HOSU 3 | Dental Marketing

Chris Pistorius – Founder Of Kickstart Dental Marketing

Most dentists have no idea what a “unique selling proposition” means because they’re not in the mindset of selling a product or service, and they shouldn’t be. Matthew Sullivan’s guest today is Chris Pistorius, the Founder of KickStart Dental Marketing. Chris has over 15 years of experience in dental marketing. He has worked with countless dentists and orthodontists across multiple facets of marketing, consulting, and coaching. In this episode, Chris shares valuable tips and insights on marketing strategies. If you want to learn how to grow your online presence, you’re in the right place. Click and tune in!

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CHRIS PISTORIUS – FOUNDER OF KICKSTART DENTAL MARKETING

Chris runs one of the top dental marketing companies in the country and shares his digital marketing expertise with me.

We have none other than Chris Pistorius. Chris, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I’ve got my cheat sheet here. All it talks about is a skill in marketing, design, ads, digital marketing, digital strategist. As you can see from your hat, you’re CEO, Owner, Founder, and boss of KickStart Dental Marketing. First of all, what on earth got you involved? What made you get started in dental marketing?

I’m asked that a lot.

Was it the love of the sound of drills? Did you watch Marathon Man over and over again and think, “I have to try and recover this?”

What’s ironic is I hate being in a dental office at all, even when I go to visit my clients. I’m not a dentist person. I go to the dentist, of course, but I don’t like it. It wasn’t because of my love of dentistry, let’s put it that way. When I first started this agency, a couple of years ago now, I left Corporate America. I had a nice job and it was safe. At the time, I had two little kids at home and I decided to jump ship and start my own agency.

Is that because you wanted your wife to go, “Chris, what a brilliant idea?”

It was quite the opposite of that. She thought I was nuts. I knew I wasn’t wired for Corporate America and the grind my whole life. I wanted more out of my career. What’s funny is, when I started the agency, I took on anybody I could, anybody that would pay me and would be willing to let me learn.

When was this? Big question. Did you make the leap, or were you pushed?

No, I wasn’t pushed at all. I made the leap. I knew I was going to do it. It was a couple of years ago but I knew I was going to do it a few months prior, so I had some ducks in a row in terms of having clients at least ready to be on our platform. There was a lot of winging it and trying to figure things out in the beginning, but that’s how I got into dentistry. We took on anybody that would pay us. Every time we did another industry, we’d have to learn the industry like the lingo, what works, and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, by the time we figured it out. It was too late and the client wasn’t getting the results that they wanted. It sounds like, “We’ve got a niche this down and be an expert in something and not only try to figure it out.”

How do you market dental offices? Do you have an ad that says, “I promise you it will hurt you more than me. I’m just kidding?”

It’s not so much about branding and building a brand. It’s about the results. It’s getting people into your store.

I might use that. That’s good.

Just kidding. Come and find out.

We’ve got a lot of cool strategies that we use but everything we do is digital marketing. Think of us as the website, social media, review management, online presence kind of people. We get creative with that stuff. We have clients in Canada as well. What’s interesting is that they have a set of laws in Canada that restricts how you can market a dental practice. You can’t do certain things you can do here in the United States. Learning nuances like that and legalities in the US in terms of HIPAA laws and things like that are a huge deal to specialize in.

It’s brilliant over here. I’ve been over here for a few years now and it’s great. As a dental office, you can say, “Don’t go down to Dr. Schwartz. He’s awful. We’re much better. Come to us.” You can say stuff like that. You’ve got much more flexibility, but years ago, that would have been what 2007.

2009.

I was applying a different set of mathematical rules. It’s advanced mathematics. The world will catch up at some point. I’m trying to think about who were the major players in terms of digital because of this whole concept of digital advertising then. It probably would have been something AdWords. I don’t think Facebook had any real defined platforms. You started off with a new client base. You’ve got to think of new strategies and you’ve gone to a completely open field in terms of what’s out there. Where did you start?

