Jeremy Weisz 6:16
So you had the idea. And then you basically went out to help them acquire those numbers like someone owned it.
Stewart Gandolf 6:22
Yeah, the marketplace vanity numbers is a thing. Now back then it wasn’t like, there weren’t that many vanity numbers. So basically, what was happening there since your ask, we were spending about half a million a year doing editing for we did a lot of direct response TV and stuff. They showed a Dallas Bob, they had like 11 Dallas phone numbers like asking a consumer to look fit and sort through which of those local clubs they want to dial is insane. So as horrible didn’t use the word back then user experience, but also is incredibly expensive for editing. So I wanted to come up with a vanity number like one 100. And I just played with that lines, when in a workout in under fitness actually gave him four or five other ones. And then this is before I knew this was possible, I go within and they get the calls, they probably should be able to find some technology, but there’s ZIP code and get routed to a local flow. So the client did all the legwork, but they figured it out. And the idea was mine. And they became a case history apparently later, because I was thinking about all the money we saved, but the editing and also just the user experience plus vanity numbers have their own value, right?
Jeremy Weisz 7:28
It’s like a high level domain name.
Stewart Gandolf 7:31
Yeah, for sure. Like, 100 dentist is in many, many million-dollar your company based upon a name given in the internet age. So that was fun, that’s fun. I haven’t talked about that for a while. So that was a fun fact. And then. And that was a big account that was in LA back in the 90s was $80 million. There’s not many accounts that are $80 million today, but a lot of the 90 so it was probably the biggest account in Los Angeles. But I honestly hated the big agency. It was very political. And what did you not like about? I’m just not political. I’m very straightforward. I’m like, well, I’m with you right now, this sort of clients and this sort of everybody. And it’s like, when you get to big agencies, sometimes at least my experience was, it just was very much about my own career and kind of politicking through and assistance. It’s like anti-Stewart, that’s just not my personality. I’m not saying it’s bad, unless that just wasn’t me. So I actually left the business for a while because my printers were making more money than me and I was working 18 hours a day. So I ended up being trying to be a salesperson for a commercial real estate company. And from there, actually fun fact, I was finally going to make it after four years of starving and then the LA riots happened and all my buildings were in the burn area. So all those deals, they didn’t burn out, they crashed all the buyers got cold feet. So I took a job with a little company doing marketing for individual doctors. This is like 90 sometime. And I thought how do you guys make any money doing this, like, this is crazy. I was there’s, a piece of an $80 million budget. But it turned out that their model was to have speaking, and I’ve never spoken publicly in my life. So it’s think or swim I had to speak to a group of audience for three days. And with five weeks prep, and I succeeded, I swam. And so I’ve spent the next 10 years growing to become VP of Marketing at that company and speaking around the country. Who were you speaking to at the time? Mostly private practices, so it was like a conference like it was your own internal seminar. And then I learned how then I became the VP of marketing. So I was promoting a seminar. But that experience was I tell my team often it was it’s amazing how helpful that experience was because I got used to working in an interactive environment for three days with a bunch of doctors. So not only did I learn a lot about healthcare, I learned a lot about being good on my feet and coming indication skills and things like that, that I wish I could just take this in my brain and give to people. But I can’t. That was the basis of what became my company later. So I took a break from that after a while during the internet, because you were there you were doing that for over a decade, I think, yeah, for about a decade now. And then, during the internet age, I took the beginning of the internet, I took a break and got into some entrepreneurial things, which were all profitable. I was actually the equivalent of US fractional CMO for a few years there working for three different companies. But I started this company as a hobby, and Healthcare Success. So one of my former colleagues said, no, I want to start a company like, I’m pretty busy. But we’ll just see what if I can create a company, which nobody was doing back then was nothing more than a website. So I learned about SEO really fast. I learned about paid search really fast. I went to Google, the P the anybody on this thing, this podcast is a digital native may recognize Google dance, I was a Google dance, which is a famous party of the day, back in 2006, through eight. So became really good at this stuff. We’re doing content marketing before that term was common. We were doing blogs before that term was common. We also went out to some publishers, I went to dental economics, and they gave me a column. So we went to that we did a revenue share deal with medical economics. And then I started speaking again, so it wasn’t all internet-based. But that knowledge plus the internet really helped. And so people started calling us really fast.
