Ep #99: Why You Should Use Facebook Lives as a Growth Strategy

Hi docs, welcome to The EntreMD Podcast, where it’s all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I’m your host, Dr. Una.

Well, hello, hello and welcome back to another exciting episode of The EntreMD Podcast. I have something fun for everybody. I know you may have looked at the title and you’re like, “Facebook Lives? I don’t want to talk about it.” But this is going to be good. Remember, I am the introvert. This is going to be absolutely okay. 100%.

Okay, so I’m going to start off by telling on myself because I want to tell you about the first time I thought of doing a Facebook Live. Now, I had known two years before that if I did videos for my private practice, that it would really explode. Because nobody else was doing it.

But still I was like, you mean put my face on the worldwide web? I don’t think I can do that. I was terrified. Horrified. And I had been doing this for two years. Two years. And then one day, I saw somebody else doing a video, it was an awful video, but she probably had 60,000 people watching it and stuff and I was like, you know what, I’m just going to do a video.

So I do this video. My first video, I posted it online and I’m like, okay, there, the worst video is done. But that’s video. You know what I mean? Very different from a Facebook Live. Something I can’t edit, I can’t do anything with, people are watching while I’m doing it.

And I remember thinking, “You know what, I’ve been procrastinating on this for two and half years at this point.” I was like, “I’m just going to do it.” So I’m in my office, it’s my lunch break, I pull out my cellphone, and I hit the go live button and I’m like, “Hey guys, this is Dr. Una, I’m the founder of Ivy League Pediatrics and I am going to be doing a live show every Thursday at one o clock to help you, empower you, to help your kids be healthy.” And I did it.

And I ended it. And there was a lot of engagement. People were like, oh my gosh, that’s my pediatrician, they’re tagging their friends and all that kind of stuff, and they’re like, yeah, we’re going to be there every Thursday. I called it the Legacy Parent Show. And I kid you not, week after week after week, I even had kids who would watch with their parents. “Mommy, Dr. Una, Mommy, Dr. Una.”

It was the funniest thing. And I started having new patients, and I would always ask because as entrepreneurs, we’re scientists. We want to see what’s working so we can do more of it. Like, how did you find out about us? Like oh yeah, I watch your videos, I watch the Legacy Parent Show.

And I kept having that and kept having that. In fact, it worked so well that when I was ready to cut back on my clinical hours, I had to stop the show because I was getting slammed with new patients. I had to stop it. And my question to you is like, would you like to have to stop a marketing funnel in your business because it’s like, oh my gosh, this is working too well?

So I get being nervous and I get not wanting to do it, but I want you to listen to this episode with an open mind and we’re going to work through this. So why should you use Facebook Lives as a growth strategy? Why should you do that?

And this works, again, whether you’re an intrapreneur, meaning you’re an employed physician and you love your job, it’s not like you’re trying to go anywhere, even if you’re an employed physician or you own your own private practice, or you’re a coach or you have some other kind of service, or you have a skincare line, whichever. This works.

In fact, the first doctor that I worked with that launched a skincare line, Dr. Yinka Skin, big shoutout, Facebook Live was her strategy. It was her big strategy. So anyway, let’s look at it. Number one, why should we use it?

Okay, so number one is that the internet loves video. The internet loves video. It does. And so what that means is chances are your content is going to be featured more. Video, higher than pictures, higher than text. That’s just the way it is. So the internet loves video.

And Facebook has a competition and that’s YouTube. And Facebook was trying to see how are we going to get people to consume more video on our platform, and they came up with the whole Facebook Live concept. They spent, reportedly, about 50 million getting celebrities to come on and use Facebook Live so that people can adopt it.

And if you go on Facebook and you put a YouTube link, they’re going to suppress it. You do a Facebook Live, they’re going to promote it. So guess what, Facebook is promoting this stuff for you. So the internet loves it and Facebook will sponsor it. So I mean, it’s a win, win, win, win, win situation there. The internet loves video. It loves video.