I had been in marketing for years. I used to work for America Online AOL back in their heyday. That’s where I got my start in digital marketing. Back then, nobody knew what to buy or sell online. They knew they needed to be a part of the internet. We sold banner ads. We put them anywhere we could and hope for the best for our clients. We track things how many times somebody saw the ad or how many times somebody clicked the ad and basic things like that. Everybody thought we were heroes and we weren’t. In terms of dental marketing strategy, I’ve been working with local businesses all my career, so I understood that it’s not so much about branding and building a brand. That’s important even in local marketing, but it’s all results-driven marketing, direct marketing, and getting people into your store and into your office, whatever it may be. I sat down and designed a set of strategies that I thought could do that and it’s worked out well thus far.

You stayed with dental marketing. It’s big. I’m not sure if you would describe it as a niche business but are you not tempted to move into other verticals like doctors, dentist, and there are other types of healthcare providers where their skillset is focused on drilling large holes in your teeth, as opposed to figuring out how to market themselves.

That’s it. You hit the nail on the head. I’ve entertained ideas of broadening it, but I’ve never seen a need for it. In fact, I was close to doing a veterinary marketing business, because I’m passionate about animals. I’m an animal lover and I wanted to try that, but I didn’t do it. The thing is, these kids that go to dental school come out as dentists. They’re good at that. The problem is they learned little about business or running a business and one of those things is marketing. In the United States, one of the biggest killers of small businesses is knowing how to be a technician in your business and doing the work well but not understanding how to grow, scale, hire, fire, and all of that other stuff in marketing, certainly. That’s why most businesses fail, so there was definitely a need for this in dentistry because like other small businesses, maybe even more so, these dentists just want to be a dentist. They don’t want to figure out how to market themselves and spend money here, there or anywhere else and that’s where we fit in nicely for.

That’s true because you’re right. Running a dental practice is a business. You can come in as an associate or as a partner. In many cases, the practice that you join will probably have that infrastructure in place. As you grow and as you set up your own business, it’s this whole concept of digital marketing. If we look at where we are now, where are the most effective strategies for this vertical? I would imagine if it works for something as narrow as dental practitioners, you could apply that same logic to others. I’m sure that my reader, would absolutely be fascinated to find out is it AdWords? Is it Facebook? Is it a combination of online and offline? Is it Instagram showing pictures of before and after? Where do you find the real impact and what’s most surprising? I’m going to continue with questions and never going to let you answer. What is the most surprising outcome of all of the work that you’ve done, the thing that made you think I never expected that?

We have a motto here, “Leaving dentists better off than when we found them,” in terms of their overall financial health, their business, and personally in terms of what ten more patients a month mean for you personally, too. What keeps me going and motivated are the folks that we pick up that are struggling with one practice maybe. We see over months and years if they stay with us and they grow. Not only is that practice successful, but they buy other practices. Now they own 2, 3, or even more practices. In a short amount of time, they’ve gone from struggling to that. I know that we at least have a small part in that and that is cool and that’s what keeps me going every day. We have tons of stories like that and it’s cool. We’re a startup atmosphere even though we’ve been for years. We’re a boutique agency. We only take on so many new clients a year, and we try to keep it close-knit and done from scratch type marketing. That’s the thing that gets me going.

HOSU 3 | Dental Marketing

Dental Marketing: One of the biggest killers of small businesses is knowing how to be a technician in your business and doing the work well but not understanding how to grow, scale, hire, fire, and all things marketing-related.

What is the difference? Because I would have thought that referral marketing would be powerful. That’s offline. How much of a role does referral marketing play? Digital marketing is where you’re casting a net wide and you’re trying to bring in people using a different set of messages than you would do. How much of your overall strategy is based on referral, as opposed to general digital marketing?

