Tobe Blog

Stem Cell Marketing Compliance: What Your Front Office and Marketing Team Need to Know

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 07:30:24 GMT

If you offer regenerative medicine, you already know the regulatory pressure is real. FDA enforcement around stem cell therapy and adjacent biologics has ramped up since the enforcement discretion period ended, and peptide companies are being shut down at industry events in real time. Most practice owners hear that and assume their compliance risk lives in the exam room.

It does not.

The biggest compliance exposure in a stem cell practice doesn't come from the provider. It comes from the front desk answering a patient's phone call. It comes from the marketing coordinator writing a social media caption. It comes from the agency building your website copy. Every patient touchpoint outside the exam room is a place where the wrong sentence can turn a legal 361 HCTP product into something the FDA will treat as an unapproved drug.

This is Chuck Meeker's third appearance on Grow Smarter, and we go where the previous two episodes (A Playbook for Compliant Stem Cell Marketing and The Blueprint for Compliant Stem Cell Marketing) did not: the operational layer. Specifically, the talk track your whole team needs.

The Compliance Risk That Lives Outside the Exam Room

Chuck Meeker is the co-founder of Hyagen Medical, a JD, and a PhD in molecular biology and biochemistry. He spends his time translating regulatory frameworks into language that entire practice teams can actually use. In Chuck's words, the biggest risk in regenerative medicine these days is government regulatory oversight tied to marketing claims, not to clinical administration.

Here is why that matters. The FDA regulates products and devices, not the practice of medicine. So if you are using a compliant 361 HCTP product, sourced properly and processed properly, the product itself is legal. The way it becomes non-compliant is when someone in your practice talks about it as if it were an approved drug.

A drug, by FDA definition, is something that treats, cures, or diagnoses a disease or condition. The moment your front desk says "stem cells can help with that" in response to a patient question, the legal product in your treatment room can be re-classified as an unapproved drug claim. The product did not change. The talk track did.

This is the exposure most practice owners underestimate, because the provider knows the rules and assumes the rest of the team does too. They usually do not.

What Your Front Office Needs to Know About Answering Patient Questions

Chuck describes two failure modes at the front desk. On one end of the pendulum are practices where staff have been told to say nothing at all. A patient calls in asking about stem cells, and the only response is "I can schedule you with the doctor." Patients find this incredibly dissatisfying, and it costs the practice consults. On the other end are practices where staff use what Chuck calls clinical shorthand: "stem cells can alleviate that, stem cells can fix that, we had a patient walking again after treatment." That is the kind of language that draws regulatory scrutiny.

The compliant talk track lives in between. The front desk can absolutely confirm what the practice does, what the route of administration is, and how to set a consult. "Yes, we do stem cell shoulder injections" is a fact about the procedure, not a claim about an outcome. "Yes, we do stem cell scalp injections" is the same. None of those phrases assert that the stem cell treats anything.

When a patient asks the harder question, "can it help my shoulder pain," the compliant answer redirects to biology. The clinic uses stem cell therapy because the cells contain natural biofactors that bind to the body's receptors and activate the body's own ability to heal. The stem cell is a delivery vehicle. The body does the work. That framing is biologically accurate, regulatory compliant, and more satisfying to patients than "stem cells will fix that."

The single most useful artifact a practice can build is a printed talk track that lives next to the phone. Hyagen Medical builds these for their clinical partners on request.

What Your Marketing Team Needs to Know About FDA-Compliant Language

The same rules apply to whoever owns marketing in your practice, whether that is an in-house coordinator or an outside agency. Chuck's two-rule framework is the place to start.

Rule one: do not link the product or its ingredients to any disease or condition. "Stem cells for autism," "stem cells for brain fog," "stem cells for chronic pain." All claims. All flagged.

Rule two: do not link the stem cell to the structure or function of the body. This is the rule most marketers miss. "Stem cells reduce inflammation," "stem cells repair damage," "stem cells activate healing." All claims, even though they sound clinical and neutral.

The compliant frame is consistent. Stem cells are a delivery vehicle for natural growth factors and cytokines. Those biomolecules bind to cell receptors in the body, and the body's own pathways do the rest. Your website copy, social posts, and email campaigns can describe the biology accurately without making a single drug claim, and that is the version that holds up under regulatory review.

For practices running paid ads on Google or Meta, the bar is higher. Both platforms require additional compliance review for regenerative medicine advertisers, and that review is getting tighter. Chuck shared in this episode that Hyagen is working with LegitScript on a fast-track pathway for compliant stem cell providers to receive LegitScript certification, which is what most ad platforms reference for healthcare advertiser eligibility. For practices that take compliance seriously, that pathway is going to matter.

The Hyagen Medical Advanced Training and What It Covers

For practices that want to go deeper, Hyagen Medical is hosting two events in 2026. The first is a clinical immersion training in July at Harry Adelson's Docere Clinics in Park City, Utah. Harry is widely considered one of the founding practitioners of stem cell therapy in Utah and was an early adopter of birth-tissue-derived stem cell protocols. The second is Hyagen's Advanced Training Seminar on September 18 and 19, 2026 in Lehi, Utah, which covers hands-on injection training, a lab tour of Blue Sky Bio Labs, compliance certification, and a marketing and practice development track.

The marketing and practice development track is the one that ties back to this episode. It is designed for the whole team, not only the provider, so practice owners can bring their office manager and marketing lead and walk away with talk tracks the entire staff can implement on Monday morning.

Details and registration are at hyagenmedical.com.

Key Takeaways

The biggest stem cell compliance risk in a practice lives at the front desk and in marketing copy, not in the exam room.
The FDA regulates products, not the practice of medicine, and a legal 361 HCTP product can be reclassified as an unapproved drug the moment someone makes a drug claim about it.
Rule one for every team member: do not link stem cells to a disease or condition.
Rule two for every team member: do not link stem cells to the structure or function of the body.
The compliant frame describes stem cells as a delivery vehicle for natural growth factors and cytokines, and the body's own pathways do the healing.
Front desk staff can confirm what the practice does and how the procedure is administered without making a single claim about what it treats.
Hyagen Medical's Advanced Training Seminar in September 2026 covers compliance certification and a marketing and practice development track designed for the whole team.

Compliance is not a reason to stop marketing regenerative medicine. It is the framework that lets practices market it effectively for the long run. The practices that get this right are the ones that train the whole team, build a talk track everyone can repeat, and audit their website copy with the same scrutiny they apply to their consent forms.

If you offer or are evaluating stem cell therapy and want to build a compliant marketing foundation, Tobe Agency works with practices on website copy, Local SEO, and content strategy that holds up under regulatory review. Book a Grow Smarter Assessment at tobeagency.com and we will tell you what your practice actually needs.

To go deeper on the clinical and compliance training side, visit hyagenmedical.com for the September 2026 Advanced Training Seminar.

Small Business Marketing Diagnosis: What You Need Before Ads

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:00:00 GMT

The most common request we get at Tobe Agency starts with some version of this: "We need to run ads." Or "We need more leads." Or "Can you set up a Facebook campaign?"

Nine times out of ten, ads are not the answer. Not because ads don't work. They do. But because the business asking for ads usually has a foundation problem that will make any ad campaign fail.

This isn't a sales pitch to buy more services. It's the opposite. The right diagnosis usually costs less and works faster than the wrong prescription.

Why "Just Run Ads" Usually Fails

Here's what we see repeatedly with small businesses spending $2,000 to $5,000 per month on paid media:

They send ad traffic to their homepage instead of a dedicated landing page. The homepage has seven different messages and no clear call to action.

They have no conversion tracking set up. They literally can't tell which clicks turned into customers, so they can't optimize anything.

Their Google Business Profile is incomplete or inaccurate. They're paying for clicks while their free listing sits there working against them.

Their website loads in 6 seconds on mobile. Google penalizes this in quality score, which drives up their cost per click.

Running ads on top of these problems is like turning up the volume on a broken speaker. Louder doesn't mean clearer.

The 80/20 of Small Business Marketing Fixes

Across dozens of clients, we've found that roughly 80% of "we need ads" requests are actually one of these three problems:

Problem 1: The website doesn't convert.

The fix is usually a clearer headline, a single call to action, faster load speed, and a mobile experience that doesn't make visitors pinch and zoom. This costs a fraction of what ads cost and produces results immediately.

Problem 2: The Google Business Profile is incomplete or neglected.

The fix takes 2 to 3 hours: accurate categories, complete service areas, real photos, and consistent posting. For local businesses, GBP optimization alone can drive more qualified leads than a $3,000/month ad budget.

Problem 3: There's no tracking in place.

The fix is setting up Google Analytics 4 events, connecting Google Ads to GA4, and defining what a "conversion" actually means for the business. Without this, every marketing dollar is spent blind.

These three fixes are the foundation. They're not glamorous. They don't feel like "doing marketing." But they're the reason some businesses get 5x return on ad spend and others get nothing.

The Sequence: Diagnose, Then Prescribe, Then Execute

At Tobe Agency, we use a framework called the Grow Smarter Method. The core principle is simple: right basics, right order.

Phase 1 is building your online front door. Website converts. GBP is complete. Tracking works. Messaging is clear. This is the foundation most businesses skip.

Phase 2 is getting found. Local SEO, content, Google Business Profile optimization. Building organic visibility so you're not 100% dependent on paid channels.

Phase 3 is scaling. Paid search, paid social, email nurture, retargeting. This is where ads belong, after the foundation is solid.

When a client comes to us asking for ads, we don't say no. We say "let's make sure your ads will actually work first." That usually means spending the first 30 to 60 days on Phase 1 before turning on paid media.

The businesses that follow this sequence spend less and grow more. The ones that skip to Phase 3 burn money and blame the agency.

If You're a Small Business Owner Ready to Spend on Ads

If you're about to invest $2,000+ per month in paid advertising, ask yourself three questions first:

If you sent 100 people to your website right now, would more than 3 fill out your form or call? If not, you have a conversion problem to solve before ads make sense.

If someone Googles your business name, does your GBP show accurate hours, services, and recent photos? If not, you're leaking credibility before the ad click even lands.

If a campaign generated 50 clicks yesterday, could you tell which ones turned into revenue? If not, you're spending without feedback, and no amount of budget will fix that.

If any answer is "no" or "I'm not sure," a Grow Smarter Assessment will save you money. We'll check your foundation, identify the gaps, and tell you whether ads are the right next step or whether something cheaper needs to happen first.

Diagnose first. Fix the foundation. Then scale what works.

Book a free Grow Smarter Assessment today.

Why Did My Sales Drop? 5 Reasons That Aren't Marketing

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Wed, 20 May 2026 01:56:32 GMT

Sales were steady. Maybe even growing. Then something shifted, and the numbers dropped. Why did my sales drop? The first instinct is to blame marketing: "The ads aren't working." "We need a new website." "Fire the agency."

But here's what most business owners miss: if your sales dropped suddenly, the cause is probably not marketing. Marketing is a slow-build channel. It doesn't produce overnight results, and it rarely causes overnight declines.

When sales fall off a cliff, the real causes are usually hiding inside the business itself. Here are five of the most common ones we see, and none of them will be fixed by increasing your ad spend.

1. Competition Is Taking Your Business

This is the hardest one to see because it happens gradually, then all at once.

A new competitor opens nearby with better pricing. An existing competitor finally invests in their online presence and starts outranking you. A national chain moves into your market with a marketing budget you can't match.

The signal: your traffic and impressions are stable, but calls and bookings are down. People are still searching for what you offer. They're just choosing someone else.

The fix: competitive analysis. Pull your Google Business Profile insights. Check if your search rankings have dropped relative to new competitors. Review your offer, pricing, and reviews against whoever is gaining ground.

2. Operational Breakdowns Are Leaking Revenue

Your marketing might be working perfectly, generating calls and form fills every week, but something downstream is broken.

Leads come in and nobody responds for 48 hours. The front desk isn't answering the phone during peak hours. Your intake process is so complicated that prospects give up halfway through.

The signal: marketing metrics (impressions, clicks, form submissions) look healthy. But revenue is flat or declining. The gap between "lead generated" and "deal closed" is widening.

The fix: audit your intake process. Mystery-shop your own business. Call your own number at 2 PM on a Tuesday. Fill out your own contact form and see how long it takes to get a response.

3. Customer Churn Is Outpacing New Business

You're acquiring new customers. But existing ones are leaving just as fast.

Churn hides behind revenue numbers because new sales mask the losses. Until one month, the new sales slow down slightly, and suddenly the churn becomes visible.

The signal: revenue looks flat even though you're closing new deals. Customer lifetime value is shrinking. Repeat bookings or reorders are declining quarter over quarter.

The fix: talk to the customers who left. Not a survey. An actual conversation. Ask what changed. You'll usually find the answer in 5 calls.

4. Your Pricing Drifted Out of Alignment

Costs went up: rent, payroll, supplies, software. But your pricing stayed the same. Or worse, you dropped prices to compete, and now you're working harder for less margin.

The signal: revenue is similar to last year, but profit is down significantly. You're busier than ever but making less money. Your average transaction value has been declining.

The fix: price audit. Compare your pricing to 3 direct competitors. Check if your margins are where they were 12 months ago. If you haven't raised prices in over a year and your costs have gone up, you probably need a pricing conversation before a marketing conversation.

5. Your Offer No Longer Matches What the Market Wants

Markets shift. What worked two years ago might not be what people are looking for today.

The signal: your content gets impressions, your ads get clicks, but nobody converts. The traffic is there. The interest is there. But the offer on the other end doesn't match what they expected to find.

The fix: look at the search terms that drive traffic to your site. Are people searching for something specific that you aren't offering? Are your service pages describing what you used to do instead of what you do now?

How to Tell If It's Actually a Marketing Problem

Here's the quick check: if your impressions and traffic are both declining, and your competitors haven't changed, marketing could genuinely be the cause. Maybe your SEO dropped, your ads got paused, or your content went stale.

But if traffic is stable and leads are down, look inward first. The five issues above account for the majority of sudden sales drops we see across dozens of small business clients.

If You're a Small Business Owner Watching Revenue Drop

If you're running a business between $500K and $1.5M in revenue and sales have dropped noticeably in the last 90 days, resist the urge to immediately change your marketing.

If your website traffic is stable but leads are down, the problem is almost certainly operational, competitive, or offer-related. No amount of ad spend fixes a broken intake process or a pricing gap.

If traffic and leads are both down, then marketing may be part of the issue, but even then, check the five causes above first. The cheapest fix is usually the non-marketing one.

If you want an outside perspective, that's exactly what the Grow Smarter Assessment covers. We pull your data, check for all five of these causes, and tell you where the real problem is. No pitch, just a diagnosis.

Book a free Grow Smarter Assessment today.

Why Isn't My Marketing Working? It's Either a Traffic Problem or a Conversion Problem.

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:15:59 GMT

You're spending money on marketing. You're posting on social media. You even redesigned the website last year. But the phone isn't ringing, the inbox is quiet, and leads have slowed to a trickle. So you ask the obvious question: why isn't my marketing working?

Here's the answer most agencies won't give you upfront: every marketing problem is either a traffic problem or a conversion problem. Not both. Fixing the wrong one wastes time, money, and momentum.

A traffic problem means not enough people are finding you. A conversion problem means people are finding you, but they're not taking action. The fix for each is completely different, and most small businesses guess wrong.

This post walks you through how to diagnose which problem you actually have, so you stop spending money on the wrong fix.

What a Traffic Problem Looks Like

A traffic problem is straightforward: your website, your Google Business Profile, and your content aren't getting seen by enough people.

Signs you have a traffic problem:

Your website gets fewer than 500 sessions per month.
Your Google Business Profile shows fewer than 200 views per month.
You're not ranking for any keywords related to your core services.
Almost all your business comes from referrals and word of mouth.
You've never invested in SEO, content, or paid search.

If this sounds familiar, the issue isn't your website or your offer. It's that nobody is seeing them. More ads won't help if you're running them to a page nobody can find organically. More social posts won't help if your audience isn't on that platform.

The fix for a traffic problem is building visibility: local SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, content that ranks, and a paid search strategy that puts you in front of people actively searching for what you sell.

What a Conversion Problem Looks Like

A conversion problem is trickier because it feels like a traffic problem. You see activity in Google Analytics, but nothing turns into revenue.

Signs you have a conversion problem:

Your website gets decent traffic (1,000+ sessions/month) but fewer than 10 leads.
People visit your site and leave within 30 seconds.
Your Google Business Profile gets views, but direction requests and calls are flat.
You're getting clicks from ads, but nobody fills out the form or calls.
Your bounce rate is above 70% on key landing pages.