Jeremy Weisz 11:36
Talk about the speaking for a second, because he’s like, I wish I could just take what I was doing and kind of plug it into someone. What were you doing with those talks that work? Because like now, it could be a webinar online doesn’t have to be to an audience could be a webinar online, it could be a piece of content. What were you doing that worked when you were speaking to those audiences?
Stewart Gandolf 11:57
I think the first thing was I knew what I was talking about. So it was easy, I was already a good marketer. And that helped a lot. Some of the others, we had a group of speakers who did this with us. And then we had like breakouts. And we had a main session, I eventually became the main session leader, too. But some are just reading out of the script. Like they really hadn’t done marketing before in any big way. Right. So I had the knowledge to be able to talk broader and between the lines. And I don’t know, it’s a locked talent. Thing is, most things I’m horrible at until I practice like guitar, for example. But speaking, I was better at than I thought I was. I’m not a technical speaker, I’ll still say arms and things like that. But I was able to engage an audience really quickly, and relate to them. And I was trustworthy to them. And I was interacting with them. And I think part of it was just the practice of being able to interact, because I figured out my agenda, I knew what I wanted to cover that in an environment like that, where you have, like 15 people, it’s small enough to be interactive, so you have to be on your toes. And people in that during those days, would spend money to come and see me speak for three days. And some of them would fight with me. It’s like, wait, you spent money to come here. Why are you here?
Jeremy Weisz 13:08
What did people fight with you about?
Stewart Gandolf 13:10
Well, like back then marketing was thought good question. Seeking to do this. Marketing was perceived as unethical, it was actually illegal until the late 70s for doctors legal in the early 80s. But there was still a scene considered unethical and later became sort of seen as unseemly. To this day, older doctors are usually uncomfortable with marketing, whereas younger doctors have many less of the qualms. So we get into this meeting where people would pay to come and learn about Mark, and they would fight with me, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Especially the science, by the way, the sites for the worse the people that are supposed to be good at helping you think bigger about your life, those are the most skeptical, the hardest audience of any other. So yeah, we did that for a while. But that was just a skill to understand the specialties to understand and to be good on my feet. It’s like to be able to like, we prepare for this and what, how many minutes? It’s something that I learned how to do. And I wish I could impart that to everybody.
Jeremy Weisz 14:12
Oh, how did you handle those objections? Because like, there’s what, 15-20 people? And you have a doctor questioning your authority, somewhat in front of a group? How did you handle those objections?
Stewart Gandolf 14:28
Questions, I’ll talk about this much. So first of all, the key is if you’re speaking to be an authority, and to demonstrate that fast and early and hard right to have shock and awe, like you really need to know your stuff, it makes it a whole lot easier. And so within the opening minutes, partly because of chemistry and partly because I just demonstrated I knew what I was talking about really quickly. So most of the time, people would accept that very quickly, and doctors in particular as our audience but especially doctors, respect people are smart. They respect intelligence. And so where a you’ll get yourself into trouble if you’re working with an audience like that. Doctors in particular are famous for thinking they know more than everybody else, because they’re doctors. And so if all you’re doing let’s say you’re let’s take it out of advertising, let’s say you’re a financial planner, and if all you’re bringing to the table is something they could have seen on the Suze Orman, you’re gonna lose them, because like, I’m working on portfolio you know nothing, like you have to know more than they do about your own topic, otherwise, you’re gonna die, it would be a horrible, awful experience. But if you’re an expert, then suddenly they’re used to learning their brain will shift. And they’ll be intrigued. Oh, this is something new. I don’t know this. And so that was the secret of really knowing the stuff and being able to communicate that clearly, concisely and well. And to me, I also had fun with it. I was almost goofy when I did these after I had the opening session. And even. I mean, back in the early days, when I was doing this before I had the experience to fall back on. I planned out everything. I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about which section, and I had a game plan. Later, after about four or five years of it, I would change everything up on purpose, just to keep it interesting to me. But when it was early, I had it all planned out exactly, because I want to know exactly where I’m going. Because you have enough bullets and missiles coming at you anyway. And usually it wasn’t antagonistic. But you could be, just like in grade school, there’s somebody always some kid is always asking questions that are off base or trying to look smart to the rest of the group, or sometimes hitting up the rest of the group for business or romance I’ve had that I once had a doctor, he hit on one of the other attendees, which was really uncomfortable. So it’s like, there could be a lot of stuff happening in that environment. And so, and if you don’t do a good job of controlling that group, you will have a very, very long weekend.