You’d be surprised how much digital does blend into referral. You’re right when you said that, especially with the dental practice. Almost always a majority of their new patients come from referrals, family members, friends, or whatever may be, and that should be that way. However, we’re in this digital age where everybody can see everything. If Aunt Sally refers me to a dental practice, I’m not going to take her word anymore, pick up the phone, and call. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go online, and I’m going to check them out. I’m going to look at their website, online reviews, and all kinds of stuff before I even pick up the phone and call them. A lot of what we do not only attract new patients but also tells a compelling story for people like referrals. Not just found, but they also want to be chosen. We help them build great online reviews from their patients. In fact, we’re about ready to launch a brand-new way to get video reviews from patients and help tell their stories to people. There is a blend there. Even digital marketing is helping out with referral patients, too.

Do you think that people trust other referrals less now than they trust online referral reviews? Historically, you’d knock on your neighbor’s door and sit and say, “Do you know a good dentist,” if I’ve moved to the area. Do I trust that person more or less than the trust pilot reviews or the Google reviews?

It depends on the person but it also depends on the source. Google reviews are legit. A few years ago, they had a little spam issue where people could go in and fraudulently put reviews. That’s become harder to do now. Yelp is the leader in that. They’re so strict with their reviews that sometimes a lot of actual real reviews get filtered out because they show them as spam but there are other sources that aren’t as reliable that still will allow those types of reviews. On a trust factor, we’re in a good landscape now where people believe those reviews. Especially the video reviews, where they can see somebody, feel the emotion, and see what they went through. Video reviews help a ton.

Those are video reviews that you put together and those are the ones that you feature. All of these things that you’re talking about here are relevant to all sorts of other businesses. Businesses where trust is the primary driver. You’ve got price-driven purchase decisions, trust-driven, location, and all sorts of people buy things for all sorts of reasons. Would you say that trust is a primary driver for your particular vertical?

No question, especially with COVID. People want to be able to see and feel where they’re about ready to take their family for a health-related service. Video allows us to show them that and we do our best to get doctors to do a quick two-minute video on their iPhone if they need to introduce themselves to the practice. At the end of the day, people still buy from people. I know that in dentistry, you don’t feel you’re buying something but you are. If people do buy from people and you believe that you need to make your online presence as personable as possible and videos are a huge way to be able to do that.

That’s amazing because the traditional understanding of digital marketing is essentially distanced marketing or depersonalized marketing where you’re trying to game the system to a certain extent. What by that is that you’re using Google AdWords. When someone typed in the word dentist, you go, “A-ha. Here’s an ad.” This has now evolved. It’s almost gone full circle where you’re moving back to people dealing on a mano o mano basis but through a digital medium.

We do Google Ads as well. It’s a complex beast. For us, it’s typing in a word a dentist in a city isn’t necessarily going to be a dental patient. That could be some kid writing a term paper. We try to take some strategy and bid on long-term keywords like, “How much is a root canal?” “How many days do I have to have Invisalign on?” Long-term search words like that. We try to make this whole strategy as personable as possible. There are 100 dentists in every city. We don’t believe the dentist is a dentist. We believe each dentist has a unique selling proposition of why they’re different and why they’re better than their competition. The clearer that story is, the easier it is to market that practice. That’s where we try to start and we market to whatever we can with that USP. In some cases, we signed on with a dentist who does at-home dental care. They do house calls, which is unheard of. They do some special needs dentistry, things like that. We try to target that type of market to help them stick out from the crowd a little bit.

How much of those decisions are driven by you and how many are driven by them? In other words, how many dentists say, “This is going to be my unique selling point?” How many people that you come across are not familiar with that term, concept, and need?

I would say 98.9% of people have no idea what I’m talking about when I say, “Unique selling proposition,” and especially dentists because again, they’re not in the mindset of selling a product or a service. They shouldn’t be. They’re not. What they are is they’re selling a solution to a problem. Somebody has a toothache or somebody wants to have a better smile. That’s a solution to a problem. Sometimes, I’ll pull analytical data and I say, “Dr. Jones, there are 112 dentists within a three-mile radius of your office. What are we going to do to be able to compete with those people?” I get that deer in the headlights look and I say, “That’s what we have to figure out first.” That is the first step of our process.