If this is your situation, spending more on traffic will only amplify the problem. You'll pay more to send more people to a page that doesn't convert. It's like turning up the faucet when the bucket has a hole in it.

The fix for a conversion problem is improving what happens after someone arrives: clearer messaging, a stronger call to action, faster load times, better mobile experience, and an offer that matches what the visitor was looking for.

The 3-Question Diagnostic

You don't need a marketing degree to figure out which problem you have. Open Google Analytics and Google Search Console, then answer three questions:

Question 1: Are people finding you?

Check Google Search Console for impressions. If you're getting fewer than 1,000 impressions per month across your key service terms, you have a traffic problem. People aren't even seeing your listing in search results.

Question 2: Are people clicking?

Check your click-through rate (CTR) in Search Console. If your CTR is below 2%, people see you but aren't compelled to click. That's a conversion problem at the search-results level, meaning your page titles and descriptions need work.

Question 3: Are people taking action?

Check Google Analytics for conversion events (form submissions, phone calls, bookings). If traffic is healthy but conversions are low, you have an on-site conversion problem. Something between the click and the action is broken.

Most small businesses skip this diagnostic entirely. They go straight to "we need more ads" or "we need to post more on Instagram" without knowing whether the real bottleneck is getting found or getting chosen.

The Most Expensive Mistake: Fixing the Wrong One

Here's what happens when you get it backwards:

You have a traffic problem, but you redesign the website. Now you have a beautiful site that still nobody sees. You spent $10,000 on a redesign when $2,000 in local SEO would have moved the needle.

You have a conversion problem, but you increase ad spend. Now you're paying $5 per click to send people to a page with a 0.5% conversion rate. You needed to fix the landing page first, then scale the ads.

This is why diagnosis matters more than prescription. At Tobe Agency, we run this diagnostic before recommending a single service. The right fix depends entirely on which problem you actually have.

If You're Running a Small Business and Your Marketing Feels Stuck

If you're a small business owner spending $2,000 to $10,000 per month on marketing and not seeing results, start with the 3-question diagnostic above. Most of the time, the answer is clear within 15 minutes.

If you're getting fewer than 500 website sessions per month, you almost certainly have a traffic problem. Focus on SEO, Google Business Profile, and content before anything else.

If you're getting traffic but fewer than 5 leads per month, you have a conversion problem. Fix your messaging, your calls to action, and your landing page experience before spending another dollar on ads.

If you're not sure which one it is, that's exactly what our Grow Smarter Assessment is for. We'll pull your data, run the diagnostic, and tell you what to fix first, in plain English.

The simplest marketing advice nobody follows: diagnose before you prescribe. Figure out whether you have a traffic problem or a conversion problem, then fix that one thing first.

If you want help running that diagnostic, book a free Grow Smarter Assessment. We'll tell you which problem you have and what to do about it.

Real Estate AI: How Luxury Agents Can Get Found in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Tue, 05 May 2026 17:06:25 GMT

A few months ago, one of my clients asked me a question I didn't have an answer to: "How do I make sure I show up when someone searches for a luxury agent in my market on ChatGPT?"

At the time, I had no idea. And frankly, nobody in our industry really did.

The tools were changing fast. ChatGPT was in the lead, then Claude started gaining ground. Google rolled out AI Overviews. Perplexity carved out a niche with power users. And the affluent buyers and sellers that most of my clients serve were already using all of them.

That question sent me down a research path that fundamentally changed how I think about real estate marketing. And after auditing dozens of agents across luxury markets, I want to share what we've learned, because the window to act on this is still wide open.

Your Clients Are Already Using AI to Research You

Let's start with the data that should get your attention.

According to realtor.com's October 2025 report, 82% of Americans who are actively buying or selling a home now use AI for real estate insights. Not 82% of all Americans. Eighty-two percent of the people who are in the market right now: your clients and prospective clients.

And it's not just consumers driving this shift. The platforms are moving too. Zillow launched a ChatGPT integration in October 2025, making its listing data available inside AI search results. Redfin followed in February 2026. Google AI Overviews now appear above organic results in the majority of real estate searches.

Here's the part that matters most for established agents: a referral used to be the end of the discovery process. Now, a referral is just the beginning. When someone gives your name to a buyer or seller, the first thing many of them do is research you on AI. They ask ChatGPT about your track record, your specialties, your market. If the AI doesn't know you, or worse, describes you inaccurately, you may never get that call.

This is especially true in the luxury segment. Seventy-four percent of households earning $100,000 or more annually use AI in their searches. Luxury buyers and sellers index about 30% higher than average on Perplexity usage and 15% above average on LinkedIn. These aren't passive consumers. They're power researchers who optimize every major financial decision, and choosing a real estate agent is no exception.

The Difference Between SEO, AI Search, and GEO

Before going further, there are three terms worth understanding.

Traditional search (SEO) is what most agents already know. Someone types keywords into Google and gets a list of results. You rank by having the right content, backlinks, and technical foundation on your website.

AI search is different. Someone asks a question and gets a direct answer with specific names and reasons, customized to their query. There's no "Page 1" to rank on. Either the AI recommends you or it doesn't.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring your digital presence so AI platforms can find you, understand you, and recommend you. Think of GEO as what SEO was to Google, but for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.

The good news: if you're already doing strong SEO, you have a real head start on GEO. But if your SEO foundation is weak, AI search will be nearly impossible to crack.

The 4 Signals AI Uses to Decide Whether to Recommend You

After running our AI & Search Intelligence Blueprint audits across dozens of luxury agents and teams, we identified four specific signals that determine whether AI platforms will recommend you. Miss even one, and you're likely invisible.

Signal 1: Entity Verification (NAP Consistency)

Before AI will recommend you, it needs to verify that you exist as a real, consistent entity. This comes down to your name, address, and phone number (NAP) matching exactly everywhere you appear online: your website footer, Google Business Profile, Zillow profile, realtor.com, and every other directory.

This is the least exciting part of the process, but it's foundational. If you write "1234 Main St. Ste. 100" in one place and "1234 Main St. #100" in another, that inconsistency will penalize you in both AI and traditional search.

When we audited agents, we found that most were only listed on four to six of the 13 major directories we check. The remaining seven or eight were either unclaimed or had outdated information. Every missing or inconsistent listing is a signal AI can't use to verify your authority.

Signal 2: Review Validation

Reviews are how AI search engines and Google validate whether you actually do what you claim. Our audits suggest a threshold: 30 or more Google reviews will generally put you in AI consideration for most luxury markets. In highly competitive markets like Miami, New York, or Los Angeles, you'll want 50 or more.

But it's not just Google. Zillow reviews, realtor.com reviews, and other platform-specific social proof all feed into the AI's assessment of your credibility. And here's a detail most agents miss: the keywords in your reviews matter, and so do the keywords in your review responses. When you reply to a review with something like "It was great being your luxury real estate agent in Scottsdale," that reply becomes indexable keyword data.

Signal 3: Content Depth on Your Website

AI recommends agents who have demonstrated expertise through content. Your credentials alone aren't enough. AI needs to see market reports, neighborhood guides, buyer and seller FAQ content, and community-specific pages.

If your website is a bio, a listings widget, and a contact form, AI has nothing to work with. The question it's trying to answer is simple: "Is this person actually an expert in this specific market?" It can only answer that by evaluating your content and then cross-referencing it against your reviews and directory presence.

For listing agents specifically: if your website doesn't have seller-specific content, like how you price, why staging matters for luxury, what sellers should expect from your process, and the marketing tools you bring to the table, AI will never recommend you when sellers search.

One underutilized resource I see constantly: market reports. If you have access to local or regional market data, publish it as a blog post or web page, not just a PDF. PDFs are not indexable by search engines. A blog post built from that data, with your analysis and insights layered in, signals expertise in a way AI can actually read.

Signal 4: Niche Specificity

Most agents' online content is too generic for AI to recommend them for anything specific. When your bio says "I'm a go-getter focused on luxury real estate," that gives AI nothing to match against a buyer's query.

Your specialty has to appear consistently across your website, Google Business Profile, directory profiles, and social bios. You need to say: luxury residential, waterfront properties, second homes, relocations, listing specialist. These specific terms help AI understand exactly what you do and when to recommend you.

Here's the biggest takeaway from our audits: AI recommends the clearest signal, not the highest producer. If your digital presence is the most specific about your community and expertise, you will get shown over a $100 million producer whose website doesn't describe their work accurately. That's the opportunity right now, and it won't last forever.

The Coordination Problem

Even agents who understand all four signals often struggle with execution. They have a web developer, a social media manager, a content writer, a photographer, and maybe an agency. Everyone's doing good work, but nobody is following a coordinated strategy.

The web developer doesn't know what the social media manager is posting. The content writer doesn't know which keywords matter. The photographer produces beautiful work that never gets optimized for search. The result is a fragmented digital presence: one message on social media, a different one on the website, and inconsistencies across directories.

AI sees this fragmentation. Google sees the gaps. And no single person on most agents' teams is responsible for the overall picture.

The agents who are winning in AI search right now have one thing in common: a coordinated content strategy where every channel, from their website to their GBP to their social profiles, sends the same signal about who they are, what they specialize in, and why they're the authority in their market.

What to Do This Week

If you take one thing from this article, let it be these five actions:

1. Search yourself on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Ask: "Who is the best luxury agent in [your market]?" and "Tell me about [your name] as a real estate agent." Note what comes back.

2. Check your Google Business Profile. Is your phone number current? Your website link? Your address? When did you last post? If it's been more than 30 days, that's a problem.

3. Count your Google reviews. If you're under 30, make it a priority this quarter to reach out to past clients. If you're under 15, this is urgent.

4. Read what AI says about you. Is it accurate? Does it reflect your actual production, specialties, and market focus? If not, identify where the wrong information might be coming from.

5. Check your NAP consistency. Pick five directories (Google, Zillow, realtor.com, Yelp, BBB) and compare your name, address, and phone number across all of them. Fix any mismatches.

The Window Is Open, But It Won't Stay Open

Right now, AI search optimization for real estate is where SEO was in the early days. You could put the right content on a website and get found relatively easily because so few agents were doing it well. That same arbitrage opportunity exists today with AI search.

The agents who send the right signals, create specific content, and bring consistency to their online presence right now have a clear path to getting found in AI searches. The ones who wait will face a much steeper climb once their competitors close the gap.

If you want to see exactly where you stand, how AI describes you, how you compare to your competitors, and what to fix first, that's exactly what our AI & Search Intelligence Blueprint was built to do. It's a 60-plus page custom audit with a prioritized 6-month roadmap you can hand directly to your marketing team.

The question isn't whether your clients are using AI to research agents. They already are. The question is whether AI knows enough about you to recommend you.

Are You Renting Your Marketing? A Small Business Ownership Checklist

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 15:05:12 GMT

The Two Ways to Get Found on Google (And Why Utah Businesses Need Both)

Last quarter, a Utah business owner sat across from me on a discovery call. She wanted a new website. Her current site was four years old, slow, and built on a platform she had grown to hate. Simple project on the surface.

Then I asked the question I always ask: do you own your current site?

She didn’t know.

We pulled up her account. The website was built and hosted by a marketing company that had locked the source code, the page templates, and her entire customer database behind their platform. She could leave. She just couldn’t take any of it with her unless she paid a four-figure exit fee plus an ongoing monthly fee to access her own data. The website she thought she owned, she was renting. The contact list she had spent four years building, she was renting. Even her domain DNS lived inside their account.

This is far more common than most small business owners realize. If you have not done a clean ownership audit of your marketing setup, there is a real chance you are renting things you think you own. This post is the checklist.

Why So Many Small Business Owners End Up Renting Their Marketing

Most marketing companies do not pitch their services as "rental." They pitch a website, an SEO program, an email platform. What they often build, though, is something that only works while you are paying them.

There are three reasons this happens:

The platform is proprietary. You cannot move the site to another host because the underlying code is theirs, not yours.
The data is locked. Your contact list, customer database, and analytics live in their system. Exports are limited, gated, or impossible.
The access is single-threaded. The vendor is the only one with admin access to your domain, your hosting, your CRM, sometimes even your Google Workspace.

When you decide to switch vendors, all three of these become bargaining chips. Not yours. Theirs. The problem is invisible until the moment you try to leave, and by then you are months and thousands of dollars from a clean exit.

The Five Things Every Small Business Should Own

Use this as a checklist. If you cannot answer "yes, fully" to each of these, you have an ownership gap.

Your Website

You should have administrator access to your website’s CMS and the ability to add or remove users yourself. The site should be built on a platform you can take with you. WordPress, Webflow, and Shopify are easier to migrate than proprietary builders.
Your Domain

Your domain name should be registered to your business, with the login held by you or your IT vendor. Not your marketing agency. If the agency owns the domain registration, you do not own your web address.
Your Customer Data

You should have admin access to your CRM and the ability to export every contact and lead record on demand. If the platform does not allow a full export, that is a structural ownership problem.
Your Content

Every piece of website copy, every blog post, every SEO deliverable should be backed up in a file you control. If your only copy lives inside your agency’s CMS, you do not own your content.
Your Workspace and Email

Your business email, your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account, and your DNS records should be in accounts you control, ideally administered by an IT vendor working directly for you. The marketing agency building or maintaining your website should coordinate with your IT vendor, not replace them. Anyone touching DNS or domain records can affect your business email, and that is not a fight you want on a Friday afternoon.

Red Flags When You’re Hiring (or Already Working With) a Marketing Vendor

Watch for these patterns:

The vendor will not give you full admin access to your own systems.
"We manage that for you" is fine. "You cannot have a login" is not.
Your contract has an exit fee for taking your website with you.
Setup and design fees are normal. Ransom on your own assets is not.
The vendor refuses to work alongside outside IT, web developers, or SEO consultants.
A confident vendor welcomes other pros checking the work. A protective vendor wants to be the only voice in the room.
Data export options are unclear or "available on request."
A real ownership policy means a one-click export.
You cannot identify what platform your website actually runs on.
If "the agency built it" is the most specific answer, that is a red flag.
The vendor’s contract gives them ownership of the content they produce.
Read the IP clause. Content you paid for should belong to you.

Any one of these on its own is a conversation. Two or three together means you should start auditing now, not when you decide to leave.

How to Audit What You Actually Own (30 minutes, 5 steps)

Block thirty minutes this week. Do this:

List every marketing tool and platform your business uses. Website CMS, hosting, domain registrar, CRM, email platform, GBP, ad accounts, analytics.
Confirm who has admin access to each. It should be you, your team, or an IT vendor working directly for you.
Test the export. Can you pull your data out today in a usable format?
Confirm where the credentials live. Your password manager, not your agency’s.
For your website, confirm what platform it runs on. If you do not know, your agency should be able to tell you in one sentence. If they cannot or will not, that is the answer.

If any step turns up a gap, document it. Do not act yet. Knowing the gap is half the work.

If You’re Already Mid-Contract and Locked In

If you are a small business owner mid-contract with an agency that is blocking exports, locking your domain, or refusing to share admin access, do not start a fight on Friday afternoon. Get the audit in writing first. Document what you have access to and what you do not. Then decide whether to renegotiate, exit at contract end, or pay the fee and move.

The wrong move is paying for a new website while the old vendor still owns your domain and your customer list. That is how owners get charged twice for the same migration.

Own It, Don’t Rent It

Owning your marketing is not a tech problem. It is a discipline. Most small business owners do not have an ownership policy because no one ever told them they needed one. The cost of finding out at the wrong moment is real: lost contacts, lost SEO equity, lost months. That is exactly the kind of avoidable waste we built Tobe to eliminate.

Waste less. Grow smarter.

If you want a second set of eyes on your current setup, book a free Grow Smarter Assessment. We will audit what you actually own, flag the gaps, and tell you what to fix first.

Vehicle Wrap Marketing: How Utah Small Businesses Turn Trucks Into Local Lead Machines

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:50:48 GMT

If you're a Utah small business owner in the trades — HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, roofing — you probably have at least one company vehicle on the road every day. You might be spending $800 to $1,000 a month on Facebook ads hoping to get more local leads. But there's a marketing channel most of you are completely ignoring, and it's sitting right in your driveway.

Vehicle wraps.

In this episode of Grow Smarter Utah, Andrew Hong sat down with Josh Minson, owner of 660 Grafix & Wraps in Draper, to break down exactly how vehicle wrap marketing works as an offline strategy for local Utah businesses — the ROI math, the design principles, the QR code strategy, and what to actually look for when choosing a wrap shop.

Josh isn't just a wrap installer. He spent 30 years in digital marketing, built his own agency, and saw the pendulum swing from offline to online — and now back again. His perspective on how wraps fit into a complete local marketing strategy is unlike anything you'll hear from a typical signage shop.