Jeremy Weisz 14:28
Yep. We’ll talk about. So Healthcare Success was kind of like a side thing and how it grew. But I do want to point out for a second, I love what you said there about. So you relate to the audience, you engage with the audience, you also make sure there’s interaction and you also make sure to demonstrate your authority. I did an interview with Oren Klaff, who flipped the script. And he talked a lot about that, and how do you create status alignment very quickly. And so that was interesting to be able to check out that interview. So you did this as a side thing. So how did it grow — Healthcare Success?
Stewart Gandolf 17:23
So we started off with about a backup just because you said something there. Because that was also interesting as we were doing these. So like, for example, little things like the first ad were assumed to second two days, and were like khakis because you want to be relatable, like all that to that level. Today, I just wear whatever I feel like because again, I have the experience back then I want to make sure I have the credibility of this suit. And then the second two days, then otherwise, you’re setting a barrier between yourself and the audience. If you’re the venue or a suit, right, you’re gonna do that either. So it’s like all of it just calculated. Going back to the Healthcare Success. So the first thing we did was I went back to a former client and said, hey, I’m doing my own thing. And so he hired us for a little branding creative project, which is like 30 grand, that was like the seed money. That’s why we had it from there. I never took out a loan ever. And we went started with a few sort of friends and family, we knew we’d be interested. But the internet stuff started working really fast. I don’t remember now, I probably remember it with rose-colored glasses, because this is 2006. But because of our and plus we did our own seminar then, we had the connection with one thing fine. We did with medical economics, we recorded audio CDs, instructional audio CDs, and they sold like 100,000 was my revenue share on that. So 100,000 worth of audio CDs, so we would get people…
Jeremy Weisz 18:54
What was on the audio CDs?
Stewart Gandolf 18:54
It was basically to market your practice. So we were still doing a little part doctors back then we started off like kind of where we left off at the other company. And so people would call me having heard me, let’s talk for essentially two days on audio. And so they thought we were a Rockstar before we even started. So it was really just sell someone like that, because we’re on the same page philosophically. They’re finishing my sentences for me. So that helped.
Jeremy Weisz 19:20
You were actually doing, like paid lead generation, right, because people would buy these CDs, right?