You’ve got a certain advantage as a dentist because it is a person-to-person transaction. The transaction is, “Do I trust this person with my dental care?” How do your programs work with industries which don’t have that personal touch? Let’s take something like finance, for example, or something where there’s still that requirement for trust but you haven’t got the benefit of having the ability to do it? Maybe it works. Do videos work as well with someone who’s not going to be having that same close interaction with you?

Each market is a little different. What works for one dental practice may not work for another.

Studies show that it does. I haven’t done a marketing campaign outside of dentistry for a while. I’m part of a group that’s a bunch of other agencies like mine but they focus on different industries and we get together every quarter. We talk about trends, best practices, things that are working and things that aren’t. I can tell you that across the board, that video is a big way. I know a guy that runs a marketing agency for TaxPros and they’re using video. TaxPros can use video and benefit themselves as anybody could.

Do you think that’s a result generally of people being saturated by ad after ad after ad saying the same thing in whatever industry you care to mention?

The big news in marketing now is the update to the iPhone, where people are able to opt-out from Facebook tracking your every move and serving you ads based on your behavior. A lot of businesses that relied on that type of marketing, which we did not, are going to have a tough time at it. They’re going to have to change their ways probably. What we’re seeing in the market is people are tired of going into a hotel’s website and jumping on to Facebook and all of a sudden, you see ads from that hotel for the next few days. It’s kind of creepy a little bit but I don’t think people like it. I’m not sure that’s the best way to market a local business effectively.

We should expand on that because that’s a fundamental change in the way that Facebook has to operate. Can you tell us a bit more? It’s the beginning of the definition of the tension between those two huge companies, Apple and Facebook. This will impact millions of millions of advertisers who rely on precisely that. With the ability to serve ads based on cookies, you’re going to a site, picking up this cookie that says, “I looked at this hotel.” Explain what’s happening because it’s only happened.

Essentially, in the past with, Facebook, especially, they can track where you go, what you do, and all these cookies are put onto your local computer, if you will, in a sense. They know what websites you’ve been to. When you hit Facebook, it can read what products and services you’ve looked at and shopped for and it can then serve ads to you personally, based on your search history. With Apple’s update, they can’t do that any longer. You have to physically opt-in to allow that to happen. Most people don’t want that to happen, so they don’t let it happen.

The other side of Facebook, the way that we use it, for our market is that when you sign up for Facebook, you tell them your life story. They know how old you are, where you live, how many kids you have, and all kinds of stuff. The brilliance behind it is because other people are going to see that, people that you haven’t seen for years, and you want to keep them up to date on what’s going on, so information is accurate. When we use Facebook Ads for a dental practice, we target things like age, if they own their own home, where they live, if they’re brand new parents, and that’s the kind of data that I believe anyway, drives results and that’s the way that we use it. We don’t do remarketing in terms of where they’ve been and where they’ve shopped. We’re more interested in the fundamentals of their demographic profile.

On that note, you touched on two things. You talked about audience selection, and copy or there’s the message. What is more important?

Both. If I had to pick one or the other, it would be the copy for sure.

The question is, you still have to have that message, even though you can target specific demographics based on age and geography. The fact that I like watching the Wives of Dental Offices in New York if there’s some new show. It is the copy, the message. What do you think is the message that resonates best with all of the ads that you run? Is there some magic or some clear strategy that works across the board for most people?

There isn’t. What works for one dental practice may not work for another. Each market is a little different. That’s one of the benefits of partnering with a company like mine, shameless plug. We’ve got years of experience in running these types of campaigns and in all kinds of different size markets from tier 1 cities to tier 3 cities. We’ve got the history of those campaigns and we can see what’s worked well and what hasn’t worked well in the past for similar size markets. That allows us to kind of hit the ground running. We still test everything, and we make changes on the fly as we go but we have a good idea of what’s going to work. It’s not always that simple but it definitely helps.

The keyword there is testing. There’s a lot of assumptions that go into marketing. We assume, based on an audience of one or a sample of one, in other words me, that if I like this then everyone else out there will like this. From your perspective, talking to dentists, how difficult is it to get across that or how to get over that view that the dentist always knows best?

