Dr. Allen Miner: Welcome everybody to the best practices segment of the UAC podcast. Today I’m really excited to introduce Dr. Sebastian Bonnin out of Puerto Rico, San Juan. Seb is, one of my favorite people on the earth, and just, I’ve never been around many other people that can influence the energy of a room as quickly as you can, Sebastian, and it’s a gift. And we’re glad to have you on the line. We’re talking best practices. Right. Dr. Brian?
Dr. Brian Capra: We are one of the best parts of our UAC group, has been over the years, the sharing of the best practices inside the group. We just wanted to give the opportunity to people outside UAC to get a little taste of what it’s like to be in a room full of people with amazing information and knowledge and experience. Dr. Sebastian is a rockstar. In Puerto Rico he’s super famous and he won’t admit it to you. [laughter] We have a lot of fun. He is a great guy. The knowledge this guy has, he can, he’s only going be able to give you a little bit, but, a little taste. But doc, why don’t you just take it away and what do you want to talk about today? What do you want to share with the group? Hopefully this could be a best practice that you share and they can actually implement into their practice.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Sure. First of all, thanks for inviting me. I love just being around you guys. Dr. Brian is my blackjack, [laughter] maestro, mentor/I make a lot of money every time I play with him, but when I’m alone, I lose a lot of money, [laughter] but, and, Allen is one of my mastermind. We have a call that we have every two weeks. He’s one of our mastermind partners. So, thanks for that call Allen, because I can assure you that just being, rubbing shoulders and just being around giants like you guys with minds that are so different than mine just really add to all those parts of myself that I lack. And I do the same to you guys in ways that maybe I know and maybe ways I don’t know.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: So, I feel very blessed to be part of the group. And I think it’s my sixth year, fifth year, or something like that. It was, I started with, in Hurricane Maria 2018. So four years now. Four years. There you go. So, I wanted to talk about something that has been working really well for me lately, which is turning a digital lead into an external lead. So, because of COVID, people stopped doing external marketing. They couldn’t do it right, because, they didn’t want you there. Masks, mandates, nobody in a closed space, and you can’t come in if you’re not vaccinated, at least here in Puerto Rico, they were like really bad. It was really tough times. So we only, our marketing then relied only on internal and then heavy, heavy digital.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Now, what happens with digital is that very different from internal, which are super highly qualified. They already like, trust you and there’s a high trust. They’re just ready to, they’re primed, basically an internal referral, you know how quickly it is to really turn them into a practice member. But digital leads, it’s very different. This random person saw your ad out of 50 other possible ads from 50 other chiropractors in your area, and they just so happened to click on yours because, I don’t know, maybe they liked the color or the picture or something, and they say, yes, I want to either go to your office or go to an event that you’re promoting. So we started just doing the lead generation ads. So it was just like, yeah, I just want to go and get evaluated and I want that evaluation for 40 bucks. And then it was a race to the bottom because the other 49 chiropractors, they were, okay, then come for 39 and the other one come for 30.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Okay, come for 20. And now it’s like, just come for free. I will give you five adjustments, three therapies and whole supplements for a year, and we’ll clean your car while you’re getting adjusted. [laughter] So it was a really bad race to the bottom, and it didn’t, that wasn’t aligned with my values, with our core values. Our vision story, and it is just not our standards, but we needed new patients. We wanted to attract the community. So we started doing and turning digital leads into external leads. So we started doing patient dinners, but what we did was we used the lead generation to put butts in seats in this restaurant. And I will come to the restaurant, I will invite you to eat, by the way, a good restaurant. People know this restaurant.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: People like this restaurant. It’s an Argentinian restaurant, skirt steak, rice and beans, like really good food. People know this place. It’s been years in Puerto Rico. Good standards. They’re aligned with our values also. So I’m inviting you to come to eat at this place. People show up, I come in, do my dinner talk which is the same health talk I give on the office. And in the end, a call to action to get evaluated, which is the next step. Now I use the patient dinner to pre-frame the whole experience, to let them know that we don’t take insurance, it’s all about reimbursement, that the first visit, if we decide we can help you, you’re going to come the next visit with your husband. Just pre-framing the whole thing. So the people that will make appointments are the ones that really want to be there. Do you follow me? So…
Dr. Allen Miner: How’s it working now Sebastian? Are you finding that people are willing to come back out to dinner talks? And what platforms are you using right now to generate those leads? Is it Instagram, Facebook is, how are you…
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yep. So right now, the company I use is using Facebook ads and the KPI or the key performance indicator, or what I’m expecting is 40 butts in seats on each dinner. We know to put 40 butts in seats, 80 people need to be confirmed. Meaning, Allen, today is your dinner, and I called you yesterday and three days before, today is your dinner.
Dr. Allen Miner: Do you call or text?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: No, it’s a call and a text.
Dr. Allen Miner: Both.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah. You can do text only, but when we call and text, it’s much better. So, 40 butts in seats mean that 80 people said the day of the dinner that they’re going, oh, yes, yes. I’m going, yes. Count me in. I am going. 80 people said yes for 40 butts in seats. Now to get 80 people to say yes you need 160 leads, so 160 people…
Dr. Allen Miner: Your friends are 50, 50, 50, 160 leads.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah. That’s it.
Dr. Allen Miner: 80 opt in, 40 to show up…
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yep. Yep.
Dr. Allen Miner: That’s awesome. Do you guys ever have campaigns that link back to the people who opted in but didn’t schedule or said they’d come who didn’t show up? Do you guys circle back to those?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah, we call those recycled leads. All these leads that…
Dr. Allen Miner: And do you…
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: That didn’t come.