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. The ROI Math That Changes Everything

Here's the number that stops most business owners in their tracks: a full vehicle wrap on a transit van costs roughly $5,000. That sounds like a lot — until you break it down.

Amortized over 36 months, a $5,000 wrap costs approximately $140 per month. Ask yourself what $140 buys you on Facebook Ads or Google right now. The honest answer: almost nothing. You might get a few hundred clicks on a good month, with no guarantee any of them are local, qualified, or ready to buy.

Now look at what that same $140 a month is actually buying you on a wrapped vehicle.

According to industry data, an average wrapped vehicle generates between 30,000 and 70,000 impressions per day — whether it's moving through traffic or parked in a neighborhood. Taking a conservative middle figure of 50,000 impressions per day, that's 1.5 million local impressions per month. Over 36 months, a single wrapped van generates approximately 54 million impressions for $5,000 total.

The cost per impression? About $0.0001. You will not find that number anywhere in digital advertising.

And here's what makes those impressions more valuable than most digital ad placements: they're hyper-local. Your wrapped HVAC van driving through a neighborhood in South Jordan is reaching exactly the homeowners who might need their AC serviced next summer. It costs more money on Facebook and Google to geo-target a specific zip code than it does to just drive a wrapped truck through it.

As Josh put it: "You're not going to get that kind of ROI per impression dollar cost anywhere else."

2. Why Your Logo Has to Come First

Here's where most business owners get it wrong. They decide they're ready to invest in a wrap, they call a shop, and they show up with a logo they designed in Microsoft Word in 2003 — or worse, one they grabbed from an AI image generator last week.

Josh is direct about this: if your logo isn't working, the wrap isn't going to work either.

"I've told people straight up — your logo sucks. I can't consciously put a bad logo on a wrap design that looks amazing and then ruin it. You're paying $5,000 to grow your business. Let me fix the foundation first."

At 660 Grafix, they offer logo redesigns as part of the wrap process for clients who need it. And the standard they hold logos to is counterintuitive: if a child wouldn't notice it, it's not eye-catching enough.

Josh described a plumbing client whose old logo was a generic pipe wrench — forgettable, invisible on a van. They redesigned it around a character: a plumbing gnome. Now when that van drives through a neighborhood, kids spot the gnome and point it out to their parents. The parents look. They remember the company. That's brand recall working exactly the way it's supposed to.

The same principle applied to a window company in Richfield — Thumbs Up Windows and Doors — whose logo features a cowboy coming through a door. The character makes people look, and looking creates memory.

Your brand has three seconds to register. Just like a billboard. If the logo doesn't do the work in those three seconds, the wrap is a missed opportunity.

3. QR Codes: The Bridge Between Offline and Online

One of the highest-leverage additions any business owner can make to their vehicle wrap right now costs essentially nothing: a QR code.

Josh refuses to put service lists on vehicles. "Nobody reads that. Nobody cares that you're family owned and operated. All they care about is who you are and how you can help them." Instead, that QR code links to your website, a landing page, or a lead capture form — and it does all the heavy lifting of explaining what you do, who you serve, and why you're the right choice.

The use case Josh described is worth pausing on: you're stuck on I-15 between South Salt Lake and Draper, and the van in front of you is a water heater repair company. Your water heater has been making noise for a week. You scan the QR code, you're on their site in 30 seconds, you see their reviews, you like the vibe, you save the number.

That's an offline-to-online conversion that no Facebook ad can manufacture.

If you use a tool like Bit.ly, you can create trackable QR codes and build analytics around them — so you actually know how many people are scanning your wrap, when, and where. For a business trying to measure marketing ROI, that's real data from an offline channel. You can even build a specific landing page behind that QR code: a contractor could drive people to an instant basement remodel quote tool, capturing a lead before the light even turns green.

4. What to Look for When Choosing a Wrap Shop

Not every wrap shop is created equal, and a bad install can do real damage — both to your vehicle and to your brand. Josh offered a clear checklist for business owners shopping around:

Ask about the material. Quality vinyl from a reputable manufacturer makes a significant difference in how long the wrap lasts and how cleanly it removes. Cheap vinyl fails faster and often damages paint when it comes off.

Ask if they remove door handles and trim. 660 Grafix removes all door handles, mirrors, and accessory panels before wrapping, then reinstalls them. Shops that cut around trim instead of removing it leave seam points that become failure points over time.

Ask about their prep process. Proper cleaning and surface prep is the difference between a wrap that lasts three to five years and one that starts peeling at six months.

Ask about the warranty. 660 Grafix offers a one-year workmanship warranty on all installs. If something shows up after the fact, they fix it and deal with the manufacturer for material reimbursement.

Don't go with the cheapest shop. You get what you pay for on a vehicle that's supposed to represent your brand to hundreds of thousands of people.

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

A $5,000 vehicle wrap amortized over 36 months costs roughly $140/month — less than a minimal Facebook Ads budget, with far more local reach
A single wrapped vehicle generates an estimated 1.5 million local impressions per month, or 54 million over a 3-year wrap lifespan
Your logo is the foundation: if it can't grab attention in three seconds — including catching a kid's eye — your wrap won't perform
QR codes on wraps bridge offline visibility to online conversion and make your wrap trackable
Offline marketing doesn't replace digital: a recognized brand in the physical world makes every digital ad more effective
When shopping for a wrap shop, ask about materials, prep process, trim removal, and warranty before you ask about price

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Utah is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. New homes, new neighborhoods, new businesses — and new customers driving the same roads your trucks are on every single day. If your vehicles don't have your name on them, you're handing that visibility to a competitor.

If you're ready to explore what a wrap or fleet graphics could do for your business, Josh Minson offers free marketing consultations at 660grafix.com. You're not just getting a quote — you're getting a conversation about your brand, your marketing strategy, and how offline and online work together to get you more local customers.

And if you want help connecting your wrap strategy to your digital foundation — SEO, Google Business Profile, paid search — that's what we do at Tobe Agency. Visit tobeagency.co.

Waste less. Grow smarter.

Book Your Free Grow Smarter Assessment

Read the Edited Transcript

Andrew Hong: Welcome back to Grow Smarter Utah, brought to you by Tobe Agency. If you're a small business owner in Utah, you know how much pressure there is to make every marketing dollar count. Our mission is to help you waste less and grow smarter with your marketing investments, focusing on what actually matters in the local market.

Today, we're talking about something that is one of the most underrated marketing strategies for local Utah small businesses: offline marketing, specifically vehicle wraps, fleet graphics, and print. I brought in an expert who does this every single day for businesses right here in Utah. Josh Minson is the owner of 660 Graphics and Wraps in Draper. He's wrapped everything from single work trucks to full commercial fleets, and he has a really clear-eyed view of how wraps actually work as a marketing tool, not just a design project.

Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh Minson: Thanks for having me.

From Digital to Print: Merging the Marketing Timelines

Andrew Hong: You’re a client of ours for SEO, but you actually have a deep marketing background yourself. Tell our audience a little bit about your background and how you got started.

Josh Minson: It all started about 30 years ago on the digital side. I built websites up until 2019. Back in the early 2000s, everything was about brick-and-mortar and Yellow Pages, and nobody was harnessing the power of the internet. Over time, I saw it evolving as people started focusing heavily online, but you can't forget Main Street. We don't physically live in a digital world.

I've always had this excitement about printing. I bought my first large-format printer back in 2008 and started printing banners right in the middle of all the digital growth because I saw people needing to market offline. In 2024, we launched 660 Graphics and started wrapping vehicles for companies, and it’s been a blast watching companies grow as we help them.

The Unbeatable ROI of Vehicle Wraps

Andrew Hong: Utah is one of the fastest-growing states in the US. We see population growth and new houses being built here constantly. With all these new people coming into Utah, where do you see opportunities for small businesses to grab more market share using non-digital techniques?

Josh Minson: For businesses around northern Utah, having your vehicles wrapped gives you the biggest bang for your buck ROI-wise. The cost per lead is crazy when it comes down to a vehicle wrap.

Andrew Hong: Let's break down that math. If you amortize a $5,000 full wrap over a short end of 36 months, that’s about $138 a month. Spending $140 a month on Facebook ads or search doesn't get you anything. For a business owner who might be on the fence, what kind of impressions do you think they can generate?

Josh Minson: Statistically, reports say an average vehicle wrap receives between 30,000 and 70,000 impressions per day, depending on where they are driving. If we take the middle average of 50,000 impressions per day, that's 1.5 million impressions in a month. If you divide your $150 monthly cost by 1.5 million, you're paying 0.0001 cents per impression. Over 36 months, that’s 54 million impressions for $5,000. You aren't going to get that kind of ROI anywhere else, and it works 24/7.

Andrew Hong: And the most important part of that analysis is that these are local impressions in your neighborhood. You are planting your brand in their mind. You have to build a marketing pipeline. They might not need to fix their HVAC tomorrow, but you're giving yourself a chance to be remembered three months from now when it actually breaks.

Connecting Offline to Online with QR Codes

Andrew Hong: Let's talk about folks who have an aging or outdated wrap. One major behavior shift post-COVID is that people got used to scanning QR codes with their built-in phone cameras. If you wrapped your vehicle five years ago, you might not have one. What’s your take on QR codes and connecting those offline experiences to digital ones?

Josh Minson: I swear by them. A lot of companies want to vomit their entire service list all over their car, but nobody reads that. Consumers just want to know who you are and how you can help them. A QR code takes all that nonsense off your driving billboard and directs the consumer straight to your website. If they are stuck behind a plumber in traffic, they can just scan the code to learn more and decide if they want to work with you. You have three seconds to get attention, just like a billboard, and your logo should do all of that for them.

Andrew Hong: I agree. If you use a tool like Bitly, you can create QR codes and build analytics around them. For example, a general contractor could have a code saying, "Scan here to see how much it might cost to remodel your basement". It takes them to a landing page, asks them basic questions, and gives them a quote on the spot. The person who scanned it gets their info, and the business gets a trackable lead.

Design Priority: Why Your Logo Matters Most

Andrew Hong: You mentioned keeping laundry lists off the van. What should be prioritized on a wrap?

Josh Minson: The number one element of a vehicle wrap should be your logo because that's what people will remember. As weird as it sounds, your brand should even attract the eyes of a child. We designed a logo for a plumbing client featuring a cool plumbing gnome. The kids point it out, and the parents look and recognize the business. In this day and age, you have to stand out. If everybody has a boring, industrialized logo, you're going to blend in.

Andrew Hong: What happens if a customer comes to you, but their brand or logo sucks? How do you handle that?

Josh Minson: I straight out tell them their logo sucks. I'm not afraid to, because they are paying us to help grow their business. I can't consciously make an amazing wrap design and then put a terrible logo on top of it. If their logo isn't working, we offer to help recreate their design at a discounted rate with the wrap to enhance their brand.

Shopping for Quality: Questions You Must Ask

Andrew Hong: If a business owner is sold and wants to explore wraps, what should they be thinking about when shopping around?

Josh Minson: First, never go with the cheapest guy. You have to think about the quality of the wrap and how it will remove later. We've seen wraps from other places that are completely failing, burning black on the hood, after just six months.

When you shop around, ask about the warranty. We personally offer a one-year warranty on all of our wraps for workmanship. You also need to ask how they prep the vehicle. We remove all door handles, mirrors, and accessory panels to avoid seams that could create failure points later. We go the extra mile to make sure our installs are as flawless as humanly possible.

Conclusion

Andrew Hong: There you have it. If you have a company vehicle sitting in your driveway or on a job site without your name on it, you are leaving money on the table every single day. Offline marketing isn't dead; for local businesses in Utah, it might be the most underutilized channel you have.

If you're ready to explore what fleet graphics can do for your business, head over to 660 Graphics. Josh offers free marketing consultations, where you can discuss your brand, your strategy, and how offline and online marketing work together to grow your business. Thanks so much for joining us and dropping this knowledge today, Josh.

Josh Minson: It was awesome. Like I always tell people: we don't just wrap cars, we build businesses.

Auto Dealership Marketing in Utah: Which Channel Actually Works for Your Business

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:35:12 GMT

If you run an automotive business in Utah, chances are you have spent money on marketing that did not work. Maybe you hired someone to run your social media, and all they did was post inventory photos that looked identical to every other dealership in the valley. Maybe you invested in Google Ads but never tracked whether those clicks turned into phone calls. Or maybe you have been doing nothing at all, relying on word of mouth and hoping the cars sell themselves.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: most automotive businesses in Utah are spending money on the wrong marketing channel. Not because those channels are bad, but because the strategy does not match the type of business. An oil change shop does not need the same marketing playbook as a custom wrap studio. A Porsche dealership and a local used car lot have completely different audiences, budgets, and buyer psychology.

In this episode of Grow Smarter Utah, Andrew Hong of Tobe Agency and Brayden Tomicic of B Social break down exactly which marketing channels work for which type of automotive business, so you can stop guessing and start investing where it actually drives customers through your door.

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. The Biggest Auto Dealership Marketing Mistake: Content Built to Sell, Not to Connect

Brayden works with dealerships, wrap shops, membership clubs, and automotive brands across northern Utah, from Porsche to boutique independents. The number one mistake he sees across the board is that every piece of content is oriented around selling.

The logic makes sense on paper. Dealership owners come from sales. They want to move inventory. So they post a photo of a truck with a price tag and hope someone bites. The problem is that twelve other dealerships in the Salt Lake Valley are posting the same truck, with the same financing offer, shot from the same angle. There is nothing to differentiate you.

This applies well beyond dealerships. Service centers that post the same oil change coupon every week. Wrap shops that only showcase finished vehicles without showing the craftsmanship or the team behind the work. Detailing businesses that post before-and-after photos with no context, no personality, no reason for a potential customer to choose them over the next listing in Google Maps.

The fix is not to stop selling. It is to stop leading with the sale. Build trust first, and the transactions follow.

2. Auto Dealership Marketing Starts With Brand, Not Inventory

One of the most direct moments in the episode comes from Brayden: your product is basically the same unless you are manufacturing your own car. Every dealership has access to the same inventory, the same banks, and the same financing terms. So if the product is not the differentiator, what is?

Your brand. Your personality. Your story. The way your team treats people when they walk through the door.

Andrew and Brayden both emphasize that small business owners need to answer one question before spending a dollar on marketing: why are you different? If you cannot summarize it in one sentence, you are not ready. And delegating that responsibility to a marketing agency or a content creator is not the answer either. They can help you communicate your brand, but they cannot invent it for you.

For Utah automotive businesses competing in a fast-growing market, this matters more than ever. More population means more competition, and more competition means you need to stand out, not blend in.

3. Transactional vs. Lifestyle: Matching the Channel to the Business

The core framework in this episode is what Andrew calls the "Transactional vs. Lifestyle" split. It is a simple but powerful way to think about where to put your marketing budget.

Transactional businesses are the ones customers search for when they need something done. Oil changes. Tire swaps. Brake inspections. Auto body repair. These businesses have pre-baked demand because the service is a necessity, not a luxury. Customers are not browsing Instagram looking for an oil change. They are typing "oil change near me" into Google.

For transactional automotive businesses, the priority is clear: own your search presence first. That means Google Business Profile optimization, local SEO, and Google Ads with a clear offer. Andrew stresses the importance of having a funnel in place so that even if someone does not buy immediately, you capture their information through an SMS or email campaign to stay top of mind.

Lifestyle businesses are discovered differently. Wrap shops, custom detailing, audio installations, high-end memberships like Warehouse Motor Club or Club Paddock. People do not search for these the same way they search for tires. They discover them through content, through community, through brand identity.

For lifestyle-focused automotive businesses, the priority shifts toward content creation, social media presence, and brand storytelling. Brayden recommends three foundational media assets for any lifestyle automotive brand: a founder story video that tells your "why," a sizzle reel that showcases your work and can live on your website and Google Business Profile, and testimonial videos from customers who genuinely advocate for your brand.

4. What $2,000 a Month Actually Gets You in Automotive Marketing

Andrew and Brayden get specific about budgets. If you are a lifestyle-focused automotive brand with a budget of two to three thousand dollars a month, Brayden frames $2,000 as the starting point on the social and content side. At that level, the focus should be awareness, not transactions. A few videos per month to establish who you are, get eyeballs on your page, and start building trust.

But here is the honest advice both hosts give: if you are a brand new business worried about making payroll, do not hire a branding agency. That is not where the money should go. Building a social brand takes time, and if you need revenue now, you are better off running targeted ads, investing in SEO, or focusing on infrastructure and sales processes.