HOSU 3 | Dental Marketing

Dental Marketing: If people do buy from people and you believe you need to make your online presence as personable as possible, videos are a huge way to do that.

I’m surprised by it because it doesn’t happen very often in dentistry. Maybe we’re getting a little bit better at setting the expectations of, “We’re the experts. Follow our lead here.” When I was doing other industries, it was hard sometimes, attorneys especially. This is a type of television ad that I like. This is the one that I want to run. It doesn’t matter what you like. It’s what the consensus of your potential customers like. Sometimes, that’s a tough conversation to have. Early on, I’d made the mistake of allowing that to happen because I wanted to be paid. Now that we’ve got at least a little bit of success, we have those conversations of, “You’re not going to run this show. You need to rely on us to do this for you. We’ll get better results.” If that’s not the way you want to run maybe, we’re not the best fit. We have candid conversations about strategy and most of the time. We don’t have any feedback at all from that. They trust us, we’ve been around for a long time, and that helps, too.

That also touches on something else on a wider spectrum. Dealing with people where the tail doesn’t wag the dog. In other words, you start off in any business where you want the customers and you want the clients, so you’re willing to do what you think they want but the problem then is that the outcome, as you were saying, doesn’t always work. How hard is it and what advice have you got for people who are in that stage where they’re building something? Maybe it’s a business like yours, where they feel that the customer is tugging them in a direction they don’t necessarily want to go?

My advice would be to stick to your guns and be passionate about what you do. Be nice to them but let them know that you’re the expert and that’s why they’re hiring you. It’s for that expertise. We’ve got clients that have been with us nine years and we have clients that haven’t been with us nine years. Some of those people that have left us have been like that. What I found is that the people that do push back and want to enforce their own strategies are the people that probably aren’t going to be with you long-term.

Ultimately, do they come back, cap in hand?

I’ve had several comebacks. Yes.

It is good because that proves that you are an expert. Years ago, did you think that you would still be doing this years later with the same group of people or did you have visions of becoming an agency dealing with all sorts of different verticals?

Certainly, in the beginning, I didn’t have any idea that I was going to niche down. That didn’t have anything to do with any of the business plans. In fact, our first business plan was to be a social media company. While that’s certainly an aspect of what we do, what we found out is that people don’t want one service from one company and another marketing service from another company. They’re looking for somebody who can handle most of their marketing in one place. That’s where we made that adjustment. I don’t think I was thinking years ahead about anything. I don’t think I am now. I’m trying to get out of the month-a-month type of thinking versus the hour-to-hour.

Your long-term strategies are next month. What you’re doing now is something that is admirable. In other words, being able to become a specialist in a particular field because it’s so easy to try and be all things to all people. The money is finding a niche and becoming an expert in that area because ultimately, you outlive everybody who’s tried all sorts of different things and you develop so much expertise and experience based on real life feedback. You then become unassailable. No one is going to have the same amount of experience as you do because they haven’t been doing it for as long, so that creates success.

You’re right on. That’s absolutely correct. My advice would be for anybody that’s starting a marketing company like mine now, find that niche as soon as possible and go with it. Make it work. Dentistry is one of the most competitive places to sell anything to and it’s one of the most elusive because you can’t walk in or call a dental practice and talk to the doctor. You’ve got 3 or 4 gatekeepers that are trained to keep you out of there. It’s competitive. It’s hard to sell to them. There are tons of people trying to do it. I picked one of the hardest ones but it was a big deal. It was a big deal when we niched down. We can talk about results, dental or other dental practices in specific there’s and it helps a ton. My advice would definitely be to pick a niche and go for it.

Also, you can then see results. The most important thing is as far as the dentist is concerned, when the results start coming in presumably, you get that movement from being skeptical to, “Oh my God. Please. Here’s what.”

We’ve picked up a lot of clients that have unfortunately been burned by other companies and they haven’t gotten the results that they wanted. It’s the sales process and those first couple of months. People are in defense mode and they’re like, “I’ve been through this before. I’m not getting burned again type of thing.” We’ve got to work through that. We’re transparent with what we do. We have strategies that work short-term while we’re also waiting for a longer-term strategy to take effect.