Dr. Allen Miner: Does a percentage of those come back in too?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah. Yep, yep.
Dr. Allen Miner: We’ve been focusing on lately for our, I’m curious if you do this in the same vein, when somebody comes through our clinic Sebastian, and they don’t sign up for a care plan, we traditionally stink. They might get on an email list, and they hear for us on an email blast, every blue moon. We’ve never actively circled back to those people that did not buy the first time through which when you look at all other industries, it’s really rare that people buy the first time through. So, a little different than the lead. You guys are recycling them, you’re going back to the leads. Do you ever do that with people that come through the clinic and didn’t re-sign and go back and reach out to them in kind of any kind of systemized way?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: We’re doing that with… So, the answer is yes and no. We’re doing that with the dinners, we definitely circle back with them. Now…
Dr. Allen Miner: So you’ll invite them back to a dinner?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah. Now, before I was franchise, I owned a Line Life franchises. We weren’t doing that, but the franchises do have a mechanism to circle back with these people that don’t start, or they say yes, they didn’t show up. So, they do have a mechanism for it and so yeah that would be my short answer to that.
Dr. Brian Capra: The question I have is you get 40 butts in seats, how many convert to appointments, and then how many convert to pay?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: So at least 80%. So, we’ll get 30 plus appointments, 30 plus, 31, 32. That’s pretty much my average. 32 out of 40.
Dr. Allen Miner: Sebastian, do you… We had a presentation from the guys over at SKED talking about they’re able to actually have people schedule right there from their seat and pay from their seat. Are you guys doing that?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah, that’s actually, I came up with that. I…
Dr. Allen Miner: Genius.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: I told Eric, “Listen man, I need you to do this for me and this and this for my dinners, can you do it?” He’s like, “Absolutely.” So yes, we highly leverage SKED basically when I do my call to action and I ask, all right, so who’s in and they’re ready to start making the appointments all I do is like, all right, pull out your phone, scan this QR code, and then just follow the instructions and that’s it.
Dr. Allen Miner: That’s great.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: They pay it right there.
Dr. Allen Miner: Because that used to be such a… We’d have a line of people and an extra staff and you’re just trying to process everybody on the schedule, and you didn’t know when people were double booking and that technology eliminates all of those challenges that…
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Oh my God.
Dr. Allen Miner: And they’ve already paid, so the likelihood of them coming in goes up…
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Exactly, our stick rate, day zero-day one stick rate, which means out of those that make appointments, how many actually show up? It’s 86%, which is very high.
Dr. Allen Miner: That’s a good number. Here’s a question I have, Sebastian, what’s your full retail price for an exam? And do you charge that at the dinner talk or do you give some kind of discounted exam?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yes, so we create value for the evaluation that people think it is 10 grand, that evaluation, but we charge in the office $395, but if you buy it today, it’s 40 bucks.
Dr. Allen Miner: And have you ever played with charging a higher price point on that?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: So, the last UAC… I’m sorry. The last TRP seminar, a doc came to me, and he asked me the same question. And the answer is no, but I’m definitely going to include labs. So, for anybody who’s interested, it will be the $395, but it will include labs. So they will have an upsell. And…
Dr. Allen Miner: Yeah, I’m a fan of that instead of discounting prices, and adding in more layers of value add and yeah, we have noticed, we haven’t done dinner talks in years. We used to do and discount like you, but we’ve noticed when we stopped doing discounted our full exam is $250 and that’s what people pay and we found there was maybe initially a little decrease in volume, but it qualifies people and our conversion rate really jumped up when we were charging that higher price on the front end. So, I was curious if you have translated that yet into a dinner talk or not?
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Yeah, not yet, not yet that’s my next… That will be my next step. And…
Dr. Allen Miner: That’s awesome man. I think that’s going to be encouraging for people listening that a lot of offices back in the day were built on spinal screenings, dinner talks and even workshops in office, in New Mexico, we had to contract back from that too. And so, it’s awesome to hear you say, “Nope, it’s green light time, go with these.” People are willing to come out and you get you’re filling your offices with these talks again. That’s fantastic, man. That’s encouraging.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Awesome man.
Dr. Allen Miner: Awesome. Well, Dr. Sebastian, we love you. Thanks for coming. And I know a lot of people are going to get a ton of value from just hearing you talk. And also, let’s point out the nuance to all the little things you touched on congruency and core values with who I’m working with, the restaurants I go to, what I’ve got to find in my business.
Dr. Brian Capra: Absolutely.
Dr. Allen Miner: Success leaves a lot of clues, and you’re a master at using that lens of your values to decide who you’re going to work with, who you’re going to partner with, who you’re going to collaborate with and hopefully the listeners are picking up on some of these things you’re talking, and you hear the people we talk about in UAC. We get to collaborate with like the Eric Kowalke’s of the world and marketers and the Brian Capra’s and the HR owners. And again, there’s just, and I didn’t want to let that go unmentioned because there’s a lot of the, just how you’re talking or how you think and who you align with, I think is a lot of your success.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Thank you.
Dr. Allen Miner: Awesome guys.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Thank you for inviting me.
Dr. Allen Miner: Thank you.
Dr. Brian Capra: Thank you guys.
Dr. Allen Miner: Thank you, Dr. Brian. Thank you, Dr. Sebastian.
Dr. Sebastian Bonnin: Bye, Brian. Bye Allen. Bye.
