How to Build a Referral Engine for Your Private Practice: Live Q&A With Dr. Una

What if the best growth strategy for your private practice is already working—you’re just not giving it enough attention?

In this episode of the EntreMD Podcast, Dr. Una breaks down how physicians can intentionally build a referral engine that brings the right patients into their practices.

This episode is not about asking people for favors.

It is about learning to see yourself as a problem solver and a valuable resource to patients, physicians, and other potential referral partners

If referrals are already bringing patients into your practice, the question is not whether they work.

The question is: What could happen if you became intentional about them for the next 90 days?

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about my 12-month program. 
• Interested in 1-on-1 coaching? Apply here.
• Grab a copy of the "The 7-Figure Physician CEO" book. 

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•  The Profitable Private Practice Movement - If you want to build a thriving private practice that serves a lot of patients, while creating time and financial freedom for you, come join us here. 
• EntreMD Business School Grow - This is our year-long program with a track record of producing physician entrepreneurs who are building 6, 7 and 7+ figure businesses. They do this while building their dream lives!
• EntreMD Business School Scale - This is our high-level mastermind for physicians who have crossed the seven figure milestone and want to build their businesses to be well oiled machines that can run without them.

To get on a call with my team to determine your next best step, go here ...

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

So what if you went all in on your referrals and you did the other things, but it was secondary. Your primary was going all in on referrals, you know, for the next 90 days what could happen.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hi Doc. Welcome to the Uncham D podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Inat.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Today's gonna be fun. Okay, today's gonna be fun. We're gonna have, you know, some QA going on. I'm gonna share a story with you that I think is really powerful, but I want you to show up with big energy. I want you to show up like someone who knows that their practice is about to change, right? Because one decision can change things in your practice, right? If we've never met before, my name is Dr. Una. I'm a pediatrician by training. I've been in private practice for 16 years. Um, I've done everything from um launching it to growing it to getting it to work without me and the whole man yards. And um it's it's been such an amazing journey. And this phase of my career is really about helping doctors win, um whether it's private practice or not, but win as entrepreneurs. Um, there's no Calvary coming for us. We are the ones who are going to take our own careers and our own destiny and our own fate in our own hands and make it work. That's um literally, literally the way things are going to happen here. So I was talking to a doctor, she I think did about $300,000 in her practice last year, if I remember correctly. And so we started, she came up to ask a question. We started having this conversation. And I said, if you needed to do a, let's say you you did a million in your practice this year. Um, and if you guys don't know, I'm always seating that, right? Like if you did a million in your practice this year, um, and you pulled it off, like what would need to happen for you to do that? And so she was like, I'm not quite sure, and stuff like that. I said, Okay, you do have proof of concept, you already have patients coming to you. And guys, I want you to, this question is for you as well. I said, How are 80% of your patients finding you? And so she thought about it and she said, through referrals and referrals from a specific specialty, right? I said, Okay, but do you see that you're spending most of your energy doing these other things when this is the thing that's working best in your business? Okay, so referrals works for everybody, but I'm trying to show you something. I'm trying to make a point here. And so I said, So what if you went all in on your referrals and you did the other things, but they were secondary, your primary was going all in on referrals, you know, for the next 90 days. What could happen in your practice? So this was the end, this was the middle of March, and at the end of um June, she looked at her year-over-year revenue and it had increased by 248%. And it increased by 248%, and the primary driver was referrals. Okay, so why am I telling you that? I am telling you that because we're not here to just say something funny and funky and that's nerve-wracking for introverts and go away. That's not what's happening here. We're here to talk about something that can make a real difference in your practice. Okay, okay, so that's a real example. Now let's look at a hypothetical example. So if you think about all the patients that you have, um, if half of them sent you two patients over the course of a year, your practice volume doubles. Not everybody, half of the people, but they send you two patients, like one patient every six months. But I'm not talking about something that's impossible, it can't be done. I want you to think about the people who come to see you. If you pulled up their phones, you would see hundreds of contacts. For some people, thousands of contacts. Someone like Makita, Makita probably has 3,000 people on her phone, well, one phone, and probably 3,000 on another phone, right? Okay. So it's not as though people cannot give you two people. What I'm trying to show you is there is a low lift way of bringing people into your practice, and it is referrals. Some of those referrals would be what we call internal referrals, which means your patients sending you patients or your clients sending you clients. Some of them will be external, which would be people who have your people who are sending you people. So I always use myself as an example. I'm a pediatrician. An external referral source could be an OBGYN, could be a daycare center, could be the YMCA, right? These are all people who have a lot of kids and they don't serve them the way I serve them. So they can send the kids to me. In fact, when they send the kids to me, they're solving a problem for themselves. Okay. So I said all this to say this. This is a very powerful thing you can use in your business. Makita's like, I have 4,446 contacts. Makita. Everybody needs a Makita, okay? I wish you had many people in your world who have 4,000 contacts. So referrals are a very powerful way. Now, somebody may say, I don't want to do that. I don't want to talk to people. I just want to do ads. Okay. So Makita and I work in, you know, I run five, I run five companies, right? So we're looking at data from a different company. And in this company, we did we did a bunch of ads for an event that we had. Let me show you something. People who were who attended the events because they were invited by friends and family had a 49.8% show-up rate. The people who came because of ads had an 8.3% show-up rate. If you were me, would you focus on getting people to invite or would you throw more money at ads? I'm not saying ads don't work. Like we still got a bunch of people from ads, but if you're going to throw all your energy somewhere, where are you going to throw it? Right? Where are you going to throw it? So this is the thing that I want you thinking about. So I'm not saying ads don't work, but a lot of times we like ads because that means we don't have to talk to people. Okay. But this is something that works. It has always worked, it will always work. And the better we get at it, the more sustainable our practices are. Okay?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

