Tea Nguyen, DPM (00:53.676)

If you're wondering what should be in place before you start opting out of insurance, or even if you've already started your direct care practice and wondering how do you actually keep this sustainable, this is your episode. What could I be possibly talking about? This is going to be a three-part series on taking the steps in building a profitable and simple direct care practice. The first step in any business venture is having a vision. And a lot of the episodes I've already produced here showed you how to think like a business owner.

A lot of us come from an employee mindset because that was our entire training from the start of our residency into fellowship and maybe into our jobs. We were taught how to be an employee. We were told what to do. The patients just showed up. We provided excellent service and then somehow we got paid eventually. Paycheck, insurance reimbursements, RVUs, all that, right?

But when you become the CEO, you now have to make those hard decisions. Things like who to hire, who to fire, what processes need to be refined, how your time should be spent on things like operations, management, and so on. So I know at first glance it sounds daunting to be a business owner, but it's actually really fun to understand what it truly takes to become that person who can run a successful business and be an excellent doctor.

So needless to say, the mental hurdles, the resistance, the doubts, and the fears, that actually lays the foundation for the next step once you master it. And in reality, I don't think any of us ever really master this. Like we never find ourselves never being fearful, never having doubts, never dealing with the resistance of change. That's part of ownership. But over time, you do get better and you learn how to navigate through them a lot faster once you have that experience. The doctors who are really successful in this model

Are those who understand that business ownership is not just a medical degree. Simply having the skill set in medicine does not guarantee your success, but it does give you the framework that you can handle hard things, and that you can learn those lessons. Those lessons are not necessarily written anywhere in books. It's kind of like our medical training. We have the foundation, we have the books, but when it comes to real life,

Tea Nguyen, DPM (03:09.326)

Patient case scenarios, everyone's journey is unique and so is yours. So keep that in mind when it comes to owning your business, functioning like a CEO, you'll have the foundation, but over time, it's really the experience that gets you there faster. Okay, so you're ready to opt out of insurance or leave employment to open a direct specialty care practice. Here's what actually needs to happen. This episode is going to focus on crafting a signature offer, the one thing that you sell.

The next episode is going to talk about patient acquisition. How do you actually find the people who need your stuff? So in this episode, I will break it all down as to why a signature offer is the thing if you want to stand out from insurance options. So let's get into it. First, we really want to understand what the default path is. When doctors leave insurance, they're thinking about a la carte visits or menu style of pricing where every procedure, CPT code,

There is a price point. So it's whatever that patient needs on that day, right? They come in for an office visit, there's a code for that. There's an x-ray that's needed, there's a code for that. There's a procedure, there's a code for that. So what we're doing in that situation is we're pricing a la carte, they call it, or per visit, per service as needed. And yes, that works, but that also makes you very comparable to insurance options. The thing is, if you keep your practice this way, you'll find your revenue kind of stays at a steady point. You never really cross the barrier. And a simple way to cross that financial threshold is actually packaging your stuff so that it's your unique recipe that gives the patients the results, the transformation. 

So the hidden cost in maintaining a practice that only offers a la carte visits is that the revenue is unpredictable and every visit feels like a fresh sales conversation. And I know doctors don't love the sound of sales conversations. It's really an educational conversation, but if we're going to talk business, we need to be on the same page. When you sell your offers, that's a sales conversation. So patients don't really know what they're buying into if you're selling per visit. In contrast to that, a signature offer is actually a plan.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (05:20.48)

It's defining what the end result is, the transformation that the patient commits to. So having a plan guarantees the patient commits to the plan instead of allowing the patient to come as they need per visit. So this is what a signature offer actually does, the psychology of that. You can frame it as packaging or bundling your services, but what it's really doing is that it's helping the patient make a decision. It's a shortcut to what they truly want.

From this medical care. There are three things that it solves simultaneously. When you create a signature package, the thing that you're known for, the thing that you're very good at helping people get through or end up with a certain outcome is this. First, you're asking the patient for a commitment because now they're buying the outcome. They're not buying the individual transactions. I like to compare this to making a cake. If the end result is making a delicious chocolate cake.

You want to make life for that cook or chef easy by having all of the ingredients in one place because you're saving them time. You're ensuring that all of the ingredients are accurate and correct. Rather than having them go to the store to buy all the different parts to that cake of the different brands, of the different sizes, of some variation.

Which leaves it up to chance. It's not the perfect cake. So when you have a plan with everything inside of it that the patient would need to get better to get that transformation, you're easing the mental energy it takes to have the right ingredients in place. Does that make sense? So you're delivering all that's needed to get better on a silver platter. So with that, offer the patient the commitment to follow your plan because it's your recipe.