The question Brayden asks every prospective client: if I brought you a hundred people tomorrow, could you help them? If the answer is no, you are not ready for marketing. You need to fix your processes, your offer, and your pricing first.

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Stop leading every piece of content with a sales pitch. Build trust first, especially on social media where you are competing with a dozen identical posts.
Define your brand before spending a dollar on marketing. If you cannot explain what makes you different in one sentence, pause and figure that out first.
Match your marketing channel to your business type. Transactional businesses should prioritize search and Google Ads. Lifestyle brands should invest in content, social media, and brand identity.
Start with three foundational media assets: a founder story, a sizzle reel for your website and GBP, and testimonial videos.
If you need customers today and you are worried about rent, do not hire a content agency. Run ads, invest in your infrastructure, and build the brand when you can afford to play the long game.

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Not every automotive business has the same marketing playbook. A service center, a dealership, and a custom wrap shop all need different channel mixes, different content strategies, and different budget allocations. The transactional vs. lifestyle framework gives you a starting point to stop wasting money and start investing where it actually works.

If you need help with Google Business Profile, local SEO, or paid search for your automotive business, reach out to Tobe Agency at tobeagency.com. If you need content strategy, video production, or social media management for your automotive brand, connect with Brayden at B Social.

Book Your Free Grow Smarter Assessment

Read the Edited Transcript

Andrew Hong: Welcome to Grow Smarter Utah, brought to you by Tobe Agency and B Social. As a Utah business owner, you know the pressure of making every marketing dollar count. Our mission is to help you waste less and grow smarter with your marketing investments, focusing on what actually matters in the Utah market.

Today we're going industry-specific. If you own or run an automotive business in Utah — whether that's a dealership, a service center, a custom wrap shop, or a detailing business — this episode is for you. Because here's the problem: most automotive businesses are spending money on the wrong marketing channel. The oil change shop is burning budget on Instagram. The custom wrap shop is ignoring it. And almost everyone is neglecting their Google Business Profile.

We're going to break down exactly which marketing channels work for which type of automotive business, so you can stop guessing and start investing where it actually drives customers through your door.

I'm Andrew Hong, founder of Tobe Agency. I handle the technical side — the SEO, the paid ads, analytics, conversion tracking. And Brayden from B Social is back. He specializes in content creation, organic social strategy for local businesses, including automotive clients right here in Utah. So we're splitting the lanes a little bit. I'll cover the search and SEO side, Brayden will cover the creative and social side, and together we'll show you the full picture.

Brayden, welcome back. How are you doing?

Brayden Tomicic: Doing good. Feels good to be back.

Andrew Hong: Awesome. So automotive really is your specialty. Tell me a little bit about how you got into the scene. We all kind of got here through a passion for cars and things like that, but how did you sort of turn a passion into a profession? Not many are able to do that.

Brayden Tomicic: Like you said, it all stemmed from cars — going out to the meets and hanging out. Obviously a huge passion for cars since I was a little kid. To not make a long story long, I started taking photos on my iPhone at that time and was doing quick edits and posting them. And then I met a couple people who were like, "Hey, go buy a camera and start doing this a little bit better." And then it just kept evolving and evolving.

I found a need in the market. I spent a ton of time not only honing my craft, but also just building the knowledge and putting in the time that it takes to really create value for businesses that's actually going to help them grow. So not only could I run a profitable business and do this full time and work in a niche that I love, but also bring benefit to people who are trying to grow and do the same thing in their own business.

Andrew Hong: You've organized a lot of things in the community here in northern Utah. You're involved in Cars and Coffee out here. You've got your own brand that you're building as well — Throttle Therapy Club. Tell me a little bit about some of the clients that you're working with out here. What types of businesses are they? What do you do for them?

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, so we work with a wide range of businesses. Everything from dealerships — we work with Porsche, a couple other more boutique dealerships, a few OEM dealerships like GMC. That's one part of our niche. We also work with wrap shops, people who do a little bit more on the customization side. We've consulted with a lot of different automotive shops, people on the maintenance side, and just kind of everything in between. We work with Warehouse Motor Club and Club Paddock, which are more membership-based but still heavily automotive. So yeah, just the full range — everything in between that's automotive-related, and a few other brick-and-mortar style businesses.

Andrew Hong: That's a pretty awesome portfolio. And if any folks out there are Porsche, Lamborghini, or exotic car fans, I think Brayden has a portfolio of pretty much every exotic supercar that's in Utah — and there's quite a few of them, actually.

So tell me, Brayden — when you're working across these clients, you're doing shoots for Porsche, right? Obviously a brand like that requires a lot of thought and precision when you execute. Tell me about some of the work that you do there and what drives value for a pretty prestigious dealership with a prestigious brand, versus the work you might do with a smaller business or one that's in a different category — like third-party parts, or maybe they're not OEM. What are some differences in the approaches that you take?

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, it's actually really interesting because people look at it and think, "That's the dream brand to work with." And yes, it's super cool to work with them. The thing that most people neglect is the style of content, the strategy — everything that goes into it is completely different versus if I was working with a more boutique dealer who is local and doesn't have the brand presence like Porsche does.

Porsche has a worldwide presence. You go anywhere in the world, everybody knows Porsche. So they're not marketing to necessarily bring in new business. They do want new business, but their strategy is different. Especially from the social and content creation side where we're talking about organic reach — it's more about building a community and having a relationship, establishing different channels and new connections with people just to keep them top of mind. Like, "Hey, we are here. Here's some of our inventory." Even though a lot of brand-new inventory you can't necessarily get because they've got a long list of people on preorder depending on the car.

The strategy is definitely a lot different at that level, because we care more about communicating the level of quality of the brand out there and building relationships with the local community. Since we are an arm of Porsche, even though everyone knows them, we need to make sure that people in Salt Lake City know that we're here and we're around. So it's a little bit different. We're not trying to be as salesy. It gives us a little bit more creative flexibility, and obviously they're a great brand to work with.

But again, the strategy is very different versus some of our other clients who don't have a national presence but have a local presence and they're trying to build and market to the community here. There's a couple dealers that sell a wide variety of different types of cars — they may have a Porsche, but they also have Mercedes and trucks and other cars. And so the approach and strategy is very different between the two, because while we want to sell, we're approaching it from, "Hey, we're here, this is what we sell, this is what we do, and here's why you should trust us over the competition."

Andrew Hong: So let's say you're one of these local businesses, right? You're not an arm of a national or international brand. Let's say you are the local dealership that might specialize in trucks — 80% trucks, 20% random other vehicles or EVs. Or you might be a dealership that specializes in EVs. For these local automotive businesses, whether they're dealerships or other types of automotive businesses — what are the two or three biggest social media and creative content mistakes that you see them make? This can go from planning to execution to publishing the content. What are some examples of big mistakes that you often see and have to consult people on?

Brayden Tomicic: So many. It's like, where do we start?

Honestly, to their credit, they're there to sell. Anyone who's even started a dealership has usually come from the sales side of the dealership. That's what they know, that's what they experience, and that's what they're trying to do.

So the number one issue that I see — every dealer and really almost across the board for a lot of other businesses — is their content is oriented around selling. And it's like, great, okay, here's the thing: because of our complete access to digital media, there's a time to sell, like within an ad. But when I'm posting a car, there might be twelve other dealerships with that same car. So why am I trying to sell you just like the other dealerships? You're kind of becoming a part of all of the other noise of what people are doing.

And that's honestly the number one mistake that I see people make — they immediately want to come in, they want to do content, and then they're like, "All right, hey, so we're going to push this car today and we're going to sell it to you through this piece of media." And it's like, okay, yes, but nobody has the trust in you as a dealer.

Andrew Hong: Why do they always pick that one car to push? Has it been sitting on the lot forever and they want to get more eyeballs? Like what — why do they always pick that one?

Brayden Tomicic: It's a combination. Sometimes it is like, "Okay, this is the hot car. We know we're gonna sell it. We just want to let people know that we have one available." Sometimes it's like, "All right, this car has been sitting on the lot for the last 60-plus days." And they pay interest on every car every day. So they might just be trying to move it a little bit. But yeah, it's usually the latter.

Andrew Hong: And frankly, it's either the latter or there's no rhyme or reason to it.

Brayden Tomicic: Exactly, yes. And it's just funny because buyers are very conscious. They know what they want, to an extent. So why be a part of what everyone else is doing? Why not be different? How do you separate yourself from other dealerships? These are a lot of the questions we walk through — not only how you separate yourself, but what makes you different. Because selling a car is selling a car. But what makes your dealership different? That's what we try to break down for people.

Andrew Hong: I ask that question a lot because when we build websites for people, and even these days when you're doing SEO, it's not just about throwing keywords in there that's going to get you found by Google. Actually, all of us now want to get found in ChatGPT and all the AI search engines. In order for us to do that, we have to talk about why you're special. And we talked about this — I think on the last time we recorded — which is that your brand has never been more important.

When you are working with a client and you're doing that initial consultation — you haven't even shot a photo yet or recorded a video — how do you deal with it when they can't really answer you on why they're special or why they're different, or they give you a generic answer? "Oh, we like our customers and we have the best selection of trucks and we have financing and we have this and we have that." How do you handle that when they can't really tell you why they're different?

Brayden Tomicic: It's very difficult. Because if they don't even really know, you can try to convince them of other ideas. But if they don't know and they can't communicate that to me, and I don't know their business that well, we kind of sit in this middle ground.

Now, we do our best to do our research on these types of dealers. But yeah, honestly, you can walk into any dealer and they're going to offer you the same thing. They work with the same banks. You're just really hoping that their inventory is not garbage — that they're not going to run into mechanical issues and other things. And you hope there's other aspects.

So there are little value-adds that people can do or say that they offer. But really at the end of the day, when someone can't communicate that with me, I think the best thing I do is I just start asking them questions. "Well, why did you get into this business?" "Well, you know, I do this and blah blah." "Okay, so you care about the customer. Great. So let's start there."

And then we start going down this series of questions that help clarify: who are you? What's the brand? What's your personality? Are you the loud salesman that's like, "We're going to get you the best deal, I'm going to work for you"? Or are you the guy who's like, "I'm here to help you"? Because even that right there is a differentiator.

Andrew Hong: The best example of that on a macro level is CarMax. And Carvana as well. Look, everyone hates these companies, right? They are what they are. But CarMax set a very clear value proposition: you come in, you know what the price is, we give you top dollar for your trade-in, we make it easy for you to buy from us so you don't have to haggle. And that actually drove a lot of messaging and branding for a lot of the used car franchises that have been out there.

That's interesting, Brayden. When I meet with a client and they're not able to express what makes them different, I actually tell them, "Hey, we should just stop this meeting and you should think about it a little bit more." And here, to exactly your point — here are some questions that you should be thinking about.

We do a brand messaging project. It's $699. We ask you a bunch of questions over a questionnaire. We do a workshop with you, and then I'll work to tell your brand story and put it together on a one or two pager. It's really interesting — when you ask questions like, "Why'd you get into the business? What do you like about your customers? What don't you like about your customers? What do you hate about this business? What are you trying to change?" — sometimes when you start just asking those questions of yourself as an owner, and I would do it when you're not in the office, somewhere where it's quiet and you're thinking freely, you start to think a little bit deeper about your business.

I think most of us as small business owners are just so busy that we don't have time to get deep on our business, which is frankly a travesty. Marketing agencies that don't do marketing for themselves — that was us. And so I think the more that you can just maybe pause and think about what makes you special, that'll give professionals like Brayden an opportunity to really show you what they can do.

Because there's been so many times where the clients are like, "Well, Andrew, you know what's best. You know how my brand should be." No, I don't actually. In fact, I think I know what it's like, but you may not like it. And so never delegate the responsibility of your brand to another party. They can guide you on what you should be thinking about, and they can help you bring it together. But you've got to really be able to tell why your brand is different and what makes you special. Because I could pull out something that might be interesting, but you're like, "I hate that idea."

You're the one who has to live with your business, not me.

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah. No, it's funny because I hate when they try to delegate it to you. Because it's like, look, I can only come up with what I think your brand represents based on my perception of you. And maybe I gotta reword that a little bit, but I will perceive your brand a certain way based on what you've already done, and that may not be what you're trying to represent.

Andrew Hong: One hundred percent. People got to figure that out. And if anything, they just got to figure out if they can summarize it into one sentence of what they stand for or what they stand against. That helps immensely.

Brayden Tomicic: Totally. That can give creative direction. We can build more content off of those angles. And then all of a sudden, you don't just have some really flashy video with a million jump cuts, different trucks and cars, and cool music in the background. Because that's just not interesting. It's eye-catching, but it's not going to particularly help you for your own marketing.

So yeah, I think that's a really good discussion. Don't delegate the responsibility of your brand and what makes you special to somebody else. If you feel like you're doing that, that means you're being lazy. You need to really put in the legwork, because that's the job of a founder and an owner — to really differentiate yourself and talk about why you're different. Especially here in Utah, there's so many similar businesses. And as we're growing, sure, there's a bigger population, but that just means you've got to stand out more from the competition.

And one thing I want to put a bow on — the number one mistake I see businesses make is that they think their product is going to be so good that that's why customers will come. No. Especially in the dealership space, your product is basically the same unless you're manufacturing your own car. Your product is the same as anywhere else that anyone can go and grab it. So finding a different way and understanding that your product isn't just solely what makes your business — it's your brand, it's who you are, it's who you represent, how you go about your business, your personality. All of that will play into it, and that needs to be portrayed well so people can trust you.

Any business, when you rely on your product to help sell your business, you're going to lose. Or at least always feel behind and feel like you need to catch up.

Andrew Hong: One hundred percent. So I want to talk about another topic, which I think is a nuanced topic that I don't think many automotive business owners see — this idea between whether you're a transactional business or a lifestyle business.

When I say transactional, it's like: you need an oil change, that's a transactional thing. You need to get your winter tires swapped out. You need new tires. You need wiper blades changed. You need a service done for a specific car. These are what I call transactional types of businesses, where generally speaking, people are searching for them when they need to get something done. It's a maintenance-related thing, it's a regular thing they're going to go to.

And for anyone who's old enough to know this — the Yellow Pages. They're going to go look for that particular oil change business, tire shop, automotive repair shop. They're going to be looking you up by and indexing you by the type of business you are. And there's a very good chance that they're looking for someone today or this weekend to get their errands done. It's one of the things on their to-do list.

There's a very different style of marketing for transactional businesses like that versus what I would call more lifestyle businesses. These are businesses where people discover it more through the content or brand. It may not be something that is 100% needed or required. In some industries it might be required; in some it's more of a lifestyle thing. It could be a wrap business, installation of stereo systems, body kit installations, painting rims — extra things that go along with that.

Brayden, I'm kind of curious — for the lifestyle types of businesses, what types of content do you think are important for them? I call these more identity-building types of content. In your opinion, what types of automotive businesses really need to have this brand and lifestyle content to remind people they're there? And there's also businesses that need that kind of content to educate people on why they might need their service.

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah. So when you're talking about the idea of transactional versus lifestyle, it's even getting kind of a blended line nowadays. People want to work with brands that they like and love versus just some transactional deal.

Certain businesses, like McDonald's, it's a transaction. We don't need to absolutely be in love with the brand to transact with them. But when you're talking about especially higher-ticket items in the automotive space — if you have a wrap shop and you are trying to showcase what you do through content and who you are and your value to the community through your services, how do you separate yourself from everyone else that has a wrap shop?

The lifestyle type of content — you can keep it a lot more raw. You can keep it a lot more authentic. Everyone immediately jumps to this corporate marketing style because we've been inundated with so much content over the years where marketing was so corporate. And it's like, "Well, that works for that large company. But you're not them." How do you separate yourself and be different? Because especially if you start to sound like them, that might even push some people away who want to work with someone who is local.

When we talk about lifestyle content, I almost like to reframe it: look, we're keeping it authentic, we're keeping the content you and your shop. How do we build trust in the community? Because people like to rely on their name and their brand to be like, "Well, our name is something." That might be true, but people want to connect with a human, not with another brand. Especially if I'm going to spend three to five to potentially ten thousand dollars for a wrap on my car, or PPF, or tint. Maybe it's audio-related, maybe it's even just buying a car.

There's certain things where you have to go one or two steps deeper to help build trust, not only with the community, but just also showcase who you are. And the great part is you don't have to appease to everybody. In fact, you shouldn't appease to everybody. There's certain people that are going to like your personality, and we have to be okay with that. But that type of content can start to help you separate yourself.