Stewart Gandolf 19:24
Yeah, that’s the model seminars, too. They always had to pay for it. Right. And it was great because again, you know, by then my CDs, which are still around somewhere I don’t think I have a copy anymore. But are they digitized? Yeah, they’re audio CDs. So they’re out there somewhere. But anyway, that was the start but the SEO within a very short order. I don’t remember honestly accurately how long it took a very short order. We were number one like worldwide for healthcare marketing. If you Googled healthcare marketing, or we were number one, go to medical Record Number one, because nobody was doing this in a very systematic way. So, we are showing up immediately, and we still show up a lot. We’re not everywhere as much as you are, because there’s obviously competition now, but we still are a dominant presence. And so the SEO people started calling us immediately and even, like, not just getting a lead, but the credibility for being on number one on Google, like I was introduced, when speaking for Envisaging to all their top doctors. He’s this, he’s that. And most importantly, he’s number one on Google. So it had its own implied credibility 100%. And so we did that through understanding SEO, creating good content. And to this day, we have thousands of blogs, we’ve done over the years, our models changed a little bit, our target audience certainly has changed. And we talked a little bit offline, I’ll give you a metaphor. So when SEO works, it’s like throwing a net into the sea every day, at least for us, as a b2b company, it’s a little different for b2c. But for us with this kind of presence, when we get inquiries every single day, you got a little fish coming in the net, at the end of the day, sometimes you get a boot, Steve stomp shark bites, you get some fairly good bass, and let’s go get somewhere else. But it’s like, it’s really a mixed bag when you’re doing online. So you just have to recognize as part of it. And over time, it’s also very general, right, because we’re a niche company. So we got a lot of people that are no longer really fit our target audience anymore, and we refer them out. But it’s a very broad net when you do SEO, but it also has huge credibility with us with our clients. Because we get a lot of clients that are looking for great SEO, they find us because we’re on top of Google, and so they’re already like, okay, can you do it for us what you did for you like, yeah, so it helps.
Jeremy Weisz 21:52
Totally so it’s the inbound part. It’s still important piece, then talk about the outbound.
Stewart Gandolf 22:00
Yeah, that’s a great point. So the inbound is awesome. And we do a lot of imbalance. So we have, as you mentioned, a blog, we’re updating a lot of our content, we’re in the process of doing our eBooks again. Whereas we have a webinar series every three weeks right now through spring and next year. We do our own podcast occasionally, which by the way, asked me about that later if you like, but it’s all great. And it’s all credibility and all generates leads. But we also do outbound and a friend of mine who’s a consultant in this category is Corey Quinn people can look him up, was a key player at scorpion and scaling them and we talk about these things. In fact, I’m on his podcast soon. But we agree philosophically on you need outbound it really for any business rely on inbound is great, I love it. But outbound So currently, our outbound is mostly very selectively like they’re going back to my seat analogy, right? Like anything, healthcare is our target audience, but I don’t have time in the scale to go after everybody in healthcare. So instead, we spent a really a lot of time thinking about exactly who is our most likely target audience that we’re really perfect for. And I actually have a bull’s eye target, which I won’t go into too much detail on this public forum, but I have the bulls eye of my number one audiences, then the next audience and the third audience. And the third audience, I just let them find us through SEO. Right. So we let the people that are outside of the core audience, they can find us for SEO. But for the core audience, we figure out each of those niches, whether they’re providers or hospitals, or whatever. And we go after them pretty aggressively, and we want to be in front of them at conferences, we want to be in front of them, we reach out to them. Like, for example, if they’re private equity back, we know the private equity company behind them, if they’re at a conference, we know who they are, we know who the players are, that fit our profile better. We know the investment bankers sold them. We know their accounting firm sometimes, and we have enough knowledge of who the players are or the consultants who work in that field. So if you’re once you’re in that sort of ecosystem, and have the credibility, it’s a little bit easier for us. But we’re very targeted with that. And that’s important. We don’t want to go up to just anybody. Because if you have limited resources, you want to go after a list. And a doesn’t necessarily mean the biggest it means the ones you’re best suited for.
Jeremy Weisz 24:31
Talk about the evolution of your services when you first started, what you offered.