We have the ability to help bring patients in quickly while we’re working on a longer-term strategy, which will probably be more cost-effective down the road. My client success managers are the people that take care of our clients. They’re awesome. They go over, above, and beyond answering questions and making sure they’re updated on what’s going on. That’s been a huge contribution to our success.

People who push back and want to enforce their own strategies are those that probably aren’t going to be with you long-term.

Dental surgeries are a business. You provide a particular service. Do you see yourself expanding within that dental framework to other areas like tax and general business advice in terms of growth in acquisitions? Do you think that what you’ve got is something that’s going to keep you busy forevermore?

What we’ve got now is, it’s going to keep us busy but what I try to do is I’ve got a podcast show as well that I do on a weekly basis. What I try to do there is bring in people you mentioned like dental brokers. They help dentists buy and sell practices, insurance people or other people in the industry that can provide great information to my base and people are potentially going to hire me. That’s how I try to tackle a lot of that, so we do that weekly podcast show. That helps a ton but I like to be the innovator and cool tech guy.

In fact, I was working on this new software, I mentioned a little bit of it, where we can send a link to a potential new patient. They tap on the link and they can use their phone and leave a video review for the doctor. It’s cool because we have the doctor shoot a quick little video saying, “Thanks for doing this. Here are the questions I’m going to ask.” It takes them through step-by-step. That’s going to be the next cool thing not only in dental but that’s something that can be applied to about any business. It’s things that where I’m going to see the growth within dentistry and adding on and innovating what we have now.

The other thing with that is that what we sometimes find with dental practices is that their front desk are great people but they’ve never been professionally trained on how to deal with new patients that call them and don’t already know who they are so they’re finding them online. That’s a different conversation than when Aunt Betty calls in as a referral. We also have developed an online training course for front desk professionals to go through and teach them how to close if you will, more new patients when they call in asking general questions. We’re trying to go full circle. You said, “We’ll help you generate more leads and get more patient conversations but we’re also going to help you close those new patients to get their butts in there in your chair.”

That’s a hugely important part because the front desk is almost a particular breed of person like a sales prevention officer. You’ve got to try and unravel decades of training that’s designed to fend people off rather than invite them in. Probably the hardest challenge is getting the front desk people to smile.

We sometimes help with hiring, so we’ll run Facebook Ads trying to get front desk people, hygienists, or whatever it may be. They asked us our opinion on that. With hygienists, you’ve got to go to school for that or anything like that but with front desk people, a lot of times, we recommend hiring people with no experience. They look at us like, “Are you crazy?”

There’s no predetermined view of, “This is how I should act.”

You can get them cheaper and you can train them the way that you want them. You’ve got to spend a little bit more time in training. What we found is that if you have somebody that comes in with 10 or 15 years of experience, it’s hard to mold them into the way that you want them and to teach them new tricks, if you will.

Do you think that because of the intensely personal relationship that the dentist has with the patient, at the time that they’re doing the surgery, and the amount of trust and cost that’s involved these are potentially big-ticket deals? These aren’t small purchases of thousands of thousands of dollars. Do you think the marketing that you’re bringing to this group is at the cutting edge of digital marketing? In other words, what you’re doing over the next few years will trickle down into other verticals that have that same trust requirement.

It already is. There’s a fine line between cutting edge and what works. For instance, we won’t deploy any strategy with one of our client’s money without knowing that it’s going to be effective. We’re testing on our own dime TikTok and marketing there. There is a segment of the population that does well for. We’re still trying to figure that out but we’re going to be one of the first dental marketing companies, and there are others that will go into TikTok and be able to produce results out. Most companies aren’t able to do that.

I know exactly what you mean. What you don’t want to do is have your clients be the guinea pigs because you’re all about results. Understanding what you’re saying that there are so many ways that people market their services. It’s stale and what you’re doing is innovative. It’s delivering results and it’s something that is transferable to other types of businesses where trust is important. The ability to train people on how to react to your video concept. That’s interesting. I’m pleased to say, Chris, that we’ve now graduated to the final part of the interview. This is where I asked my quick-fire questionnaire.