I think it works great for more lifestyle, more local companies that care about their customers and their relationships. I know a few wrap shops where their entire business is built off of those relationships that they've curated over the last few years. And if that's the business style that you work with, that's who you are, that's what you need to focus on. Because those types of relationships and the communication you're going to have with the community — who you are, what you stand for — is going to go so much farther than just trying to sell somebody on a wrap.

Andrew Hong: And while we're talking about wraps, we have a mutual client who's a wrap client. I was really talking with him, trying to figure out, "Hey, how can we bring an angle to you that's a little bit different?"

What became really clear was that he's a marketing expert — an offline marketing expert. We all talk about digital, social, all the digital channels that get all the attention these days. But let's not forget — especially in Utah — offline, regular direct mail, that kind of stuff still works very well here. There's a reason why Yes Co is putting up billboards all across the I-15 right now. I'm starting to see them up in Wyoming, Montana, and going east into Colorado as well.

There is something to be said about this. Remember, there's a lot of people who pass through Utah. I think three or four times as many people come here to visit as there are that live here. I-15 is a major thruway in the United States — you've got people road-tripping, you've got truckers who are coming through. We live in a really interesting part of this country, and there's a lot of attention on it.

So when you're thinking about this type of offline marketing, I was telling him, "You need to educate your audience on why offline marketing is actually a really important channel." Because I can guarantee you a lot of these business owners are thinking about online and digital and all of the things that I do. But the reality is that there's a lot of people who are trying to understand how they can use wraps or vinyl to help them improve their offline marketing if they're a business owner.

That was the through line we came up with: "Hey, look, if we can position you more as an expert in marketing to drive demand — to get people to consider, 'Hey, I could buy a billboard, or I could wrap my fleet and get unlimited ROI for as long as the wrap is there' — we need to bring awareness of that as a potential solution to folks."

And that's just an example of trying to think a little bit outside of, "Oh, well, we're the best quality wraps, we have the best designs, we do it fast, there's no bubbles, there's no this, there's no that." That's all expected. We talked about that last time — a lot of these things that we say are our values are kind of just par for the course.

Brayden Tomicic: Baseline. Yeah.

Andrew Hong: And so I think that's a lot of why you bring in professionals like Brayden or myself, which is: we'll help you think through an angle that might help you pull out the thing that makes you unique. But you've got to tell us what makes you unique. And then our job is to figure out how we translate that into media, into SEO, into blog posts, and Google Business Profile posts.

One thing I wanted to touch on, Brayden, was the transactional side. Some people call these the "boring" versions, but the reality is most small businesses out there have some kind of transactional nature in them. You've got to get an oil change every X miles. You've got to take your car in for service every X miles. You've got to swap out tires every season or after every X miles.

And so there's already pre-baked demand. You don't have to generate demand for these things. The problem I see, though, is that when a customer is searching for one of these transactional businesses, they don't make it easy to buy from them. And that's usually where you've got to have an offer. You've got to have a coupon.

Why do you think Jiffy Lube sends out those $29.99, $39.99 specials? Brayden, since we were in high school, probably. We've been seeing those things come through the mail. They keep doing it because it produces an ROI for them. It gets the customer to come back or come in the first time. If they've stalled out for a while, it reminds them that they're there.

And so my advice to anyone who is doing more transactional marketing — focus on organic search and paid search, but also make sure that when you're running any kind of paid campaigns, you have some kind of offer in place to capture them. And most importantly, when you have that offer in place, link it up to an SMS campaign, an email campaign, or something so that you're staying top of mind with them.

And that top of mind — that's where some of the lifestyle content Brayden talked about earlier comes in, because you don't want to keep top of mind by sending them a promotional coupon every single week. Sometimes you might want to mix that up with a piece of educational content or how-to content or something else that's a little more lifestyle-driven.

But I would say if you are one of these transactional businesses — focus on search and making sure that you have a good offer and a funnel in place so that if they're not ready to buy from you right away, you're reminding them of why you're there.

So that's just my two cents on the transactional businesses. Maybe going back to the lifestyle side a little bit — Brayden, when you are working with automotive businesses that sell identity, aspiration, or visual appeal — like a high-end membership, for example — what does a real social media and content strategy look like for them? Do you need really sexy shoots and really high production quality? Or to what you were talking about before, do you try to lean more towards authentic content? And what does that authentic content look like to you?

Brayden Tomicic: So there's a few different things we like to lean on. When we break down content strategy for a brand like that, let me take a step back. One thing — it's really easy to fall into the trap of making the same content over and over again. Now it works, especially when you find something that works. You want to replicate that because now you've found the formula.

I think Gary Vee talks about it, or Caleb Ralston — you take 80 to 90% of what works, and then you change that last 10 to 20% and remake the next video. So it's good to find what works. But if you're doing the same thing over and over again and it's not working and you keep doing it, hoping it will — that's a problem.

What we like to do from a content strategy side is, "Okay, hey, we picked apart your business, we understand the direction, we understand what your brand wants to do, what you offer." And then by observing what the market has responded to with other businesses who are doing the same thing, we take all of that and funnel it down into individual columns that we can then pull content from.

So we'll find a general topic — and when I say general, I mean we can create a thousand subtopics underneath that. So we'll create these different pillars of content that we can generate ideas from. So it always feels fresh, it always feels new, even if we're maybe hitting the same type of video. Like, how many times can you educate somebody on tint? Well, there's a few different ways to do it, and a lot of different ways you can approach it. But if we're always only posting about education on tint, people are going to be bored.

So we try to throw a couple different other opportunities in there to create content. That way you don't just have the really cool trendy content or the crazy hype reels — sizzle reels as we call them. You can mix in a few other things.

We'll create the pillars, we'll put levels of importance on them, but we also try to attribute those pillars of content to where it might fall in on the funnel for people who are watching it. So maybe someone doesn't know who you are and doesn't know anything about wrap or PPF — we're going to have content that fills that awareness gap. Same thing for the next level down, and the next level, and so on.

So it's very strategic in that sense, where we try to appease from the top of the funnel to the bottom and keep it entertaining, keep it raw, keep it authentic — all aimed towards your brand and the goals that you have over the next five to ten years.

Andrew Hong: Let's get a little specific. I'm kind of curious — people always like to know budgets. What should I be spending? Let's say you're working with a more lifestyle-focused automotive brand. They're heavy on social media. They get a lot of attention, followers, engagement on social media — maybe less so on the website and SEO side, but clearly they're growing their business social-first. What would you recommend if they had a budget of about two to three thousand dollars a month?

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, so again, it's very demand-based. What is the goal? Because $2,000 is kind of the starting point on the social media and content side, just because it is so heavy overhead. That's kind of where the start really is, truthfully.

So we go, "Okay, hey, at $2,000 a month, what's most important to your brand right now? Is it customers? Are you fighting for money? Are you worried about next month's rent?" When that notification comes up and you've got to pay the landlord — do you worry about that? Because if so, let's do one video, let's run that as an ad, and we run that in conjunction with you, where we need to bring in customers and bring in money.

But when we talk about specifically just social media and the brand strategy side, we go, "Okay, what does your brand need right now?" If you're new and you're growing, typically it's awareness. It's not even the "hey, we need transactions" as far as bringing in customers — obviously that is the goal. We're in this because we need to make money at some level.

But with that, we try to go, "Cool, your brand needs awareness. So what's the type of content that's going to bring you the most eyeballs possible but still be reminiscent of your brand?" Not just a cool video that people go, "That's dope," and then click and swipe to the next one. We want people to look at this and go, "Oh, that's cool," and then want to engage with you further and then have a ton of other content.

So that's kind of where we start. We'll do a few videos a month just to get the ball rolling. And then from there, the intensity increases, we can do a lot more, our bandwidth becomes greater, and we can really start to dial in the content to fill those different parts of the funnel. But typically when somebody's at that level, it's like, "Great, let's just get you eyeballs. Let's get people to know who you are and see your page."

Andrew Hong: Here's a tricky question. What if they are new and they want customers now?

Brayden Tomicic: That's a great question. I would say we are probably not the right fit.

Andrew Hong: Yeah. Me too.

Brayden Tomicic: Like, to be frank — here's the thing. Time value of money. If I have $2,000 and I'm worried about next month's rent check that I've got to fork out, or I've got employees and I'm worried about payroll — well, you got to take care of your bills. So we're not going to be the right fit, because building your brand is a huge investment over time. And when I say huge investment, it's not that large, but over time, it takes time to do it. We can't just provide results within one month.

We can get you eyeballs. We can get you viewership that will bring in clientele. But when you are really a new business, you can do a lot of content yourself to start. But I would say dump it into the parts of the business that are going to bring you that type of value. Like SEO, running ads — put some of that money towards an ad budget. So that way you can start targeting people around in your community. Social media, you've got a lot of noise, and the quickest way to stand out in the noise on these platforms is unfortunately to pay the platform.

But the great part is, with that, we're throwing it out to the masses. By doing an ad, you can throw that directly at your ideal ICP. I've had those conversations many a time.

Andrew Hong: I have to ask the question, and again, as another agency owner, I always want to see what another agency owner says. And I'm glad to hear that we're of the same opinion.

But you should not expect customers when you first open your doors — if you haven't done sales, if you haven't done networking, if you haven't literally gone out there, knocked on doors, told people about your business. If you just start with marketing, you're going to be negative ROI from day one, guaranteed. One hundred percent.

And the reason Brayden says we're not the right fit is because the way I look at it — you see us as a silver bullet to solving your payroll problems, and that's not what marketing does. Marketing is one piece of the growth equation.

Marketing sometimes doesn't work because your product sucks. Marketing sometimes doesn't work because you haven't differentiated yourself as a brand. Marketing sometimes doesn't work because the way you packaged and priced your products — even though they might be really good — you'll be shocked at how many times I'll come in and I have to build a service page for a business. "Oh, we charge $250 an hour." Okay, how many hours does it take usually? Does it always take that many hours, or does it take more? Is there anything else included in this? You've got to make it easy for people to buy.

And when I start running ads to a page where things aren't priced and packaged well — sure enough, we get tons of clicks, like 8-10% click-through rate, high ad quality, all that stuff, and they fail. "Andrew, we're not getting any leads." That's because when they come to your website, they're not liking what they see. It's really simple.

We're targeting the people that you want to target. Here's the report. They're clicking through at a rate much higher than we would normally expect. But if you're telling me you're not getting the next step in the funnel, they didn't like what they saw there. So you got to fix that.

I think if you have not shown a history of getting random people to buy stuff from your website, through your phone, or whatever — you should not expect the marketing agency to come in there and fix it. Because the reality is there's more than a marketing problem there. There's maybe a product problem, maybe a pricing problem. There might even be a customer service problem. Because if no one's there to pick up the phone and they don't have the right talk track — they're going to bounce and you're going to blame it on marketing. "Oh, my marketing agency sucks."

Every experienced marketing agency, when you come across a new brand that starts to say, "Oh yeah, we want to get customers through the door like yesterday" — that is the first red flag that any experienced agency owner is going to see. Because inevitably, unless the conversation I have with them is like, "Look, it's gonna take you six to eight weeks just to build the foundation. And just because you build it, they will not come. Then we need to start doing the marketing." So are you willing to wait eight to twelve to sixteen weeks before you start potentially seeing some revenue from some of the efforts that we're doing? And most of them don't like that.

Which is why I have a very common phrase in the emails that I send: "You're not going to like to hear this, but..."

So I'm glad to hear that you've kind of experienced the same thing on your end as well.

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah. And to your credit, it is interesting because working with a lot of these new and up-and-coming and starting businesses, if they really don't have a foundation there quite yet — I just always ask them this question: "If I brought you a hundred people tomorrow, could you help them?"

And they'd be like, "Oh my gosh, no."

"That's great. You're probably not ready to take that step because you got to grow into it. You got to build your processes. What is your offer? Is it something people care about? And also, even if I brought you a hundred people tomorrow, if your prices are too high and it's out of their budget for the type of clientele you're thinking you're going to attract, well, then either you're pushing to the wrong clientele, or you need to adjust some things in your business."

There's so many different things from an infrastructure side that you kind of have to go through the motions on as a business owner and really figure out and understand. Because we can only understand so much by our own research and by looking at other people. But if your product isn't serving what the market is demanding, or maybe it's too high-priced — whatever the reason is, we can only do so much for you.

Andrew Hong: Here's another one. Brayden, I'm kind of curious — when a business wants to move forward with marketing, but they have no awareness at all. Is there any sort of foundational media that you think they might want to start with?

I ask this because a lot of times as someone focusing on websites and SEO, I'm like, "Look, if you have to invest in something right now, it's got to be a website. You've got to have a storefront." And for me, it's always — if you really want your website to communicate brand and value, you probably need to invest in some media. So for you, let's say they are starting out. They are okay with not getting the ROI on the investments they're making right away. Is there a foundational package that you might recommend them to start with?

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, actually, it's kind of funny. It's the Founder's Package that we have. And it's actually really interesting because this applies for a lot of brands, whether you've been around for ten years or you are just starting out.

The foundational package essentially breaks down this way. One — we want to tell your story as a brand. So we call it the Founder's Story. It's something that really builds trust. It shows you as an individual, as a business owner. We kind of start to have you be vulnerable on camera, but tell your story. Why are you doing what you're doing? Why did you get into this? Because sometimes we don't wake up — I didn't wake up one day and say, "Oh, the dream job is a photographer." I stepped into it out of passion. And some people don't sit there and go, "Oh my gosh, I wake up and I want to wrap people's cars." You kind of come into it. So what's that story? Tell that, tell why you're doing what you're doing. That's kind of the first step.

Second — it is cool to showcase your brand in a really cool light. So a sizzle reel that kind of highlights it. Something you can use as a banner video on your website, something that you can throw on Google Business Profile too. You can put this type of video on your GBP, because those people who are searching on GBP, when they click on your profile, they're looking for someone. And if you have that sizzle reel right there, that is just an awesome piece of content that can help them take that next step to tap or pick up the phone and call.

Andrew Hong: Absolutely. It's like chef's kiss, I call it.

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, one hundred percent. So that's the next kind of piece of content that really adds to it. And then where we can start to really build trust past even all of that is testimonials. So after you've got two or three clients through the door that are advocates for your brand — and not just people who are like, "Yeah, it was good working with you," but people who absolutely love you, who are endeared to you now, who always call you up and say, "Hey, my friend just did this. Can you help him out?" — those are the types of people we want to get on camera to tell that story.

What it was like working with you. Because a quick testimonial video now takes you out of the light. Because you, as a business owner, are going to be biased about your product. But if you can have someone who's worked with you and loves your product — and maybe isn't just your wife or your friend or your kids being advocates for you, but somebody who's real and who's worked with you — talk about you as a brand, that goes so far.

Unless people know that you're a trustworthy person, that you are someone that when they go to work with, they're going to have a similar experience — the testimonial piece is so important.

Andrew Hong: And I actually think when I meet a new business and we are trying to build their foundation — we're not just focused on leads at the beginning — it is so shocking to see what happens to the lead generation, the calls, all those things, when you start to have testimonials on your Google Business Profile.

Like, we've built the best websites in the world. Awesome SEO, great content, answered every question up front. But the new sites we built that don't have a lot of social proof on them — they don't convert. It's really simple. And in automotive, people don't want to spend three to five thousand dollars on a wrap or do some of these more lifestyle-focused things if they're seeing bad reviews. It's like going to a Yelp restaurant that has three stars. I could go to it, but do I want to? I'm rolling the dice.

Having the testimonials is so critical because what SEO can do is get people to find out who you are and what you're about. What SEO cannot do is convince them to pick up the phone and call you. That's all about your content marketing. That's all about your media. That's all about the brand that you present. SEO is just one part of the equation.

And when I meet clients who've already been doing SEO and they get the traffic but they're not seeing customers — I'm just licking my chops. Because the hard part is done, which is getting the eyeballs. Now we just gotta focus those eyeballs and get them converted. And many, many times I see the conversion rates increase as we provide more social proof, as we use more testimonials. It is a direct correlation between the two.

So I think that's a really important piece of media. Are there any other pieces of foundational media that you include in that package, Brayden?

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, we try to create the media in that package to be formatted for multiple uses. We might do a couple other style videos, but the formatting I think is the most important part. We want to format it for your Google My Business page. We want to be able to format it so it can go on your website, and then even make a cut so you can put that type of stuff on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever you want.

There are other pieces that we might include, but from a foundation side, especially for the cost, we really hone in on those few first and then branch out from there.

Andrew Hong: I want to wrap our episode by kind of straddling the middle a little bit here. Because the reality is, whether you're a transactional business or you're a lifestyle business, you probably need a little bit of both of this kind of marketing.

