The Veterinary Social Media Podcast | Social Media Marketing, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Hospital, Digital Marketing

VSMP 11: How Family Pet Health Engages Clients Through Social Media and Community Events With Michael Shirley

• Cheyanne Flerx • Episode 11

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In this Veterinary Social Media Podcast episode, host Cheyenne Flerx interviews Michael Shirley, Chief Empowerment Officer and co-owner of Family Pet Health, about his unique journey into veterinary medicine. Michael discusses his transition from an agriculture teacher to running a veterinary practice alongside his wife, Dr. Amy Shirley. They delve into the practice's vision, community engagement through events like the 'Walk My Dog Challenge' and trivia nights, and the importance of fostering a positive work environment. Michael also shares insights on the role of social media and the benefits of having a podcast in connecting with clients and the community.

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⏰ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Introduction to the Veterinary Social Media Podcast
00:12 Meet Michael Shirley: Chief Empowerment Officer
00:54 The Journey to Family Pet Health
04:06 Building a Visionary Veterinary Practice
04:48 Creating a Positive Work Environment
07:34 The Importance of Social Media Presence
13:36 Handling Negative Reviews with Grace
20:38 Setting and Achieving Goals with Traction
28:59 Social Media's Role in Rural Areas
29:29 Managing Events: Walk My Dog Challenge
32:03 Community Partnerships and Sponsorships
36:04 Trivia Nights: A New Initiative
43:47 Podcasting for Pet Health Education
49:42 Leveraging Long-Form Content for Marketing
52:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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PRODUCTS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO:

⭐The Energy Bus for Schools: 7 Ways to Improve your School Culture, Remove Negativity, Energize Your Teachers, and Empower Your Students by Jon Gordon (Author), Jim Van Allan (Author): https://amzn.to/3yxxQ9Z
⭐ Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business Paperback by Gino Wickman (Author): https://amzn.to/4cepKRl
⭐VLBC (Veterinary Leadership Book Club): https://www.facebook.com/groups/3142499042461591
⭐ Connect with Michael and check out his practice, Family Pet Health here: http://www.familypethealth.com/


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Want to learn more? Try these episodes:

- How Do I Get Clients to Follow My Hospital on Social Media: https://www.heycheyanne.com/post/how-do-i-get-clients-to-follow-my-hospital-on-social-media
- Why Won't Pet Owners Engage With My Social Media Posts? https://www.heycheyanne.com/post/why-won-t-pet-owners-engage-with-my-social-media-posts
- How to Get Your Team Excited About Social Media https://www.heycheyanne.com/post/how-to-get-your-team-excited-about-social-media

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🎁 RESOURCES I CREATED FOR YOU!

🤳 Quick Start Guide to Get Started with Social Media FAST: https://www.heycheyanne.com/start
🤳 FREE Content Calendar to Help You Plan Your Posts: https://heycheyanne.ck.page/3118bb6b86
🤳 See all my free goodies here: https://www.heycheyanne.com/freestuff
🤳Learn how to be a professional social media manager for your veterinary clinic ➡️https://www.heycheyanne.com/foundations

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💕 CONNECT WITH CHEYANNE

⟡ Instagram:

Welcome to the Veterinary Social Media Podcast, where you learn how to navigate social media and apply it to the world of veterinary medicine. I'm your host, Cheyenne Flerx, and let's get down to business.

Cheyanne Flerx:

Welcome to the episode today. And I'm so excited because we have our official first guest on the show. And his name is Michael Shirley. He is the Chief Empowerment Officer for Family Pet Health. And if I'm understanding correctly, you are also the owner of your practice. Is that correct? Correct.

Michael Shirley:

I am a co owner with my lovely wife, Dr. Amy Shirley.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

I wanted to have Michael on the show today for a few reasons. One, he's a former client of mine, so I have a little bit of a different perspective of how his practice operates. But from a distance, I am a huge fan girl of everything that they're doing at the practice. And so I want to dive in, just get to know your practice a little bit more, talk about some of the unique events that you've been doing and talk about just really your overall vision for your practice today, Michael. So. With that, I would love to first off, just kind of start with your backstory and get to know how family pet health came to be and really your journey to vet med. Because, um, if I'm understanding correctly, you aren't a doctor, you didn't start out in vet med, but you have a little bit of a different journey