HOSU 3 | Dental Marketing

Dental Marketing: The big news in marketing now is the update to the iPhone, where people can opt-out from Facebook tracking your every move and serving you ads based on your behavior.

I’m in trouble. I didn’t study.

These are one-word answers. There are ten questions. Don’t worry. It’s simple. We have the power of the edit.

That’s true. This isn’t live. I liked it.

We can pretend you live. To wrap up what has been an incredibly interesting interview, I have my ten questions. Question number one, Chris Pistorius. What is your favorite word?

My favorite word is innovation.

Number two, what is your least favorite word?

Anything negative. I don’t like negative people and anything with a negative tone. Take your pick.

Number three, what are you most excited about right now?

This business. A couple of years ago, I started and hopped out of bed and couldn’t wait to get started and I still have that feeling.

Every day, you still have that drive and passion. Number four, what turns you off right now?

Negativity. I hate social media and I’m in the business. The only reason I’m part of social media is because I have to be. What I’ve experienced with politics, COVID, what I’ve seen, and how other people act is repulsive and horrible. That’s probably my biggest thing there.

If you have somebody who comes in with 10 or 15 years of experience, it’s hard to mold them into how you want them to be.

Number five, what sound or noise do you love?

Whenever we bring on a new client, there’s a little noise that my contact management software makes. I always love hearing that.

Ka-ching.

It’s not that, but it’s similar. I can’t describe it.

Question number six, what noise or sound do you hate?

My apologies if you’re one of these people, but these people that have these little cars that they souped-up and it sounds like a weed eater and it’s a car that’s going by. I’m like, “What’s going on there?”

I used to do that when I was a kid. I used to drill holes in my exhaust fan but you graduate from that when you’re about sixteen or something.

That makes more of a manly grr sound. These new things with these little street racers sound like weed eaters.

Number seven, what is your favorite curse word? You can plead the fifth if you like.

That’s a toughie because I can go deep there.

No one reads this, so it’s fine.

HOSU 3 | Dental Marketing

Dental Marketing: When we use Facebook Ads for a dental practice, we target things like age, if they own their own home, where they live, and if they’re brand new parents.

I’m going to go with the S-word. I use that a lot.

It’s these good multifunctional words. Number eight, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I’d like to be a manager of a professional baseball team. I helped coach my son’s Little League team now and I know that’s nowhere near but I played baseball in high school and college. That’s what I’d like to try.

Number nine, what profession would you not like to attempt?

Anything that’s a daily grind. Anything in Corporate America, I’m anti. Specifically, probably a management-type job.

Imagine that. It’s hell on earth.

I don’t think I can do it.

Question ten, the final question. If heaven exists, what would like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

“Welcome in,” would be good to hear versus, “You’re in the wrong exit. You’ve got to go the other way.”

Chris, thank you for being such a brilliant guest. Final question, how do people get hold of you? What’s the best way of contacting you, KickStart, and learning more about how you can benefit their practices and their businesses generally?

The best way is to go to the website KickStartDental.com. There are several opportunities there to schedule what we call a strategy session. That’s our first stop. It’ll be with me personally. I talked to every new client in the first conversation. We’ll go over some. I have some questions and see where it goes and see if we might be a good fit for what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s KickStartDental.com.

Thanks once again. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on. I look forward to following your progress and staying in touch.

Thank you so much for having me.

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About Chris Pistorius

HOSU 3 | Dental MarketingChris Pistorius is the founder of KickStart Dental Marketing which has consistently been listed as one of the top dental marketing companies in the country by UpCity, SEO For Growth, DesignRush, Expertise & AgencyVista. Having over 15 years of experience in dental marketing, he has worked with countless dentists & orthodontists across multiple facets of marketing, consulting, and coaching. He shares his expertise by giving marketing seminars across the country and hosting a weekly dental marketing podcast.