Number two, when you have just the one thing to sell, you now create simplicity. And simplicity accelerates your financial growth. This allows revenue predictability. So now you know how many numbers of these things that you need by the end of the year in order to hit a certain revenue. That also simplifies your marketing strategy. So if you're putting money into ads, you'll have a better idea as to gauging how many of these things you need to sell versus having a list of different

Tea Nguyen, DPM (07:34.478)

price points for different services, which makes it a little bit harder to predict. So we're talking about simplifying a direct care practice. And the third thing that happens with a package, a signature offer, is that it saves you a lot of time and energy and a lot of decision points as well for you. So you're not re-explaining all the different packages you have at every single visit. You just have the one this is what direct primary care does so well is that they have the one offer. It's a membership

Where people pay into it monthly. Now that could be a low price point, that could be a high price point. It doesn't matter, but it's the one offer. That is what makes them stand out compared to insurance options. Where a person who chooses a direct primary care practice, like myself, I have a DPC doctor, super proud of that. That was a big jump for me. But now I have a DPC doctor and I know every month that they're going to withdraw from my bank account a certain dollar amount. So that allows me as a consumer to also budget my healthcare spend.

And I know because I'm not relying on billing insurance that there isn't going to be a surprise bill at the end of the year. The price is the price. I also really love being able to email and text the doctor for acute needs and not having to wait months for that. And your people will love that too, because specialty care oftentimes takes a few months to be seen. So the signature offer provides patient commitment, it gives you revenue predictability, and it preserves your time and energy so that you can focus on the patient care. Now, what is the actual framework?

This is the meat. This is the part that you need to have in order for your signature offer to stick. There's three specific points. The first is you want to ask yourself, what is it that I'm actually providing for the patient? I'm not just giving them my time, but what is the outcome? What is the problem that you solve? And that's how you build your offer around it. So as a podiatrist, I offer pain relief, for example. The problem that I'm solving for people is foot pain relief.

That's the outcome that people want when they come to me. Point number two here is now you talk about what is the structure, what's included in order to get from point A, the problem, to point B, the outcome. Your service is the bridge. So what is going to be included in the service here, in the transformation? You don't want 10 different things included in there. You want the meets, you want the parts that stick. Three parts that stick usually is the average, the structure.

Tea Nguyen, DPM (10:00.802)

And that could be in the way of the treatment number of visits. This is where you start talking about how many visits it typically takes to get better to get the transformation. It may include some kind of technology for me. I have laser shockwave injections, for example, and then something that's supportive. It could be a pain cream or an orthotic. That's it. I don't inundate them with all of the tech specs. I don't give them 20 reasons why they should choose me. I'm making it very clear that the process is simple.

And then number three here is now you introduce the price and you want to position it as a value. So we're not talking about breaking up the visits per visit per se, although that is exactly what we're doing. But when you're communicating to the patient, when you tell them your price, when I tell the patient this is going to cost $2,500, I am telling them it costs money to save time. It costs money to not have those other opportunity costs. What is it going to cost you if you did nothing?

If you live with this pain every single day, working 40 hours a week, not being able to play with your grandkids, not being able to hang out with your pickleball friends, time does not make this thing go away. It actually makes it worse. So now you're framing the price, not just per visit, of what that would cost, but the opportunity cost if they did nothing. So now you're doing a price comparison or a price anchor. Because you want to put it in their mind that they're not just spending on a transaction. They want the outcome. We can improve their life.

their daily activities. Maybe you're surgical and you're giving them a physical outcome. And that's how you build a signature offer. And this does not have to be complicated at all. So what I've done for you here is I've created a worksheet for you to think through all of the different things you already offer and cleaning it up so that you just have the one solution based signature offer. You don't need 20. I would start with one.

that you want to offer that you love that people have been coming to you for and refine it, allow it to evolve with the people who come into your practice. When I first created my preventive foot care package, I wasn't certain how I wanted to price it or how many visits it would entail because there wasn't really an endpoint to preventive care. I am helping people prevent emergency room visits, but they may not connect the two where I offer foot care services, cutting their toenails, reducing their calluses,

Tea Nguyen, DPM (12:24.332)

making sure their shoes are correct, customer orthotics as needed, they may just think that they're coming to me to get their toenails cut, but I have to explain that my ideal client are actually high risk patients, and I am helping them prevent consequences like infection, like hospitalization, like amputations. And when I position it in that way, then there is a value to an investment, not just the cost of the visit. So the way you frame your stuff is important.

People don't know what they don't know, but you know what they should know. You know the blind spots, you know what happens when people ignore stuff or try to do bathroom procedures on themselves at home. You have the experience. So it is your job to convey to them that kind of opportunity cost and the investment it takes to reduce irreversible problems. So now you know exactly what it takes to craft a signature offer. Just start with one. I have the worksheet down in the show notes for you to

work through and sort out all of the different things you offer. I know a lot of us offer lots of things, medical care procedures and surgeries, but you just need to do the one thing and think about the thing that people are already paying out of pocket for. This will shortcut your path as to what your signature offer can look like and bundle it all together so that it becomes your perfect recipe that only you can provide. So if you're the kind of person who likes to have long-term relationships with patients

You know that what you have to offer takes time, that there really isn't a quick fix, and you really want to ramp up your bottom line in a way that is sustainable and not at all sleazy. Start working through the worksheet. And if you need help, you can shoot me an email or find me on Facebook or Instagram, and I will help you with your next steps. Until next week, I'll see you then. Take care.