All righty. So Dr. Bobby says one of my biggest fears of asking for referrals is that I feel like I am begging and bothering them. This is one of your favorite questions, right, Dr.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Is it one of my favorite questions? It might be. It might be. Okay. Okay. So here's the deal, right? Dr. Bobby. When you are a referral source, you are a problem solver. You're not a problem. You're a problem solver. So as a pediatrician, guess the problems I have. I need a good PT person to send my patients to. I need a good developmental pediatrician to send my patients to. I need a good pulmonologist. I need a good adolescent GYN. I need all of these people. I need resources to send my people to. So when literally this happened, this is, I'm not making this up. There was a day I was minding my business in my office, and this lady walks in. She must have been like eight months pregnant or something. She walks in and she says, I'm a I'm a physical therapist. I just started a new office. Um, and I wanted to introduce myself. Okay. So she was all shy and all of those things. And I love entrepreneurs. So when I saw, I was like, oh, you know, entrepreneur pregnant, everything. I was just like, oh my goodness. But this is the thing. I already had a physical therapist house sending people to, but they had been around for a long time. So now my patients needed to wait three weeks, four weeks to get in to get an appointment. So I had a problem that this woman solved. Because she's here, she's starting a business. It means she's new, it means she can get people in the next day, right? Within two days, three days, all of those things. I literally took her, went to my front desk, told my after confirming the insurances she took, took her to my front desk and told her, send everybody to her. We got her so busy that she was like, she started having longer wait times. So she solved a problem. Okay. Okay. In the comments, how many of you are actively looking for somebody to send your patients to? And tell me what specialty. Okay. You're actively looking for somebody you can either because the person you use has long wait times, or the person you use the, you know, I had a neurologist I had to refer to, had awful reviews, but he was the only one there. I couldn't send them to anybody else. What do you think I would do if another neurologist came? I would hug the person. I would hug the I'm like, you are the best thing since sliced bread, and I'll send them everybody have. So this is what I want you to understand. Every potential referral source has a problem, and you might just be the answer to the problem. Right? So when you go, show up as a problem solver. Don't show up as somebody who needs something so their practice can win. Show up like someone who has something to offer. You're a gift, you have a resource, you can take problems away and all of those things, right? Don't suppose just I can I can hug you. I mean, it was it was something. But don't think of it like, oh, I'm going after this person to get something so that my practice, my private practice can work. Go there going like this person needs these people need resources, and I happen to be a resource and I'm available to help. That's the approach. Okay, that's the approach. And then so you you feel like a problem solver, which is very empowering, right? As opposed to feeling like somebody who's trying to get something from somebody, which feels very transactional and very yucky, right? Okay. And guys, whenever you do something and mindset drama shows up, just re realize that mindset drama is something to be worked through, right? So, Dr. Bobby, if I were you, I would probably have a sticky note on my computer or something like that, or a screensaver on my phone that says I'm a problem solver, I'm a I'm a highly sought-after resource resource, something like that. That so every time you want to go out, you're looking at that before you go out, knowing that your mind is going to play tricks on you. So you can anticipate it and prepare for it. Okay. Okay. All right, good.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Dr. Shereen said, I don't have fear stopping me. I've gone to concierge practices taking lunch and then introducing my practice, but I feel like they don't want to send out of their office. Not taking insurance is a big loss. Everyone wants my opinion if I take their insurance.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Okay, so Dr. Shereen, I can see you, so nod. Um, your your cash pay? Concierge. Okay, okay. So um, Dr. Shereen, this is the way I will approach this. And this is a really good question. Um, almost everybody on a on this call has some variation of this. It's either um with referral sources or something, like something you're trying to go at that is not quite working yet. And I want to challenge you to be the person who keeps knocking at the door, when I say knocking at the door, I don't mean knocking at a door. I mean like keep going at it till you till you find the solution, right? Like that that's what you're doing here, which is amazing. So um there are a number of things to do. When you find that the referral sources are not quite referring to you, the first thing you want to do, which Dr. Sharin, you've already done, is make sure that you're talking to the people who get what you do, right? And so if you are concierge or you are DPC, you want to talk to people who are concierge, who are DPC, um, who pay coaches, who pay like people who pay cash, because people who pay cash pay cash. That's kind of the