Stewart Gandolf 24:35
This is fun, I haven’t done the math thought about this stuff for a while. So when we first started as I mentioned, we kind of did not a mirror image what we used to do a little better image so we used to do but it was like we’re just getting started. And I’m an entrepreneur, so I just jump in and figure it out. It’s fun fact other people I used to work with tried to do what we did, and shatter office space rented shatter for miniatures, shatter filing cabinets with little labels and shields wait, no, I did the opposite way. And we found clients and we figured it out. So that means seriously, we didn’t think any of that stuff. And so we had clients to deal with, and we worried about it. But back in the day, even though we’re doing a lot of digital marketing for ourselves, we did a whole lot of branding, creative stuff. So we would do, like brochures and branding and like, traditional advertising, because most clients weren’t really ready yet for digital. And that transition within a few years, and then one of the key things was our old company was very much about, having a good, a thought leadership position and selling them, you know, stuff and the theory was, they don’t want to buy anything after that, just get them start started so that they can, you know, go off on their own and prosper. And that’s madness. It’s a terrible model. And the reason is, most clients that we want today are partners, they want a marketing partner that can be with us forever. And it’s recurring revenue that I can count on. So I don’t have to be out hunting all day. So we change to a model or we call it a marketing partnership program. Some people call it a retainer, that there needs to be enough commitment on both sides, so we can stamp it properly. And our model evolved from like giving him a box of stuff literally sometimes like a bunch of brochures and things to being a marketing partner. And our model today has evolved completely differently, to where we have very strong account managers who are involved with the strategy. But then we have process experts for paid search paid social, programmatic, SEO, local SEO is different design writing, project management, traditional media, those are all separate people. So our model is completely yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 26:53
But when you go to services, you can see now, under the digital marketing, if you’re listening to the audio, we’re looking at actually a screen share of healthcaresuccess.com. If you go to services, digital marketing, SEO, paid search, social, programmatic display, CTV content marketing, reputation management, website design under marketing, strategy and planning, branding, creative services, traditional advertising, multicultural marketing, b2b marketing to doctors and HCPs, staff training, Reporting Analytics. So you kind of started off as like almost like the branding piece. And then keep going with what you were saying.
Stewart Gandolf 27:34
Yeah, so the branding, there were creative and traditional media, probably those three over there. But what was great was we wanted to do more digital and the world shifted. So we were a little early in becoming a digital agency. And at one point, we focused so much on digital, that we almost thought about being a digital agency only because the advantage there, there’s pros and cons on this, I told you earlier, we’re unique in that we’re truly integrated, the problem is getting that team and building that team is extremely difficult and took us 17 years to get here. So if you’re a digital audit firm, and some of our colleagues and competitors in this call, it’s really a lot easier to scale. If all you’re doing is paid search and SEO, that’s really scalable, right, you can only have a key, you get really good at one little sliver and you do it over and over again. And it’s more profitable. If you’re truly doing all this other stuff. There’s a lot of moving parts, so it’s a lot harder. So the advantages are, though, that it’s a competitive advantage, because people will do that. The disadvantage is profitability, and mechanics are much harder. So, that’s actually another thing. So this is just for those of you on the audio on the showing just some of our team members, not all of our people want to be on LinkedIn. So some of them are hiding behind the scenes here. I’m sorry, LinkedIn or our website, but these are some of our process experts that are on our team. And I love our people got some great people.
Jeremy Weisz 28:58
Talk about culture. And I know there was a big shift. And there’s a lot of big shifts in healthcare and for your company with a pandemic. But let’s just tackle because you had an office and how did things shift with the culture in the team and we could branch out from there?
