’s, and we’ve produced over 100 summits in the past six years, at doctor talks,
Dr. Barbara Hales 17:25
When a person is having a podcast, versus, you know, being head of a summit or leading a summit in a particular group, is the one leading the summit considered, you know, prospectively, a higher authority than someone that just has a podcast?
Bret Gregory 17:47
Well, I wouldn’t necessarily compare it to having a higher authority than someone with a podcast, but certainly, hosting a podcast can help you raise your authority and become that key opinion leader. Definitely, hosting a summit can also help you raise your authority and be a key opinion leader. I think one of the main differences is that if you’re hosting a summit, you’re going to grow an email list that should be highly valuable and profitable to your practice, and so in both cases, you will be able to elevate your key opinion leadership.
Dr. Barbara Hales 18:22
So, with a virtual Summit, you can grow your email list faster.
Bret Gregory 18:33
Definitely, yeah, usually, again, when we have the host, we will get a copy of the email list that we can produce with the summit. That email list should be worth half a million to a million dollars a year to a doctor who has a practice. You know, whether it’s even if it’s a brick and mortar practice or even if it’s a virtual practice, the it’s you know, think about an email list of 20,000 prospective patients, you’re going to have a lot of you know, great value in that, and that’s something that the summit does. Now, summits are they’re considerably harder than a podcast. Podcast is a much easier place to start. But I would also suggest, again, if you’re really starting out from scratch, start out as a guest with one podcast interview, and we can help you get booked for free on drtalks.com.
Dr. Barbara Hales 19:30
Well, one of the great benefits of having a summit is that, for whatever topic this summit is highlighting, the people who have signed up for it are the ones who are raising their hand, saying, ” You know, this is a topic that I’m interested in,
Dr. Barbara Hales 19:59
when a person. And signs up. Is there a little blurb at the bottom saying, “By signing up, you give permission to receive information,” or is that the first email you send after you get the email list? Would you like to keep getting information?
Bret Gregory 20:17
Yeah, it’s the first part. So they have to acknowledge that they’ll be on the host’s email list. And that’s why they have to check a box to agree to it in order to register. So it’s very clearly labeled up front that you’ll be joining the doctor’s email list. And then, of course, like with any email system, you should be able to easily subscribe with one unsubscribe with one click. Should you choose to do so?
Dr. Barbara Hales 20:47
Surely. Now, do these people who sign up get any kind of lead magnet, or is the Summit and the summit information enough of a draw that nothing else needs to be sent to them?
Bret Gregory 21:00
Usually, we’ll have four to five ebooks, and, as you said, you can refer to them as lead magnets, but they’re typically high-value. Many times they’re authored by the host; sometimes they’re authored by premium guests who have, you know, really high-quality information aligned with the topics. So, for example, on the reversing heart disease naturally Summit, there were, I think, about four or five ebooks that were all related to reversing heart disease naturally. And they’re very, very high-quality ebooks,
Dr. Barbara Hales 21:40
which is a very important topic these days.
Bret Gregory 21:43
Yes, absolutely agreed.
Dr. Barbara Hales 21:46
So when a doctor gets an email list, well, I think first of all, we can all agree that one of the most valuable assets a doctor or any businessperson has is that email list, right? So once the doctor gets the new email list, what do they do with it?
Bret Gregory 22:06
Great question. Yeah, this is one of the most important things for a doctor, and really for any business, is your email list. And the email list should be far more valuable. And let me just help give some perspective here. Would you rather have 10,000 Instagram subscribers or a 10,000-person email list? You would much rather have the email list. You could likely turn a 10,000-person email list into hundreds of 1000s of dollars of revenue, where you could almost never do that with 10,000 Instagram subscribers. So if you ever hear this phrase from people who teach marketing, “the money’s in the list,” it is absolutely true. So you want to really focus on building your email list. That can be done with a newsletter. It could be done by hosting a summit. There are many ways to do that; we won’t get into it right now, but the most important thing is to nurture your list. So you want to send, ideally, a weekly email newsletter that drives traffic back to your website.
This is one of the most valuable things we can help doctors with who have podcasts: many doctors forget that if they have their own podcast, they should send out a weekly email as part of their newsletter. And it’s really this. This last part is really important in the if you’re going to release a weekly podcast episode instead of driving traffic to Spotify or Apple or your YouTube channel, you drive them back to your website so you can put your podcast on your website, and whenever a new episode comes out, you would send that email in your newsletter once a week and send traffic back to your website that right there could be worth six figures a year in driving traffic from your existing patient email list you don’t need, you don’t need a giant list. You could have a 1000-patient email list, and that would generate, you know, probably six figures per year. So what do they do with the email list that you want to nurture it? The best way to nurture it is with a newsletter. The easiest way to do it is news. To populate your newsletter is like having a weekly podcast.