way it works. So that's the that's the first thing. Um, the second thing, and I've noticed this with um a lot of doctors, um, we love what we do. So sometimes when we talk to people, we are selling them on the process, right? Um, you know, I I have a client who this will this was the beginning of the big turnaround for her because she had this very complex process that she loved, and she keep talking about it, all this stuff. And people like, and I'm like, so when you talk to them, what do they do? Do they glaze over? She's like, How did you know they glaze over? Like, because nobody cares. We don't care. What they want to know is this is the pain you have, this is the solution I offer, so they can say yes, right? So you want to make sure in your messaging that you're not confusing, it's so clear that for the right person they're raising their hand. So, and that could look one of two ways. If you're talking to a patient, of course, is the pain they have and what life can look like on the other side of working with you. If it is a referrals, an external referral source, the pain may not be the disease condition at all. It could be, hey, you want your patient to see a psychiatrist, the wait time is four months. I can get you a, I'm cash pay, but I can get you in tomorrow. Do you see how that's a pain and a solution, but it has nothing to do with the medical condition itself. So you want to really lean into why would somebody say yes to me? What is a problem they have right now that I solve and how do I communicate in such a way that they're like, oh my goodness, yes, where have you been? I'm looking for you, right? So you want so you want to look at the kinds of um doctors you're talking to. You want to look at the messaging that you're that you're using. Um, the third thing you want to do is you want to look for proximity. I'll explain what I mean. I mean by this. Um, when I started my private practice, I started in um I started in Lawrenceville, Georgia. And I did not train in Georgia, I trained in New Jersey. And the first job I had was in Stockbridge, Georgia, which is a good hour away. And so I didn't, and I was an introvert, I didn't have on train D and I didn't have PPP, I didn't have any of these things. Okay, so I didn't know anything I'm telling you now. So I didn't have a network of people who already knew me. Do you see what I'm saying? Who can say, connect me with this person? This is what I'm looking for. Because you have friends who do that for you. Now, on the flip side, I worked locums for this other lady who started a practice and had she's a pediatrician and she had three friends who were OBGYNs. What do you think she did? She called them, she said, I started a practice. They're like, girl, we got you. We'll get you busy. She needed to hire me within six months of opening her practice. She was bursting at the scene. She had hundreds of undone charts, but that's a different conversation. Um right? But that's how busy she was. So look for proximity. Sometimes when we start businesses, because we have, you know, imposter syndrome or we feel like our stuff is not perfect or whatever, we don't talk to friends and family about it at all. But check do you have friends, do you have family, do you have colleagues, do you have people who know the people you need to be your referral sources? Talk to them to connect you. Do you know the actual people who could be referral sources? Why are we going through the front desk? Like send them a text message and go on a walk with them and tell them exactly what you need. Do you see what I'm saying? So you look for proximity. Because okay, let's do this in the comments. How many of you have somebody in your world who refer people to you? Right? Well, you have not spoken to them. Yeah, there we go. Right? So we take advantage of proximity, say gift given to us. So take advantage, like who is close enough that is a referral source or close enough to the referral source that you tap on that. Okay. Okay. So that's number, what's that? Number three, Dr. Shereen? Yeah. Right? Type of person, yeah, type of person, the message in proximity. And then the fourth one is shameless persistence. Okay. You guys, if you've heard me speak about this before, you know, I'll tell this story every single time. We had a we had a doctor in the entream d business school. Um, she started working, she's obesity medicine. She started working this referral source. She went there, she's like, oh my goodness, these guys have 19 um clinicians in this orthopedic practice. And of course, they would need people to lose weight, you know, for certain surgeries and stuff like that. She went to them for 11 months. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. She went to them for 11 months and got nothing. Finally, they book a meet and greet with her. She goes there. Turns out it's not set, it's not 19 clinicians, it's 42 clinicians. And they were like all over, they were like, Oh my goodness, we've been looking for someone just like you. Give me your card, give me this, give me that. She ran out of everything. When they started referring, they she was getting five to seven referrals, referrals a day from these people. So the question is, is it was it worth the 11 months? Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? So, Dr. Shereen, I hope this has helped you, but the kind of people you're talking to, the messaging, the proximity, the persistence, right? And then you work that and something will click. And when it clicks, it clicks very nicely.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