A used car dealership, for example, probably needs both search and social presence. If you're a detailing shop, you probably want to get Google searches, but you also want to get found through social as well. So you might lean more on one channel or the other depending on what your budgets are. But in general, good marketing — you should be tackling all of these channels, identifying the right channel mix.

For me, if you're in that two-to-four-K-a-month budget for marketing — and that includes ad spend — you might want to be thinking about where you want to split your budget. Do you want to split it more towards social? And if you're going to split it more towards social, you probably need to be investing more dollars with someone like Brayden, because it doesn't make sense to be putting most of your channel budget onto social without investing in media.

On the flip side, if you see a lot of value in Google Ads and that's basically where you're looking to convert all day — you probably need someone to manage your Google Ads, an expert, because we do things like feed the conversion data back into Google, which can help you drop your cost per acquisition.

So regardless of what you're doing, you're probably picking multiple channels. Just make sure that you're allocating budget for the expert that's going to help feed not only the strategy for the channel but the content and the management and everything else that goes into the channel itself.

Any advice for anyone else out there who might be thinking about, "Do I want to do search or social, and where should I put my budgets?"

Brayden Tomicic: Yeah, I think the biggest thing I would say is — if you're sitting there and you're wondering how to take your brand to the next level, consider what your goal is with that. What does that even mean? Does that mean, obviously, you've gotta make more money — so maybe that's more clientele — but what does that actually entail? And what can you afford right now as a business? Because this is a long-term play, both on the social side, but even on the SEO and some of the other strategies.

So to me, I think the biggest thing is: identify who you are as a brand, where you want to be in the next three to five, potentially ten years, and then understand what you can allocate towards it. And can you allocate that and commit to yourself for doing that for at least a year?

And then based on those goals, you can kind of dissect — does it make more sense to put money into ads? Does it make more sense to invest into the branding and social media side? Or does it make more sense to maybe invest in your own infrastructure in the business? Because sometimes that is the right answer — to reinvest back into the business.

So that's what I would say: break that down, understand your goal, understand who you are. And then from there, just dissect it. Talk to professionals, have a conversation, see what they offer and see what advantages their services might bring your business. Because there's also a thing that I've recognized with a lot of people — they don't know what they don't know. And so if you as a business don't even know what's going to help take it to the next level, obviously everyone's going to pitch you on their services, but talk to them, understand what they offer, what value they bring, and then see if that lines up with what you are trying to do. And if it does, find the right individual to do it and go from there.

Andrew Hong: We talked a lot about just general business strategy this episode, Brayden. Don't go throwing dollars out there if you just started your business. If you need customers through the door yesterday, there's other things you probably have to be thinking about before you go put that money out there.

And so not every automotive business has the same marketing playbook. In fact, it's probably a mix of multiple playbooks like Brayden and I talked about today.

If you're a transactional business, you want to own your search presence first. You're still going to need social, for sure, but the dollars on the tree are probably closer to you by starting with search.

If you're a lifestyle brand, it's a little bit harder to get folks. You're going to need to invest in content, invest in a brand, invest in building an identity to get there. And that's going to take you potentially longer to get to that revenue than a transactional business. And that just makes sense.

And if you're somewhere in the middle, now you've got a framework to split — how much do I invest in social, how much media do I need, do I just need to invest a little bit in search? Use the framework that Brayden and I have been talking about to split your budget without wasting it.

If you need help with your Google Business Profile or any of your local search marketing, reach out to us at Tobe Agency. And if you need any help with content strategy, video, social media management for your automotive brand, make sure you connect with Brayden and B Social. He's seen a lot of different scenarios, a lot of different case studies, and he can be the right person for you to figure out how to tell your brand story.

Thanks for watching Grow Smarter Utah. We'll see you in the next episode. Brayden, thanks so much for dropping all your knowledge and experience here today. I'm sure we'll have some other interesting topics to talk about as we get to the near future. Thanks for joining me again, Brayden. Take care.

Brayden Tomicic: Thank you.

Wealthspan: The Financial Strategy Longevity and Wellness Practice Owners Can't Afford to Ignore

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:15:46 GMT

You've spent years helping patients optimize their healthspan — extending the quality of their lives through functional medicine, longevity protocols, and personalized care. But here's the question nobody's asking you: what does your wealthspan look like?

That's the concept at the center of this episode of the Grow Smarter podcast. Paavan Kotini, founder of Kotini & Kotini and author of Effortless Wealth and Tax-Efficient White Coat, joined host Andrew Hong for a conversation that every practice owner in the longevity and wellness space needs to hear.

The core argument is simple: if you're helping patients live to 100, your financial foundation needs to keep pace with that vision — for you and your family. Most practice owners are earning well. Far fewer are building wealth intentionally. This episode is about why that gap exists, and exactly what you can do about it starting today.

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. What Is Wealthspan: And Why Practice Owners Keep Ignoring It

Paavan draws a clear distinction between three terms that practice owners in the longevity space should understand instinctively:

Lifespan is the quantity of life. Healthspan is the quality of life. Wealthspan is the viability of life — the financial quality of life that determines whether the years you're adding actually feel like freedom.

Most high-income practitioners neglect wealthspan for one simple reason: they assume their tax bill is just the cost of success. They hand their documents to a CPA in April, pay what they owe, and move on. That assumption is costing them more than they realize.

"The biggest mistake practice owners make today," Paavan says, "is that they don't know they're leaving money on the table."

The distinction Paavan draws is between tax filing and tax planning. Your CPA handles the former — reactive, compliance-focused, looking backward at a year that's already over. Tax planning is a completely different discipline, one that requires forward-looking strategy, specialized knowledge, and, critically, the right timing. You can't optimize what's already happened.

2. The Filer vs. The Planner: A $5 Million Difference in Mindset

In Chapter Two of Tax-Efficient White Coat, Paavan tells the story of two doctors with identical incomes — both earning $350,000 per year. One is a traditional filer. The other is a planner. Over 30 years, the difference in their net worth at retirement is $5 million: $3 million for the filer, $8 million for the planner.

The gap isn't luck. It isn't income. It's mindset — and the team behind that mindset.

"Just like in longevity and functional medicine, you can't go to a traditional doctor and ask for the same things," Paavan explains. "You have to go to a specific type of practitioner that knows how to do these things."

The shift from filer to planner doesn't require a complete overhaul of your financial life overnight. It starts with one decision: to stop treating your tax situation as a fixed cost and start treating it as something that can be actively managed and reduced — legally, strategically, and proactively.

3. One Low-Hanging Fruit Most Practice Owners Miss: The Consulting Entity

If you're a functional medicine or longevity practitioner who speaks at conferences, consults for other practices, or creates content — you may be missing one of the simplest tax moves available to you.

Paavan describes it as a side consulting entity: a separate LLC structured around your consulting and speaking activity. This entity can unlock deductions your main practice cannot — covering things like speaking travel, podcast appearances, content creation time, and consulting work with other clinics.

The three major pillars of tax planning, as Paavan frames them: credits, deductions, and depreciation. A consulting entity is one of the most accessible ways to unlock more deductions without dramatically increasing complexity.

Beyond taxes, proper entity structuring also serves a second purpose: risk mitigation. It creates a wall between your personal assets and your business — so that if something goes wrong in your practice, your personal financial life is protected.

"You can utilize entity structuring to mitigate taxes," Paavan says, "and not only mitigate taxes — it's also mitigating risk."

This is the kind of move that separates a filer from a planner. It's not exotic. It's not complicated. Most practice owners just don't know it exists, or they've been told to wait until they're bigger to think about it. They shouldn't.

4. Private Equity Is Coming: Opportunity or Competition, Depending on What You Do Now

One of the most urgent topics in the episode is the trajectory of private equity in the functional medicine and longevity space. Paavan is direct: PE is already consolidating traditional medical and dental practices at scale, and it will move aggressively into longevity and wellness clinics over the next 7 to 12 years.

For practice owners, that creates two very different futures — and which one you end up in depends almost entirely on decisions you make today.

Scenario one: You've been building intentionally. Your practice isn't entirely dependent on you as the primary practitioner. You have documented systems, diversified revenue, and a financial structure that reflects real enterprise value. When PE comes knocking, you're positioned to command strong multiples and exit on your terms.

Scenario two: You haven't been thinking about the end game. PE firms buy up the clinics around you, invest in marketing, build national brand recognition, and start competing directly for the patients you used to acquire through word-of-mouth. Your ability to compete erodes, and the window for a favorable exit closes with it.

Andrew makes a related observation from his own marketing work: the competitive landscape for longevity practices is already harder than it's ever been. Large consolidated groups are investing in SEO at a national, state, and local level — systematically targeting independent practices. The time to prepare is now, not when the competition arrives at your door.

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Wealthspan is the financial quality of life that needs to keep pace with the healthspan you're building. Don't extend your patients' lives without securing your own financial future.
Tax filing and tax planning are not the same thing. Your CPA handles compliance. A proactive planning team handles strategy — and they need to be talking to you before the tax year ends, not after.
The filer-to-planner identity shift is the most important financial mindset change a practice owner can make. It's intentional, not accidental.
A consulting entity is one of the most accessible, underutilized tax moves for practitioners who speak, consult, or create content. It unlocks deductions your main practice can't access.
Private equity is coming to your space. Whether it becomes an exit opportunity or a competitive threat depends on how you build — and plan — starting now.
The right time to start is now. If you're doing $1M+ in revenue and haven't had a proactive tax planning conversation, you're likely leaving money on the table.

Ready to Build Your Wealthspan?

If this episode resonated with you, Paavan and his team at Kotini & Kotini offer an initial diagnostic call to see if they're the right fit for your practice. You can reach them at kotiniandkotini.com or pick up a copy of Effortless Wealth or Tax-Efficient White Coat on Amazon to go deeper on these frameworks.

And if you want help making sure your practice shows up — online, in Google, and in the markets where your ideal patients are searching — that's what we do at Tobe Agency. Book a Grow Smarter Assessment and let's build the foundation your practice deserves.

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Stop guessing with your marketing. At Tobe Agency, we help healthcare and wellness entrepreneurs build the foundational systems they need to scale with confidence. From compliant website copy to Local SEO that attracts high-value patients, we ensure you waste less and grow smarter.

Book Your Free Grow Smarter Assessment

Read the Edited Transcript

Andrew Hong: Okay, hey everyone, welcome back to the Grow Smarter podcast. If you're in the longevity or wellness space, you've probably built your whole practice around helping people live longer, healthier lives. You're obsessed with healthspan — extending the quality years for your patients, maybe not just the quantity. But here's the question that nobody's really asking you as a practice owner: what's your wealthspan look like?

Because helping patients live to 100 is incredible. But if your financial foundation isn't set up right, you might be funding those extra years in a way that keeps you working forever — and not by choice. We all become entrepreneurs because we have this dream of freedom, and sometimes we end up in the exact opposite of that dream.

Today's guest has over two decades helping high-income practitioners stop the financial bleeding. He's the founder of Kotini & Kotini, a boutique virtual family office for first-generation wealth builders, and the number-one Amazon bestselling author of Effortless Wealth and Tax-Efficient White Coat. His approach is called SWAN — Sleep Well at Night — and as entrepreneurs and longevity and healthcare professionals, we all know how important sleep is and how financial stress can keep us from getting it. It's built specifically for busy professionals who are great at earning money but haven't had anyone help them actually build wealth from it.

We're going to talk about the mindset that separates practice owners who scale from those who stall, what most CPAs miss when it comes to tax strategy and planning, and why the decisions you make in your practice right now could determine your exit value in ten years. Whether you're thinking about an exit or not, your financial plan is here to stay — and you need to understand how to put it in place. Welcome to the Grow Smarter Podcast, Paavan. Great to have you here today.

Paavan Kotini: Thank you, Andrew. Excited to be here. I'm passionate about longevity and functional medicine — I'm a benefactor of it myself — and I'm really excited about today's conversation.

Andrew Hong: Give me a little bit about your background. You have a biomedical engineering background and eventually made your way into the financial planning space. Tell me about the arc of your career and your journey to where you are today.

Paavan Kotini: It's a little interesting, actually. I started off as a biomedical engineer and did seven years of research on cancer. I totally believed growing up that I was going to be an oncologist — the intent was to help people and make a difference through medicine. Long story short, I was doing surgery on a monkey one day at the Vanderbilt Cancer Ingram Institute. When I cut a vein, blood started spreading everywhere. There were six other scientists there, and I passed out on the ground. The question became: do we take care of Paavan or do we take care of the monkey? Five of the scientists decided the monkey was more important — and it took us six months to plan for that surgery. The junior scientist dragged me out, threw water on me, put my legs up, and made me feel better. This happened a couple of times, and I realized I can't see blood. It's hard to be in the medical profession when you can't see blood.

So I had to look for my next career trajectory. Not to be stereotypical, but if you're Indian, you know that if you're not in medicine, you're typically in engineering or IT. I worked at Apple and was part of the first iPhone project, which was really cool. But it was a segue career, because that's when I realized I didn't understand much about 401(k)s or the financial industry. I got very curious. I got into finance out of curiosity for myself, but also to help my parents. My father and mother were successful entrepreneurs, and when I asked them about finance, they said: we know how to earn money, we know how to save money, but we're too busy to figure out what to do after that.

Andrew Hong: Invest it. Manage it. There's a difference between earning it, saving it, and that whole other gray area in the middle — which is really where wealth gets created.

Paavan Kotini: Absolutely. My father had a number of different advisors, but none of them were collaborating or talking to each other. It was a hodgepodge of things that really wasn't working. He was paying a ton in taxes. Coming from a non-financial background, I quickly saw that there had to be a better way. As I got into the industry, I learned that there are tools and strategies that multi-millionaires have access to that most people simply don't. That became my passion — helping families in the financial space. I didn't become a medical doctor, but as my family says, I ended up becoming a financial doctor.

Andrew Hong: Just curious — what kind of businesses were your parents in?

Paavan Kotini: A variety. IT companies, and my mom had a restaurant — she was a really famous chef in Richmond. They had a restaurant, a grocery store, two coffee shops, an IT company. Serial entrepreneurship. My father also helped build Capital One and was one of their VPs back around 2002.

Andrew Hong: Entrepreneurship runs in the family. Were your parents first-generation immigrants?

Paavan Kotini: Yes, absolutely. We were first generation. One of the reasons I love working with first-generation wealth builders is the energy — there's just a different level of drive. We came in the early 80s; I was two years old when we arrived in the United States.

Andrew Hong: Tell me about Kotini & Kotini. What do you do, who do you work with, and what makes you different?

Paavan Kotini: We are a non-traditional, proactive planning family office. We focus on six primary areas: advanced tax planning, wealth management, risk management, legal services, business advisory, and — specifically for doctors — practice enhancement and lifestyle concierge. Our focus is to bring all of these elements together as a one-stop shop. We're not necessarily looking to replace someone who's already working great for you. We want to identify the areas you may be missing. We call ourselves savvy sandbox players — we work really well with other professionals. If you have a CPA you've been with for years who's great at tax filing, fantastic. They do the tax filing; we do the advanced tax planning. There's a significant difference between the two.

Andrew Hong: I want to double-click on a term you just used: lifestyle concierge. Tell me what that means and what it looks like as a service for your clients.

Paavan Kotini: What we started to notice is that busy, successful professionals get very good at delegating financial things — but they're also looking for help in other areas. Part of lifestyle concierge is about health: how do they continue to improve their executive health? And part of it is more experiential — access to custom suits, exotic cars, whatever it might be.

Andrew Hong: I need that allocation for the Porsche.

Paavan Kotini: Exactly. Whatever it is, the goal is to make our clients' lives simpler and improve their lifestyle. We have access to a number of things, and we work to make those accessible.

Andrew Hong: That's interesting because I work with a practice in Boise right now where our monthly syncs inevitably drift from SEO reports to "Andrew, I can't figure out this IT thing — my Google admin is driving me crazy." As professional services firms serving these practices, we see how quickly entrepreneurs get overwhelmed outside their area of expertise. Which actually connects to how Paavan and I met — we were both at A4M's Longevity Fest conference this past December 2025. As an entrepreneur, you step in as the expert in your field — stem cells, hormone balancing, whatever your focus is — but when you become a business owner, you quickly realize you don't know all the other things required to be successful. There comes an inflection point where it no longer makes sense to do everything yourself. Is the lifestyle concierge part of what differentiates you from other tax and financial planning firms?