Number two, number two is that there’s a much higher engagement with live videos than there is with non-live videos. So we’re talking they actually did the data and showed that there are 10 times more comments, 10 times more comments with your live video than with your non-live video.

And guess what happens when you have more engagement? Facebook is like, oh my gosh, this is engaging content, let’s share it with other people. So you want the engagement, Facebook Lives work. Facebook Lives work.

The third reason, one of my favorite reasons is that it is so cost effective. I need you to think about it. Now we’re in the Facebook era so it’s sometimes hard to look back but let’s think about when there was no Facebook. So we’re talking 2003. There’s no Facebook and you decided I want to do a show on TV. I want to do a show on TV.

So let’s pick reality TV. I want to do a show on reality TV. Do you know I pulled up the data and it actually shows that – I got this from Manville that it costs between $100,000 and $500,000 per episode? Let that sink in. $100,000 to $500,000 per episode.

And Facebook is letting you do a show because I called mine the Legacy Parent Show. You can create whatever you want. And you can have a specific time for it, and you can write it out the way you want it to go. And you pay no dollars. So no dollars versus $100,000 to $500,000. You should be picking no dollars every day. All day every day.

This is your opportunity to have a show and not pay the big bucks for it. It’s a $500,000 a week savings. Do the Facebook Live. It’s cost effective. It’s cost effective.

Number four, it establishes you as an authority. Now, we talked about this with using podcasting as a strategy. So that’s a few episodes back, please go listen to it. The links will be in the show notes. And the person who is out there speaking, the person who is out there on stage is perceived as the authority.

Now, if you are an expert but you’re not out there, nobody knows you’re the authority. Nobody knows they should be listening to you. If you want to have a brand that is positioned where you’re positioned as an authority, you need to be out there. You need to be out there speaking. People need to see you in your element doing your thing.

So I want you to think about this. Like or hate Dr. Oz, he’s out there. He’s out there, he has a show, he has a following, he’s writing books, he’s doing all this stuff. If he comes out and he says that chocolate is the new strategy for weight loss in children and a pediatrician with no brand is like, no, the data doesn’t show that, eat your fruits and vegetables, guess who they’re going to listen to.

And I’m not saying that Dr. Oz is saying that. I’m just making this up so you can see what happens when you don’t position yourself as the authority. So chances are he has a TV show, he’s out there, people are going to listen to him. You might say, “But that’s ridiculous, that’s not data, they should listen to me.”

My thing is if what you have to say is so important, then you owe it to the people who should listen to you, you owe it to them to go build authority so they can listen to you. This is your responsibility. This is your responsibility. You have to be out there.

So showing up on Facebook Lives, it establishes you as an authority. And you might be going, “Dr. Una, I hate video, I don’t want to do it, I hear you but I don’t want to do it.” I have stuff for you. Just be patient. Roll with me.

So that’s number four, establishes you as the authority. Number five is one of my favorites right after cost effective and that is it is your opportunity to do market research. When I teach this in the Business School all the time, when you sit down and you’re dreaming up what your business will be and what it’s going to do and who it’s going to help and what kind of solution you’re going to offer, that’s like being in the classroom, coming up with hypothesis.

That’s like you being in the classroom coming up with hypothesis. That’s what you’re doing. Now, when you are done in science, when you’re done with all that, you have to go to the lab to test what you said. You have to go test it. In the same way as an entrepreneur, you can dream up anything you want. When you’re done, you have to take it to the marketplace to go test it.

And one of the wonderful ways to test is to do a Facebook Live because guess what, you can ask questions, people are giving comments, you can ask what resonated with them the most, and they’re telling you, you can ask them what topics they want to hear about and they’ll tell you, you can ask what their challenges are and they’ll tell you.

And you might find, oh, wait a minute, I was thinking that they wanted me to help them lose weight, but what they really want is they want these meal plans. You don’t know – your business is not about serving you. It’s not about what you like. Your business is about what you can do to help your ideal people.

And a Facebook Live, because it’s a two-way gives you an amazing opportunity to do market research. I cannot tell you how many times in the Business School we’ve had students who are like, this is what I want to do, they go out there, and it’s not like they had to completely reinvent everything, no, not at all, but it’s just a little slight pivot. Because now they see what their audience really wants.