How do you know if your work overlaps with the practice, but you do it differently? How do you feel like you're not competing? How do you know who's a good referral source that you know you guys are not competing, but you're overlapping?

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Yeah, so this is the way to look at it. Um, a good referral source, external referral source now, would be somebody who serves the people you serve, but they serve them not with a different method, but in a different way. Right? So for instance, you know, like I'm Pede's, right? And OBGYN and I, we serve the same person, which is the parent, but we serve them in completely different ways, so we're not competing. Um, a a life coach and a business coach, they do different things. So they serve the same person, but they're not competing. Um, but if you are menopause and you do um lifestyle and there's lifestyle, it's a little too gray. Do you see what I mean? I wouldn't optimize for that, except to someone who reaches out to me and says, I hate this part of this, like go do it. I would look for people where there's a clear, there's a clear demarcation between what we do. So think of it this way: we serve the same person in different ways. Like they're happy to send people to me to do what I do because they don't want to touch it with the 10 foot pole. So that's the way I would look, I would look, look at it.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Dr. Jennifer said, what KPI carries can I give to my marketing VA for helping me with external referrals?

SPEAKER_02 19:49

So I'm gonna answer this in two ways. Um, when it comes to building a referral base, this is a relationship-based thing. And chances are the person who has the best shot at building that relationship is you, the physician, like physician to physician. Okay. Um so how I've used VAs and how I've trained my clients to use VAs is you can use them to build out the database. Like I want to know everybody who is primary care within a 10-mile radius or 20-mile radius, or whatever that is. Um, so they build out the database. They can reach out to the offices or reach out to the doctors to schedule meet and greets, right? So that that way you're not needing to do all that work to get on, you know, like a 15-minute Zoom call or whatever. That person is doing it, so you can do that as well. And you can also use them to follow up on leads that are cold, like you don't have any relationships. So rather than not work them at all, this person can kind of prime the pump there. And then if you do, um, if you send out um, you know, cards or gifts or whatever periodically to your referral source, then this person can do it. But as far as growing that no-like and trust factor, you're the weight of who you are is important in pulling that off, right? So, in light of that, um, KPIs will be around maintain uh active referral database of a hundred people, for instance, right? Um, you could have set up um two meet and greets every single week, right? Ensure handwritten cards are mailed to our hot and warm referral sources once a month. So you can put things like that, right? And guys, when we create KPIs, we also want to make sure that there's a pathway for this person to win, right? And so for instance, I know I said a hundred referral sources, but if your person can't conceptually, like they're like, I I Google that they're only 30, you know how to source for the rest, but they don't, then some coaching is going to be needed there because you want to empower them to win. Okay. But that's that's the way I would approach it. Yeah. What we don't need in a referral relationship is friction. So you're you're looking, you're looking for the person who is like, Dr. Shereen, where have you been all my life? That's what you're looking for. Like here, like and determine a person, send everybody to her, like everybody. That's what you're looking for. So you're not looking to overcome friction, you're looking for the no friction.