Paavan Kotini: Absolutely. Our biggest differentiator is that we bring everything together — we don't look at things in silos. We stay true to the original intent Rockefeller had when he created the first family office: bringing multiple disciplines together and looking at things comprehensively. Most family offices out there are really just glorified wealth managers. We do the tax planning and bring all of those aspects together. For doctors specifically, we have a division called the Doctor's Family Office — a physician's family office. It's specific and niche, and it includes unique lifestyle concierge services that really help doctors improve their practice and their personal lives, because they're dedicating so much time and energy to their practice at the expense of everything else.

Andrew Hong: Let's talk about the elephant in the room: exit strategy and private equity. As an entrepreneur, there needs to be an exit. There's no glory in saying "I'm going to stay on this thing and work until I die." If you're building a legitimate business, you need to build it in a way that at least gives you the option to exit. Over the past three to five years, I've noticed the significant entrance of private equity in this space — roll-up plays happening across the US, acquiring practices, sometimes at good terms, sometimes not. Where do you see private equity and small longevity and wellness practices going in the next ten to twelve years?

Paavan Kotini: The industry is really growing on a very promising trajectory, and private equity has noticed. You're already seeing it in traditional medical and dental practices — they're acquiring at multiples and grouping practices together. We're going to start seeing that happen in functional medicine and longevity over the next seven to twelve years. What's really important as a practice owner is to keep the end in sight. How do you want to transition? Do you pass it to the next generation, sell to your employees, or sell to private equity? As entrepreneurs, a lot of us think our business is our retirement — but we need to build wealth outside of the business so we have a real retirement. There's a difference between physical retirement and financial retirement. I'm not saying you have to be physically retired when you financially retire, but it gives you freedom and choice.

Private equity is going to do one of two things to you. One — it gives you a really good exit opportunity. If you're looking to exit in the next seven to twelve years, that's fantastic, but you have to do things now to increase your enterprise value and your differentiation. It can't be dependent entirely on you as the primary practitioner. Two — if you don't have the end in sight, they're going to be buying up longevity and functional medicine clinics all around you, and they become your competition. You need to understand how that impacts your ability to compete.

Andrew Hong: It's never been harder to acquire new patients than right now. There's a big roll-up play with a company called Genesis that's consolidating under a specific brand, investing in SEO at a national, state, and local level, and systematically trying to take patients away from independent practices. This field is great and there's a lot of attention on it, but the competition is significant — and it's only going to increase. As I've learned more about your firm, it seems like you try to show clients the iceberg that's 500 miles away that they're slowly drifting toward. Is a lot of what you do about preempting these things?

Paavan Kotini: Absolutely. We believe in planning for the best but preparing for the worst. We see the iceberg — are we turning right, left, or going directly at it? We do things that are micro strategies for now but also look at macro strategies for the long term. Most people can make really good decisions if they have the right information in front of them. Unfortunately, in a world with so much information and AI-generated noise, it's hard to filter what's actually relevant. When it comes to private equity, it is harder to get clients today than it was five or ten years ago, and there will be more competition. How do you make sure you're getting the best value, and when is the right time to exit? Most people think they have a plan — they want to exit in ten to twelve years — but if you get a really good offer in seven years, would you take it? We want to understand the ultimate goal and bring you news and insights that say, hey, maybe now is the prime time to sell a longevity clinic. You're getting four to five times multiples now; a few years down the road, it could be less. We want to paint the whole picture so you can focus on what's really important to you.

Andrew Hong: Let's talk about wealthspan — a term you use throughout your books and content. A lot of practice owners and their patients are obsessed with healthspan. But why do successful, high-income practitioners so consistently neglect wealthspan? And what do you think the cost is?

Paavan Kotini: I think the biggest reason is that they believe they're already earning really well, and the taxes they pay are just the cost of success. That's not necessarily the case. Most practice owners in longevity and functional medicine are focused on lifespan and healthspan. Lifespan is focused on the quantity of life. Healthspan is focused on the quality of life. Wealthspan is focused on the viability of life — the financial quality of life. If you haven't thought about wealthspan much, you really need what I call a wealth plan.

I'll give you an example from Chapter Two of Tax-Efficient White Coat. I talk about the journey of two doctors. One is a traditional filer — he's done well, clients love him, he's respected. He does all the right things, puts money into his 401(k) and HSA, and every year hands everything to his CPA. The CPA says here's what you have to pay in taxes, and he thinks that's just the cost of success. Then you have another person who is focused on optimizing — just like in longevity, you're trying to optimize efficiencies. For two earners making the same $350,000 per year, one who is a filer and one who is a planner can see a massive difference. At retirement in thirty years, one could have a net worth of $3 million while the other has $8 million. The difference is mindset — it's intentional, not an afterthought. The second component is having the right team to help you get there. Just like in longevity and functional medicine, you can't go to a traditional doctor and ask for the same things. You have to go to a specific type of practitioner. Wealthspan requires being proactive and forward-thinking. If you're living longer and improving your quality of life, you also want your financial wealth to match that lifespan and healthspan.

Andrew Hong: That comparison with functional health really resonates. The CPA is kind of the micro — prescribe a pill for that thing, here's what you owe, standard structure. Your firm looks at both the macro and the micro. The macro might be: you were thinking about selling in ten to twelve years, but we're seeing trends right now that suggest the window may not stay open. Is that the value you bring — big picture plus the details?

Paavan Kotini: Absolutely. Even on the tax side alone, there's a difference between tax filing and tax planning. There are over 80,000 pages of the IRS tax code. A traditional CPA, unfortunately, knows about 2% of it. They're focused on compliance — looking at things reactively, talking to you after the tax year is already over. Tax planning is completely different. We have specialists who understand the other 98%. And here's the reframe: don't look at it as 80,000 pages of rules. Think of it as 80,000 incentives that allow people to mitigate their taxes. Congress created the tax code to incentivize people to mitigate it. Most people just don't know how to utilize it, and they don't have access to the right strategies. The biggest mistake practice owners and medical professionals make is they don't know they're leaving money on the table.

Andrew Hong: Let's get tactical. I always want to leave our audience with a concrete takeaway. Most practice owners are the practice. Even in marketing, they want to grow, but the challenge is building a brand bigger than themselves. As I got through your book, there's a really practical, often-overlooked move: structuring a side entity separate from your main practice. It can unlock deductions you might not be able to access in your practice due to corporate structure or deduction eligibility. Can you walk us through that strategy?

Paavan Kotini: Great question. There are a number of low-hanging fruit strategies, and this is one of them. Let's say you're a functional medicine practitioner — you're doing IV, hormones, all the things in your day-to-day practice. But you're also being asked to speak, to consult for other practices, because you've built authority in your field. Creating a side entity focused on consulting means that the effort you put into speaking engagements, podcasts, and other avenues can be taken as additional deductions. Consulting work with other practices can also be run through this entity rather than your operating business, giving you more flexibility.

There are three major pillars of tax planning: credits, deductions, and depreciation. A side entity allows you to capitalize on certain deductions you may not have access to through your operating business. It's also an avenue to start pulling money outside of your operating business. Many practice owners we work with have their operating business, a separate entity for payroll, and a holding company. There are different ways to structure it. That's the simple version — but based on the complexity of where you're going, entity structuring can mitigate taxes and also mitigate risk.

Andrew Hong: Risk as in IRS audit protection and also protecting personal assets from business liability?

Paavan Kotini: Exactly. In terms of IRS, you're mitigating audit risk. But also, if something goes wrong in your practice, you don't want your personal assets exposed. The goal is to create a wall between your personal assets and your business.

Andrew Hong: Going back to the mindset shift from filer to planner — setting up that side entity is actually a tangible way to make that shift. Because now you have another entity, a separate QuickBooks, separate tax filings. That structure almost forces you to take the planning step. Things get a little more complicated, but that's why you hire professionals to manage it. And net-net, the result is better financially, from a wealthspan perspective, and even from a mental health perspective — maybe you can apply the SWAN method and sleep a little easier at night. Tell me about SWAN and how you came up with it.

Paavan Kotini: The initial concept of SWAN came about when I realized there are times when markets go up really well and times when they go down. In terms of investment and wealth philosophy, I didn't want to be a pure bull market investor but also didn't want to be a pure bear market investor. I thought about SWAN market investing — being able to sleep well at night because you're in the medium ground. Not too greedy, not too conservative. That concept originated in 2008 when we were able to help protect a lot of families from losing money when the market crashed, and in fact help them grow. The concept then expanded into how we look at wealth, taxes, and risk overall. The idea is: plan for the best, prepare for the worst. In many cases it's not a matter of if something will happen — it's a matter of when. We're already prepared. When markets crash or business slows, many of our clients aren't fazed because they already have a plan in place. You're really able to sleep well because you've thought through the majority of scenarios — not every exact scenario, but you know what the impact of those scenarios will be, and we can plan for that.

Andrew Hong: When is it a good time for a practice owner to talk to you? What's the revenue or income threshold where it starts to make sense?

Paavan Kotini: I love developing relationships early because there's so much we can do to help shape someone's entrepreneurial journey. But our ideal clients are individuals with a net income of $600K and above, or those paying $100K or more in taxes annually. A lot of times that corresponds to practice owners doing about $1 million or more in gross revenue. That's when it really, really makes sense — because you are almost certainly leaving money on the table, and there are clear ways we can put money back in your pocket.

Both practice owners in growth mode and those thinking about exit are great conversations. For anyone looking to exit, I absolutely recommend involving us before the sale. When it comes to capital gains, depending on when we get involved, we may be able to mitigate a large portion — 70% or more — and potentially even more if we're part of the conversation beforehand. After the capital gain event has already happened, we can still help, but the number of opportunities decreases significantly.

Andrew Hong: So don't wait until you're at the finish line to start thinking about planning. That's a key message. I've seen it from my M&A days — people so eager to get out that they took on really bad tax implications. And often the buyer will offer better terms if the owner sticks around for an earn-out period. It changes the whole dynamic.

Paavan Kotini: Absolutely. Let me tell you two stories. The first: a physician, about 56 years old, came to us in the last month of the year. He'd heard about us at a Christmas party. He had just sold his practice and wanted to mitigate some of the capital gains. We were able to mitigate 100% of the capital gain in his scenario. He had sold his clinic and wanted to immediately jump back in and buy another practice. We sat down with him and asked: what is your ultimate goal? What do you actually want? He had spent so many years dedicating his life to working, and we realized that with the strategies we were putting in place, he could actually retire. He didn't need to go back to work.

He was caught off guard — he thought he still needed to keep going. But we were able to show him that he didn't. He'd worked hard for his money; now his money could work hard for him. He was able to retire. His wife, also a physician, was stunned. She said: "You're telling me that all these years we've been told to save, save, save — and now you're telling me it's okay to spend? It's okay to retire now?" It's a different paradigm shift. We don't like to be yes-men. We like to bring thoughtful analysis so our clients can make educated decisions.

Andrew Hong: That really resonates. We start businesses as experts in something — otherwise people wouldn't pay us. But then you talk to a brilliant doctor and realize they know nothing about marketing, and they're almost embarrassed about it. Money is a weird thing. You come from an immigrant family, I come from an immigrant family — my dad was an investment banker, the opposite of an entrepreneur, very risk-averse. People's relationship with money is often wrapped in shame, even when they're doing well. There can be a psychological block around asking for help, especially when you've built something yourself. But if you're doing $1 million or more in gross revenue, there is likely money on the table, and people like Paavan exist specifically to help you capture it. Think of it like a functional medicine doctor — you wouldn't just take the pill your primary care doctor prescribed. You'd go to a specialist who looks at the whole picture. The same principle applies here.

Paavan Kotini: Absolutely. We can't all be the expert at everything. You have expertise as a practice owner. There are other people who are experts in other areas. You can certainly try to DIY many things, but in many cases you outgrow that approach. It took us years to become experts in this space, and we still feel like we don't know enough — we're learning every day. It's okay to go to an expert. We don't judge when someone has a problem — our goal is to help solve it. But you have to be honest with yourself. If your patients were embarrassed to tell you their symptoms, you couldn't diagnose them. The same applies here.

Andrew Hong: You can only evaluate so much through a tax return. Like a functional medicine doctor who looks at the whole body — the history, the lifestyle, the future considerations — you bring that same holistic perspective. And the arc of your story is remarkable: from fainting at the sight of blood in a lab to helping doctors who deal with blood every day get their financial lives in order.

So for any practice owner listening — what's the process if they want to connect with you?

Paavan Kotini: Similar to medicine, the first step is an introduction — about 30 minutes to see if we're a good fit, personality-wise and professionally. From there, if it feels right, we do a deeper diagnostic, just like in functional medicine with comprehensive testing. We look at everything. Then we come out with a proposal: fee structure, ROI, scope of work, and what the outcomes could look like. In most cases, when people get to that point, it becomes a no-brainer — because they can clearly see the value we're going to deliver far exceeds what they're paying. Our ultimate goal is to protect your most valuable asset, which is time. And to do it by making complex simple.

Andrew Hong: 100%. Paavan, that conversation went fast. Thank you so much for your time. If you're running a longevity or wellness practice and you've been putting off getting your financial health in order, I hope this episode was a wake-up call. We talked a lot about the wealthspan concept, and that alone is worth sitting with: you help your patients live longer, but your financial plan needs to keep up with the life you're trying to build.

If you want to connect with Paavan or explore what his family office approach might look like for your practice, go to his website at kotiniandkotini.com. His books, Effortless Wealth and Tax-Efficient White Coat, are both on Amazon. And remember: the Grow Smarter podcast is about helping practice owners grow smarter in every dimension — not just the modalities and treatments, but the marketing, financial planning, tax strategy, and operations that make a practice truly sustainable. Paavan, thank you for joining me. We'll have you back for more conversations.

Paavan Kotini: Thank you, Andrew. I really appreciate it. I can't believe an hour flew by.

Andrew Hong: Thanks everyone. We'll talk to you next time.

8 Years In: What It Actually Takes to Sustain a Growing Hormone Health Practice

andrew@tobeagency.co (Andrew Hong) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:00:00 GMT

Most healthcare practices don't make it to year five. The statistics are brutal — and if you're building your own practice right now, you probably already know this. The real question nobody talks about isn't how to launch. It's how to stay.

Dr. Bermesola Dyer, DNP, APRN, FNP-C, founder of The Wellness NPs in Laurel, Maryland, is approaching her eighth year in practice. She built her clinic from scratch — self-funded, with her first patient being a close friend — and has navigated COVID shutdowns, staffing turnover, and in December 2024, a fire that condemned her building and forced her team to operate out of a single room.

She's still here.

In this episode of Grow Smarter, Dr. B shares what healthcare practice longevity actually looks like from the inside. No highlight reel. No theory. Just eight years of hard decisions, real mistakes, and the mindset that kept her going when quitting would have been easy.

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. How to Sustain a Medical Practice Past Year Five: Lessons from the Ground

Dr. B didn't launch The Wellness NPs with venture funding or a full team. She saved her own money, avoided debt intentionally, and started seeing patients while still teaching as a nurse educator at a university. Her first patient was a close friend who stayed her only patient for almost six months.

That slow start, she says, was actually protective. Because she wasn't over-leveraged, she wasn't forced into desperate decisions early on. Growth was measured — more compounding interest than explosive scale.

By year seven, things were starting to click. Revenue was improving. The team was stabilizing. There was, as she describes it, wind under the sail. Then, on December 12th, 2024, her staff called to say they were smelling smoke in the building.

"I thought maybe someone left popcorn in the microwave," she recalls. By the time she arrived, there were roughly 20 firefighters on the roof, fire trucks blocking the road, smoke and flames visible from the street. The sign on the door read: do not enter — building condemned. Patients kept showing up because they didn't know.

Dr. B's response wasn't to fold. It was to stabilize, regroup, and use the forced slowdown to audit her systems, processes, and onboarding — things she'd been too busy growing to fix. Since they couldn't focus on growth, she told her team, they would focus on getting their processes iron sharp so they'd be ready when they returned to their space.

That mindset — treating a crisis as a systems audit — is one of the clearest markers of a practice owner who will still be standing in year ten.

2. Staffing: Your Most Important Asset and Your Hardest Problem

Ask any practice owner what keeps them up at night, and the answer is almost always staffing. Dr. B is no exception — but her background gives her an unusual advantage.

Before launching The Wellness NPs, she worked as a house supervisor for a hospital system, managing nursing floors and staffing gaps in real time. It was chaotic work that required constant creative problem-solving under pressure.

"I was pulling my hair out almost every night," she says. "But I realized now that it was really good preparation for what I'm having to do now."

Her approach to building a clinical team has been deliberately flexible. Rather than hiring full-time providers she couldn't yet fill, she built a per-diem, part-time model with designated schedules, rotating weekend shifts, and a culture built around family flexibility. Five nurse practitioners. Three registered nurses. Medical assistants. A practice manager. Virtual assistants.