Dr. Barbara Hales 24:32
When a person signs up to the website, of course, they’re seeing everything that you are. You know, believe everything that you believe in, everything that you teach. But you know, when people look to see how many subscribers you have, obviously, if they’re going to the website as the primary exposure. Or that there is no, you know, subscribing button. So do you say, well, it’s more important that they see your web list than a subscriber number.
Bret Gregory 25:13
Well, great question. So the subscriber number that you see, whether it’s on YouTube or your Spotify followers, I like to refer to as social proof. Often, those are vanity metrics. So you might see a lot of people with hundreds or 1000s of followers on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok; those tend to be what I refer to as vanity metrics. The exception is YouTube. If you have YouTube subscribers, those tend to be a lot more valuable than, say, Facebook subscribers. That all being said, I would still rather have the email list and when you drive traffic, if you’re going to drive traffic somewhere, you always want to drive traffic to your website, and when, for anybody that is, you know, if you’re just getting started out, one of the things that you would do is make it easy for people to sign up for your newsletter, and so you just Have a form on your homepage where it’s very easy for people to sign up for your newsletter, and then you send them a weekly newsletter. That’s the nurturing that we were talking about earlier. And if you do it once a week, you can send people traffic to your website, whether it’s reading a new blog post or perhaps seeing your latest podcast interview. Anytime you can get your patients back to your website, you have the opportunity to let them book a consultation or purchase anything else you might offer.
Dr. Barbara Hales 26:54
Well, that’s really great advice. So, at this point in the podcast, I like to ask my guest: What are two tips you would give to the listening audience? So let’s say a person you know is not just starting out in the practice, but is not, you know, towards the end of their practice, either they’re you know, like midway, they’d like to, you know, they’d like to improve the numbers, or if they’ve decided recently, which is even more important, if they’ve decided to transition away from an insurance dependent model to a concierge now, it’s as though they are starting from scratch, because now they need to let people know that that’s what’s going to be happening. They need to attract new people and convince existing ones that paying for something is worth it. So, absolutely like, what tips would you give?
Bret Gregory 27:58
So my biggest tip, and you know, I’m certainly biased, is that I think doctors should be a guest on a podcast, but because it’s free, it’s easy. And, you know, we have a way to make it really easy for you to get booked on podcasts. My tips would be to get booked on a podcast, and one of the easiest ways to do that for any of you, if you use any kind of AI out there, if you like ChatGPT or Claude, whatever you use, go and open up a window and type in this prompt. Help me come up with a catchy podcast title. And here’s where you fill in the blank that might be, wherever your area of expertise is, peptides, menopause, heart disease, diabetes, whatever your specialty is or area of expertise, and then let it run, and it’ll come up with a bunch of really catchy podcast titles. Find the one that resonates with you, and it just hooks you. That’s the key. Find the one that just really hooks you. Go, ooh, that one would be great. Use that when you approach other doctors who have podcasts. So again, on doctor talks, you create a free expert profile. You can quickly start messaging our AI, which will match you with other podcast hosts. You could start messaging those doctors and say, “I would love to be on your podcast.” Here is my and you can call it your signature talk. Here is my signature talk. Copy and paste that catchy podcast title, and that’s going to hook them into wanting to interview you. It’s totally free, and it’ll give you a really great opportunity: once the last step is taken, you can ask your favorite AI chatbot to help you come up with great interview questions. And have come up with approximately 10 questions that should be good for about a 25-minute interview. Try to keep your interviews to approximately 25 minutes. It’s just a good rule of thumb. You don’t want them to go. Too long, and those are my tips that can really help you.
Dr. Barbara Hales 30:04
Those are great tips. And if I might just throw one in, following up on what you said is, you know, when you find that title or that hook that you think is wonderful, the thing is, someone else might have thought it’s wonderful first. So, before you actually make that your podcast, get the URL. If the URL is not available, then think again, because sure, you don’t really want to be promoting someone else’s podcast.
Bret Gregory 30:41
Yeah, I was referring to if they were going to be a guest, as opposed to hosting their own podcast, you’re 100% correct. If they’re going to host their own podcast, you need to put a lot more thought into the title, the name of the show, but I was thinking more of a catchy podcast, title of an episode, of an episode, then in that case, you’re absolutely right, yeah.
Dr. Barbara Hales 31:05
Well, you know what? I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you today, as I’m sure the listeners are, you know, interested in what you have to say. They’ve, I’m sure, gotten a lot of value out of it. So I just want to remind listeners that you can visit drtalks.com, browse the site, and sign up. It’s free. You are getting nurtured by one of the best. Yeah.
Bret Gregory 31:39
Thank you so much. Well, yeah, for anybody who’s listening, you can create your free account. If you’re a doctor, go to doctor talks.com that’s D, R, T, a, l, K, s.com, forward slash, connect. Then you can sign up, create your expert profile, and get started. Our AI will connect you with podcast hosts, and you can start getting connected. And our team will be happy to assist you if you need any help
Dr. Barbara Hales 32:01
well. Thank you so much. This has been another episode of marketing tips for doctors, till next time.