Okay, so that’s the fifth thing is that it’s beautiful, beautiful for market research. It is so beautiful. And if you haven’t listened to the episode on podcasting, I want you to go back and listen to that because the things there apply to this as well, but I wanted to give you some new stuff.

So the Legacy Parent Show did a great job growing my business. It was Facebook Live, it was free. In fact, you might be going like, oh my gosh, the tech. Let me tell you what my tech was. My tech was my phone, my iPhone, I don’t know, seven or eight at the time. And I had a little lapel mic that I got from Amazon. I had that.

In the beginning I didn’t have a stand, so I used a box that had a nebulizer in it as my stand. And I was good to go. Literally, I was good to go. So don’t worry about the tech. Now, I got a little fancier little later and got a light and got a stand but that was pretty much all. So you got this.

Okay, so now, I have two kinds of people who are listening. One’s like, you know what, I’ve been doing Facebook Lives, I’ve been meaning to do them, but I haven’t been doing them strategically, I wasn’t consistent, now I see I can really use it to grow my business, I’m all in. And if that’s you, I want to tell you go for it. Be all in.

Now, I have another group listening who’s like, “Dr. Una, I’m an introvert. I’m shy. I can’t do video. I think I’m going to forget my words. I can’t do this.” Now first of all, I’m going to tell you there’s a podcast episode where I interview Dr. Amy Paul and she talks about her first Facebook Live. I’m going to link to it in the show notes. You should go listen to it. It’s so cool. It’s so amazing.

And it’ll just let you know you’re not alone. I told you my own story. You’re not alone. But I’m still going to have you commit to at least doing a few Facebook Lives. Why? Because when you become an entrepreneur, I want you to think of your training in entrepreneurship the same as a doctor or a medical student would.

Nobody says – even if you say when I was born I knew I wanted to be a dermatologist and you show up in med school, you’re going to do dermatology rotations, you’re going to do ENT rotations, you’re going to do surgery rotations, you’re going to do OBGYN rotations.

Nobody cares that you don’t like any of those things and you don’t think that’s what you’re going to do because you don’t know. How many people have walked in and in the process of doing their rotations, they decided, oh my gosh, I never want to do that?

I wanted to be an OBGYN forever. Actually I told people I’m not sure what I want to be, but I’m sure I don’t want to be a pediatrician and look at me. So I want you to treat it like a med school rotation. I want you to go like, okay, this may not be my thing but I’m going to do it. I’m going to try it. I’m going to put my best foot forward, I’m going to try it for a month or whatever, see what the results are. See whether I really don’t like it because I’m shy and it’s uncomfortable, I don’t like it because I’m not wired to do it. You don’t know. You don’t know.

So I’m going to challenge you to go out of your comfort zone and do it. And then decide if you like it or not. So don’t not do it. Do it. But you don’t have to do it forever. Consider it a four-week rotation. Awesome. This is so good.

Now, I want you to think about it. Who knows, who knows, maybe a few months from now I’d be getting an email or DM from you saying, “Dr. Una, you should see what I did with my Facebook Lives, I’ve created a new problem for myself, I have more clients than I can handle, or I have more patients than I can handle.”

And we can talk about what you need to do with that. So there you go, this is why you should embrace Facebook Lives. It’s for you. It’s a $500,000 savings a week. I would take it. And I can’t wait to celebrate all the good stuff that happens from you doing this.

Again, if you’re like, I need a strategy for it though, I want to be able to use it the right way, I want to learn to talk like – I want to learn to speak in a way that I get my message across and I’m building my audience, I’m doing all that stuff, of course, the EntreMD Business School is for you. Come join us, we’ll be happy to have you there.

But you have enough right now to go start doing this. So thank you for listening, and I will see you, my friends, on the next episode of the EntreMD podcast.

Hey, if you love listening to The EntreMD Podcast I want to invite you to join EntreMD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com/ondemand and I’d love to have you join us. See you on the inside.