Stewart Gandolf 29:19
Sure. So in 2019, at the end of the year, I made the brilliant decision that I want to scale our company and I brought in three new executives all at the same time, at the end of 2019, and new managing partner who in that agency business kind of like a president, a new creative director and a new Director of Client Service. And COVID happened like, as you guys know, weeks later, I never I only met the creative director one time. That’s how this work is we have a friend of mine is a neuroscientist, and he told me what was happening because he’s a scientist. And so we went virtual week before everybody else did mostly fun duty to try to help slow the virus down. And so we evacuated in the rain, with a brand new management team. And culturally, that was brutal, because they never really had a chance to understand my company, they never understand our culture. And so now we’re all virtual. And so it was tough, it was not easy. And I feel like, in retrospect, at least, I’m pretty convinced at least one or two of those people weren’t cuts anyway, I’m pretty sure I could have saved at least one of them by being in a pandemic was really tough. And then, as I joke when pandemic hit, we never went to our knees, we went down, we lost some revenue, and we went from probable to losing a little. But that wasn’t the issue was really more people. So, as I joke sometimes, we have some nice people who we’re not very effective. And we had some effective people who weren’t very nice. So we took the opportunity to make a few changes to our team. And we love everybody, but we had to make the decision we had to make during a pandemic, but then we just had, like, a lot of agencies, just a ton of different things happening with people, people decided they want to go out of business or turnover, people want to go back to grad school, it was just a really tumultuous time. And then I renewed my office space, which was up in May 2021, for a couple of years, actually twice, and nobody wanted to go back. So and then when we looked around is we had started acquiring virtually because we were virtual, we hired some of our best people were virtual that could not come into the office. And today, probably half our team, I could say, buddy, come back to the office, but more than half the team. And almost everybody we’ve hired last two years, some of our best people ever are all too far to come in there in other states. So that’s been a challenge. But I’m happy to report the end of all this, despite the challenges of having turnover, like I said, like a lot of people do during pandemic by Spike going virtual. Culturally, we’re back like kind of where we want to be.
Jeremy Weisz 32:12
What do you do to maintain culture now, virtually?
Stewart Gandolf 32:16
So, it’s never enough. I want you to do more, we fly everybody in twice a year. First of all, we have a summer party, and we have a holiday party. So that’s actually how people really like that. We also have a wrap-up, meaning that they do most Friday afternoons. And sometimes they’re just simple shout-outs, sometimes we do video games, or games led by Tim for team members. We also for those of the people that are local, we have events, sometimes at my house, something informal or, like, sometimes we’ll go on hikes together or whatever or go to the beach, separately, people are local, it’s a little easier. We also benefits, why it has one of the things has been really helpful for us, we have three weeks of PTO to start, we also have all major holidays on top of that. And then on top of that every month, we get at least one three-day weekend. So on the weekends, but there’s no formal holiday, we have an additional Friday off and our employees love that. We were really, really hard. Oh, and then on top of all that we have a holiday break for a week of paid a week off during Christmas and New Year’s. So our team loves that. And I think they’re really appreciative of that. And so that said, it’s never over, right. And it’s really easy to feel isolated. And I was just talking to one of our employees in a day over lunch. Oh, I also do lunches. I have an open schedule with my team. And I have lunches almost once a week with various team members usually requested sometimes our question to them. But even one of my biggest advocates for being digital is telling me well, now the unparent and I’m feeling a little lonely, it’s like so that’s you have to do this stuff. And so those beers and tacos with employees are every bit as important as anything else we do. And we do that to the extent we can. It’s not perfect. And it’s harder with the virtual team, for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 34:11
Yeah, we’ve seen that too. Some people actually want to, they’re getting lonely at their house working and they want to go in somewhere and be with people.
Stewart Gandolf 34:19
We’re thinking about, I just did a poll, I would do it. There’s some cool workspace out there. Especially if the workspace was next to a restaurant, like our old space is beautiful. And you can see pictures of it on our website. If you look around, you can poke around and find it. We had a beautiful space. But nobody wanted to go there and not being next to a restaurant as a deal killer today, but so many office spaces. If you have to get in a car to go to a restaurant for lunch, it’s like it’s a deal killer for me anyway. So we’d like to some cool, very cool modern hip space, but I’m not going to spend even a half the space we used to have 10 or $15,000 and be there by myself. That’s stupid. So until I got a groundswell people really are serious about going back as well. But if somebody wants to go to work or whatever we can.