The key to keeping providers reliable, she says, isn't contracts — it's culture. When someone has a sick child, the team covers the shift. The licensed staff have maintained a high level of professionalism. Higher turnover has come from unlicensed ancillary roles — a pattern common across the industry regardless of practice size.

Her honest assessment after eight years: staffing can make the practice or break the practice. And she's still refining the formula.

3. Marketing a Healthcare Practice: What Worked, What Was a Waste

When Dr. B launched, she did what most new practice owners do — leaned on her personal network, reached out to friends and family, and built an organic social media presence. No ads. Just consistent content: patient testimonials, before-and-after photos, educational posts on Facebook.

"Social media doesn't cost much," she says. "It was just word of mouth and the testimonials — and then me going in and promoting and talking about the services."

As the practice grew and revenue started coming in, she invested in a healthcare-specific marketing platform that combined SEO, website management, newsletter distribution, and lead tracking. The shift made a measurable difference — The Wellness NPs now ranks in the top two for local weight loss searches in her market.

What didn't work: Google Ads and Facebook Ads both delivered poor ROI. Facebook in particular blocked significant amounts of their weight loss content. The money, as she puts it, was just going nowhere.

Her marketing sequence — organic first, platform investment second, paid ads last — mirrors the Grow Smarter Method exactly. Build the foundation. Get found locally. Then scale. Don't run ads on a broken foundation.

4. Reframing Obesity: The Clinical and Human Case for Compassionate Care

One of the most powerful segments of this episode is Dr. B's explanation of why obesity is so widely misunderstood — and why that misunderstanding makes her patients' lives harder before they even walk in the door.

Obesity, she explains, is a recurring, relapsing chronic condition — similar in nature to high blood pressure or cholesterol. It is not a moral failure. It is not a willpower problem. And yet patients arrive carrying years of shame, judgment from their spouses, discrimination at work, and the deeply held belief that if they just tried harder, they'd figure it out.

"I've had patients come in in tears," she says. "They're frustrated because they can't get the weight off. They're trying so hard."

The science tells a different story. Hormones, insulin resistance, sleep quality, microbiome health, genetic set point — all of these interact with weight in ways that go far beyond diet and exercise. The Wellness NPs uses a six-pillar framework that addresses root cause, not just symptoms. When done well, this work changes lives — not just numbers on a scale. Dr. B has patients who have stopped blood pressure and diabetes medications entirely as a result of addressing their body composition and underlying hormonal imbalances.

Her goal, stated plainly, is to change the narrative about what the disease of obesity actually is.

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Don't invest in marketing until you have public testimonials. No testimonials means no trust, and no trust means digital marketing won't convert.
Build your clinical team with flexibility before commitment. Per-diem, part-time providers reduce financial risk while patient volume grows. Culture keeps the good ones showing up.
Organic marketing compounds. Social content, SEO, and word of mouth build on themselves over time — paid ads without a foundation burn money.
A crisis is a systems audit in disguise. Dr. B is using the fire recovery period to fix the processes she was too busy growing to address.
Build your expert team before you need them. A marketing partner, accountant, attorney, and operational advisor pay for themselves in mistakes avoided.
Entrepreneurship is personal growth with a business attached. The person who survives year eight is not the same person who opened the doors in year one.

Eight years. A pandemic. A fire. Staff turnover, tight margins, and the daily weight of running something that is, as Dr. B puts it, inseparable from your life and your mission. She's still standing — and getting clearer, more patient, and more calculated with every year.

If you're building a healthcare or wellness practice and any part of this conversation hit home, watch the full episode on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to connect with Dr. B or learn more about The Wellness NPs, visit thewellnessnps.com.

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Stop guessing with your marketing. At Tobe Agency, we help healthcare and wellness entrepreneurs build the foundational systems they need to scale with confidence.

From compliant website copy to Local SEO that attracts high-value patients, we ensure you waste less and grow smarter.

Read the Edited Transcript

Andrew Hong: Hey, everyone, welcome back to Grow Smarter. The show built for healthcare and wellness entrepreneurs who want to stop wasting money and start building practices that actually grow. I'm your host, Andrew Hong, founder of Toby Agency. And today's guest is someone I've had the pleasure of working with firsthand: Doctor Birx Dyer, aka Doctor B. She is a Doctor of Nursing Practice, a family nurse practitioner, and the founder of The Wellness NPs in Laurel, Maryland, a practice specializing in medical weight loss, hormone optimization, and menopause management. Doctor B isn't just a clinician; she's a business owner approaching her eight-year anniversary, which puts her in a category that most healthcare practices never reach. She's navigated hiring challenges, operational chaos, and even a literal fire to come out on the other side with a stronger practice and a clear sense of mission. Today we're talking about the staying story—what survival looks like past year five. Hey, Doctor B, how's it going?

Dr. B: Hey! It's going well, I can't complain.

Andrew Hong: So happy to have you here. We're going to talk a little bit about this eight-year anniversary—has it already passed or is it coming up?

Dr. B: It's coming up in April. We opened our doors to start seeing patients the last week of April 2019.

Andrew Hong: You had to navigate the Covid craziness that a lot of people had to do. Tell me a little bit about your background. How did you get into healthcare, and what inspired you?

Dr. B: I have been a nurse for 26 years, since 2000. I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to get my bachelor's in nursing. I actually wanted to be a nurse because of Nurse Carol on the show ER. I worked for about ten years and then went back to become a nurse practitioner. I'm originally from California, but I moved to the East Coast to get my master's in healthcare administration and a doctorate in nursing practice. I eventually went back to California and had the opportunity to work in a medical weight loss practice. When I was in the hospital, I felt like a pill pusher, just pushing medications all the time. I wanted a better way to get to patients before they were having amputations or bypass surgery. In the weight loss practice, I loved helping them learn how to eat and getting their blood pressure under control. When I came back to the East Coast with the military, I worked on my business plan during a deployment. We definitely came in before the craze of GLP-1s and the weight loss specialty. We really want to focus on preventative healthcare, wellness, functional medicine, and root causes to help patients lose weight and keep it off.

Andrew Hong: You're one of the OGs who got into this before the GLP-1 craze. By the way, where in California are you from originally?

Dr. B: Born and raised in the Bay Area. I went to Cal Berkeley and lived there for the first 35 years of my life.

Andrew Hong: I grew up in San Jose in the South Bay. I moved to the DC area during high school, going to Langley High School in McLean. But in California, I went to Harker High School in Saratoga.

Dr. B: I went to Independence High School. I ran track and played the trumpet in the marching band.

Andrew Hong: We played them in tennis! That's why we hit it off so well. Fast forwarding to today, late February 2026, we actually met through Elite NP. There's no shortage of people trying to start practices today. Small business statistics show that 80 plus percent fail in their first year, and around 95% fail by their fifth year. Now that you're at year eight, what does that feel like? Are you stable, or are you thinking about growing more?

Dr. B: Getting closer to my 50s, my perspective on life and how hard I want to work is shifting. Last year, year seven, I felt like we were finally starting to get some wind under our sail and making a comfortable profit. Looking back, it took a long time to get our first patient—who was one of my closest friends—and she was my only patient for about five or six months. I still teach as a nurse educator and professor. I funded it all on my own because I didn't want to go into a lot of debt, which is probably why I'm still here, even if we moved slower than companies that took on debt. We had our five-year anniversary gala a few years ago, and seeing the testimonials and before-and-after pictures was incredibly rewarding. But at year eight, we had a fire on December 12th of last year. My staff called smelling smoke, and I thought it was just popcorn, but by the time I arrived, flames were coming out of the roof. There were about 20 firemen, roads closed off, and a sign put on our door saying the building was deemed unsafe.

Andrew Hong: Wow.

Dr. B: We were left without a place to go, having to tell our patients we couldn't see them. This whole year has been us trying to stabilize and regroup. If you're going to start a business, you have to absolutely love it, or it will be hard to keep going through rough times. Usually at least once a week I want to throw in the towel, but as a woman of faith, I pray, fast, and meditate, and that gets me through.

Andrew Hong: There are always tests of your resilience. What motivates you and keeps you going when a literal fire burns everything down?

Dr. B: It's a calling and a life's mission. I wanted to teach since I was five years old, and now I do a lot of educating and coaching with my patients and students. Seeing their transformations is so fulfilling that it fills my cup.

Andrew Hong: For those just starting out, my recommendation is often to avoid digital marketing and ads initially unless you have public testimonials. I suggest building a decent website and hitting the ground to talk to your network. How would you recommend getting those first few patients?

Dr. B: Reaching out to friends and family who already know you is key. In the beginning, I was really active on Facebook, talking about our services and sharing educational sessions and before-and-after pictures. It didn't cost much because we didn't do paid marketing on social media; it was just organic word of mouth.

Andrew Hong: Did you have a physical location when you first started?

Dr. B: I did.

Andrew Hong: That’s an important point, because if you only do telehealth, you effectively pay a marketing tax since you don't show up in local Google Maps searches. Moving on to building a team, how did you approach hiring as you grew, and did you use W-2s or 1099s?

Dr. B: I got guidance from my attorney and accountant and decided on W-2s for our core staff to avoid misclassification issues. We have five nurse practitioners, three registered nurses, medical assistants, a practice manager, and outsourced virtual assistants who are 1099. Staffing can be your most important asset but also a difficult liability. Before this, I was a nursing house supervisor, which prepared me for managing turnover and sick calls. I have a wonderful, solid core team of nurse practitioners and an executive team that have been supportive through Covid and the fire.

Andrew Hong: When bringing on new clinicians, did you wait until you were busting at the seams, or did you bring them on part-time to fill up their schedules slowly?

Dr. B: A lot of our providers are part-time or per diem. They have families and don't want to commit to 40 hours a week, so we have designated rotating shifts that work well.

Andrew Hong: Why does that work well for you? Many practices struggle with clinicians no-showing.

Dr. B: Our nurse practitioners maintain a high level of professionalism. I do see turnover and no-shows with unlicensed ancillary staff, unfortunately. We try to be a very family-friendly and supportive practice, offering flexibility for childcare and family issues, and we cover for each other. I also get very creative with staffing when needed, like stepping in myself.

Andrew Hong: Running a business requires problem-solving and resilience, and not everyone is suited for it.

Dr. B: The fire has exposed a lot of our deficiencies, which is actually a good thing because we wanted to scale. We only have one room now instead of five, so we are taking a step back to fine-tune our processes and onboarding. I also learned the hard way how important it is to have consultants, mentors, and coaches to help guide me, because it can be a very lonely space.

Andrew Hong: Let's talk about marketing investments. What was a good investment for you?

Dr. B: We found a platform called Patient Gain that helped build our SEO, send newsletters, and manage our website and leads. Before them, we had a pretty website but no traffic or leads. We used to spend a lot on Google and Facebook ads, but the return on investment just wasn't there, and Facebook was blocking our weight loss content. Now, if you search for weight loss places near us, we rank at the top organically.

Andrew Hong: The weight loss space has changed drastically. How has the mindset of the new weight loss patient evolved with the popularity of GLP-1s?

Dr. B: They are very educated and often come in demanding just the shots, without wanting to hear about anything else like blood pressure or hormones. We do a lot of educating to help them understand we are looking at root causes through our six pillars to help them lose the weight and keep it off. Obesity is a complex, chronic, relapsing disease process—not a moral failure or just an issue of diet and exercise. It's heartbreaking to see patients come in in tears due to frustration and discrimination.

Andrew Hong: You've also built a specialty in women's health and perimenopause. How does functional health tie into that?

Dr. B: We moved into women's health because we had patients on the top doses of GLP-1s who were doing everything right but still couldn't lose weight. They were complaining of hot flashes, low libido, and fatigue. A patient who was a midwife suggested we look into hormone optimization. We realized that as women go through menopause, shifts in hormones and thyroid function slow down metabolism and cause visceral fat buildup. We take a holistic look to get to the root cause rather than just being a pill chaser. If we listen to the body, it tells us what needs fixing, like the importance of getting enough sleep, which is highly underrated.

Andrew Hong: There are over 300,000 monthly searches for perimenopause symptoms. Going back to the basics like sleeping instead of following toxic hustle culture is so important. To wrap up, what advice would you give to your day-one self?

Dr. B: Get a support group and a team of professionals around you—an accountant, an attorney, a marketing person. Also, find a support team of like-minded business owners to bounce things off of, because your employees might not understand the difficult decisions and sacrifices you make. I've definitely grown and am much wiser and more patient today.

Andrew Hong: Entrepreneurship is truly about personal growth, and to get to the next level of success, you have to become a different person. Your story is inspiring. Thank you for being so transparent. I'll include all of Doctor B's and The Wellness NPs' information in the show notes.

Dr. B: Thank you for having me. To anyone developing a business: don't give up on your dreams. It's hard, but it's so rewarding and fulfilling if you love what you do.

Tobe Blog

Stem Cell Marketing Compliance: What Your Front Office and Marketing Team Need to Know

The Compliance Risk That Lives Outside the Exam Room

What Your Front Office Needs to Know About Answering Patient Questions

What Your Marketing Team Needs to Know About FDA-Compliant Language

The Hyagen Medical Advanced Training and What It Covers

Key Takeaways

Small Business Marketing Diagnosis: What You Need Before Ads

Why "Just Run Ads" Usually Fails

The 80/20 of Small Business Marketing Fixes

The Sequence: Diagnose, Then Prescribe, Then Execute

If You're a Small Business Owner Ready to Spend on Ads

Why Did My Sales Drop? 5 Reasons That Aren't Marketing

1. Competition Is Taking Your Business

2. Operational Breakdowns Are Leaking Revenue

4. Your Pricing Drifted Out of Alignment

5. Your Offer No Longer Matches What the Market Wants

How to Tell If It's Actually a Marketing Problem

Why Isn't My Marketing Working? It's Either a Traffic Problem or a Conversion Problem.

What a Traffic Problem Looks Like

What a Conversion Problem Looks Like

The Most Expensive Mistake: Fixing the Wrong One

If You're Running a Small Business and Your Marketing Feels Stuck

Real Estate AI: How Luxury Agents Can Get Found in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google

Your Clients Are Already Using AI to Research You

The Difference Between SEO, AI Search, and GEO

The 4 Signals AI Uses to Decide Whether to Recommend You

The Coordination Problem

What to Do This Week

The Window Is Open, But It Won't Stay Open

Are You Renting Your Marketing? A Small Business Ownership Checklist

The Two Ways to Get Found on Google (And Why Utah Businesses Need Both)

Why So Many Small Business Owners End Up Renting Their Marketing

The Five Things Every Small Business Should Own

Your Website

Your Domain

Your Customer Data

Your Content

Your Workspace and Email

Red Flags When You’re Hiring (or Already Working With) a Marketing Vendor

If You’re Already Mid-Contract and Locked In

Vehicle Wrap Marketing: How Utah Small Businesses Turn Trucks Into Local Lead Machines

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. The ROI Math That Changes Everything

2. Why Your Logo Has to Come First

3. QR Codes: The Bridge Between Offline and Online

4. What to Look for When Choosing a Wrap Shop

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Read the Edited Transcript

Auto Dealership Marketing in Utah: Which Channel Actually Works for Your Business

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. The Biggest Auto Dealership Marketing Mistake: Content Built to Sell, Not to Connect

2. Auto Dealership Marketing Starts With Brand, Not Inventory

3. Transactional vs. Lifestyle: Matching the Channel to the Business

4. What $2,000 a Month Actually Gets You in Automotive Marketing

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Read the Edited Transcript

Wealthspan: The Financial Strategy Longevity and Wellness Practice Owners Can't Afford to Ignore

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. What Is Wealthspan: And Why Practice Owners Keep Ignoring It

2. The Filer vs. The Planner: A $5 Million Difference in Mindset

3. One Low-Hanging Fruit Most Practice Owners Miss: The Consulting Entity

4. Private Equity Is Coming: Opportunity or Competition, Depending on What You Do Now

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Ready to Build Your Wealthspan?

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Read the Edited Transcript

8 Years In: What It Actually Takes to Sustain a Growing Hormone Health Practice

Key Takeaways & Show Notes (Chapter/Timestamp Summary)

1. How to Sustain a Medical Practice Past Year Five: Lessons from the Ground

2. Staffing: Your Most Important Asset and Your Hardest Problem

3. Marketing a Healthcare Practice: What Worked, What Was a Waste

4. Reframing Obesity: The Clinical and Human Case for Compassionate Care

Key Takeaways & Conclusion

Ready to Grow Smarter?

Read the Edited Transcript