Jeremy Weisz 35:05
Yeah, I’ve heard there’s been a few that have been saying that’s what they’re doing. They’re just getting a membership to co-working space. And people can go if they want to go type of thing. You mentioned growth in like your bullseye target, I love how you talked and broke down about knowing the different players in the space. And we are chatting before we hit record on growth. And one of those things, it’s almost counterintuitive of what you’re saying, which is the way you’re able to grow as you’re saying no, a lot more. Can you just dig deeper.
Stewart Gandolf 35:34
That is a lesson I had heard for years, even for my CPA, there’s not a normal CPA, my CPA, built the largest accounting, independent accounting firm in Southern California by buying 100 accountants. So he’s not a normal guy. And even he told me that, it’s gonna be really hard for you, you’re gonna want to like do whatever it comes across the door, but you’ll never get anywhere if you do that. And it took us forever to learn that lesson. And I can, I don’t know, I was just stubborn and stupid on that. And finally, not very long ago, we had a client that just was a horrible fit and was antagonistic from the beginning and was a small client for us. And, again, when I say these things, I’m being sort of very informed. I’m not being disrespectful, the least. But when you take on a client, that’s too small for your roster, it’s a challenge, because to them, it’s a lot of money. And to you, it’s not enough to really service properly. So who wins in that equation? Nobody. So it’s not like I’m being greedy. It’s just I needed to have enough revenue to support it to the way they’re happy. And if they’re not, they don’t fit that category. I really do want to help everybody. There’s a teacher in me, there’s so I really do want to be a servant leader and help everybody but I just figured out I can’t. And so today, that’s part of the reason why we do content, is when somebody is too small for us to service or like read our blog, it’s fantastic. And we know, like sort of freelance guys who do stuff that we refer to once in a while for those guys, because it just white people are all six figures, they’re all expensive, and nobody, so far nobody yet has and 17 years is bought or offered to volunteer for a client. So they all have to be paid. Right? And I always talk about that. It’s like, so there’s no volunteers and my team. So it’s like, when we get these phone calls, like, I’ll pay you on commission based upon results, I can, I can do that. So it’s like, it really comes down to finding clients that are yours and also, like I said, it’s like, we’re the pedigree that what we’ve done matches what they are, is the first layer because it’s easier to convince them, it’s easier to service them. And we work with people outside of that layer all the time. But again, if you’re going to focus your energies on outbound focusing on who you really want. I would like to actually mention something to promote you guys and what you’re doing on the podcast. So we’ve been in podcast as well. And so when we do podcasts, I’m not active on that right now as much as I was. But when they do, we reach out to people we want to do business with, or at least know.
Jeremy Weisz 35:34
Yeah you’ve had people from the Cleveland Clinic on your pocket.
Stewart Gandolf 38:07
Yeah, great example, so even on Cleveland Clinic we haven’t ever done business with directly. One of my favorite guests from Cleveland Clinic I’ve had multiple is Jim Merlino, he’s a longtime friend. And we were friends and we’re lifelong friends that came out of that. And so, we’re able to share knowledge at the highest level with our audience. And Jim’s a fascinating guy, lots of people like that. And so, sometimes we do the podcasts, it’s for outbound and once a lot, it doesn’t result in business, it does happen. But it’s part of the aura of the whole thing and creating really good content, like, going back to we were talking about earlier, I’m pretty confident in our content is really at the front end of the pack there. It’s like, maybe not number one, but it’s pretty good. And so the top 90th percentile for sure. And so that’s how you get a good following and it just makes everything easier, right? And that’s saying other people don’t get good content they do but ours we have a high standard of quality and that’s actually as we’ve evolved back in the day, it was about quantity. I went to look for Bruce Clay if you’re an SEO aficionado, I went to Bruce Clay’s training and seemed that Simi Valley he’s kind of like the godfather of SEO and back then that’s how I learned about SEO sir Bruce back in the day. And their comment there was if you’re doing a blog a week to two if you’re doing two blogs a week to four, you’re doing four blogs to eight.
Jeremy Weisz 39:35
It’s not like a personal trainer for your SEO.
Stewart Gandolf 39:39
Yeah, I so we bought into that. And we did think four or five blogs a week today this now we do one thoughtful blog a week. And then or some piece of premium content every week. So whether in a book or a blog, or whatever, but it’s more thoughtful, it’s less frantic, and it’s smarter and it’s better.
Jeremy Weisz 39:59
Stewart, I have one last question. I really appreciate your time sharing your journey, your leadership, you know, your thoughts and culture has been really valuable. Last question is just resources. What resources have you found valuable over the years, it could be a book, a podcast, it could be just a person, like you mentioned, Bruce Clay, what are some resources people should check out that you’ve learned from?
Stewart Gandolf 40:23
It’s funny. That’s on top of mine. It’s fun. I’ve got a whole library of you, Greg to kind of go look through him. Yes, a few guys started with, I did a lot of personal development actually, in the day. And so I did one of those sort of California seminars where we hugged each other at the end. And I did Tony Robbins, and Zig Ziglar, and all that Brian Tracy, my wife and I, to this day, both Brian Tracy, what was his theory says,
Jeremy Weisz 40:52
Eat That Frog.
Stewart Gandolf 40:53
Now, it’s like his Brian Tracy was like, leaders work hard, hard, hard, I’ve got to get back to our fences. So lots of that sort of stuff. Today a lot of the stuff I learned from is, you know, I’m just voracious online, and I listened to, I mentioned quick wins starting his own thing. On, there’s a fair number of blogs that are leading blogs, like for David C. Baker, and Drew McClellan have agency blogs on how to create successful agencies by Carl Serkis, is another guy. So I still read books, but the online stuff is so much I had on my podcast, The Conversion Doctor, I’m spacing on his name at the moment, and then at last week, so I also will interview people I think are smart, right. And so, that’s a way to keep learning, books, I read books, the books I’m reading today, using a marketing or not a marketing, the marketing books. I mean, the marketing stuff is so available and happening so fast online. That there’s just so many blogs out there that we read. I look at LinkedIn, increasingly, we have a bigger presence on LinkedIn, too. And then, so today, I’m mostly interested in scaling and, you know, leadership. And it’s funny, you mentioned that word leadership, I started this, I was a total entrepreneur. And I had always thought this might be helpful to your listeners, I had always since 1988, with J. Walter Thompson in 1990. Whenever I left there, I haven’t had a real job since. So, I became I got into commercial real estate. And then when I was doing the speaking, I was technically an employee, but I was really my own sort of unit, my own business unit. And then I got the various things I’ve done and very entrepreneurial. So I started this company with a partner, and bought them out a few years later, but I learned how to manage on the job. And that wasn’t easy. If I had to do it over again, I might have stayed in the corporate hierarchy a little longer to learn stuff, the easy way on somebody else’s dime, because it’s really hard being an entrepreneur and not having any really good management experience. That wasn’t easy. But I have learned over the years experientially and things like for example, I’ve been told by mentors forever, hire slow and fire fast, and I would do the opposite. So like, that’s a very, very expensive lesson, right? Because then if you hire the wrong people, and keep them on your team, and stay motivated to the players, and so, I’m a bonehead. On that way, I’ve had to learn a lot of things that people told me I had to learn and experientially myself. So if you’ve heard these kinds of things before you’re not doing them trust me, you’ll be easier if you finally listen to people who are giving you this advice and going at the hard way. Hope that was helpful to you.
Jeremy Weisz 43:37
Yeah, Stewart. Thank you everyone check out healthcaresuccess.com to learn more, you can check out the resources there blog and Stewart I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks.
Stewart Gandolf 43:47
Thanks for having me. By the way, I’m easy to find LinkedIn and if you want and great nice meeting you and especially as to you and everybody else. Thanks.