Michael Shirley:

very long story short is that I am a, an educator by training. Uh, my career was in agriculture education as 4 H agent and as an agriculture teacher at the high school. One day I was sitting on the couch and my wife came home after about 10 years of, uh, being an associate veterinarian at one practice. She came home one day and said, And, um, well, she, she decided to leave that practice and was doing relief work about a year and a half into that process. She came home one day and said, I want to open my own practice. And after the initial shock wore off, I had given her a high five and told her I would help her however I could. And, um, that led her saying, I to help me with the business side of things and the people side of things, and I'll be the doctor. And so that's been, our dynamic is my wife started out. We, we, we purchased an existing practice in the spring of 2018. It was my wife. We had three team members and I was teaching full time and was helping after school. Um, and I would, uh, all night long usually until two or three o'clock in the morning. It was a, whoo, it was a tiring time then cause we did a bunch of remodeling and rebranding. but now we just celebrated one year in a new hospital, a brand new building. Um, have five doctors now and 20, uh, three team members, I think, I lose track. Um, but we have a big team. Yeah, we're growing. And, um, so yeah, so my, my, my background was education. Um, my wife and I, the very first time I ever met my wife or saw her, I was working in a veterinary hospital and, uh, I remember very vividly was and where she walked around the corner and I was like, Whoa, you know? um, uh, but We attended the same undergraduate university and then she went on to vet school and we got married two weeks after she graduated.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Oh. That's awesome. I love that. I always like to ask people about their story and how they got to vet med, because I feel like not everyone was like, they, a lot of people are like, Oh, I want to be a vet when we grow up or when I grew up, but it's not always that same, like, okay, I'm going to be vet and it all ran smoothly from there. And so I just love to hear those stories. So thank you for sharing that. That's really cool.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

absolutely. It's a, it's a cool journey. It's really unique. You know, I think like many of your listeners, I wanted to be a veterinarian, but I didn't want to study. So those don't go well together.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Same, same. I always wanted to, when I entered, I'm also a huge fan of 4 H. My love for dogs started with 4 H in middle school and into high school, um, but I fell in love with the whole, like, animal behavior and animal science of it all. So I was like, okay, I'll be a vet. Well, I joined my hospital. I was like, nope. I don't want to be a doctor. I, I'd rather do marketing. Um, yeah, but with that said, you've celebrated one year of being in your new location. I would love to dive in a little bit more of like your whole journey of coming to create that vision for your new practice. Like I know a lot of hospitals will just move locations, but I feel like it had a deeper mission and meaning for you.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

Oh, for sure. You know, when I asked my wife why she wanted to own her own practice, because she had never talked about that ever in our, in our dating, in marriage, that topic of ownership had never come up from her. And so when I asked her why, she said, I want, I want to create the type of work environment where I want to go to work every day. And I want to surround myself with people with whom I want to work every day. And I said, now that I can help you with, cause it's, that's people. And that's what I do.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yeah.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

so the, uh, the title that I gave myself as chief empowerment officer, uh, my job, my role is to hire, find great people, hire them, equip them with the tools that they need to, to. to do their job and then work alongside them to accomplish the vision of our practice. Everyone that applies to family pet health, before they can come in for an in person interview, that's where it starts. Like getting buy in starts there. Before they can come in for an in person interview, we require them to read a book. Uh, the book is called the energy bus and it's a 10 rules for fueling your life with positivity, your life, work, family with positive, positive energy. Um, that's not to say that it's like sunshine and rainbows and puppies and kittens all the time at our office. It's

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yeah.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

that way. Right? Um, but We talk about our vision all the time and it all goes back to Dr. Shirley's desire to, uh, build, work in a nice facility where they enjoy going to work and then having a really great high functioning team. Everything else. that we've done that's been successful is because we've stayed true to those first two things. Um, the new building that you're talking about when, when we, we started out in a 1960s ranch style house. It was almost the identical floor plan to our first house. It was not meant to be a veterinary hospital. and So when we, when we decided that we were going to build a new building, we had a vision board in our office. And, um, it was right when you came out of the only bathroom we had in the hallway. And we would, and I would post, I would write questions on the board for my team to answer. While we were going through the design process things like what is your ideal vacation and they would put things on there What is your favorite restaurant? They would put things on there What's the one thing in this building that you love that you're gonna miss? What's something that you can't wait to get rid of? What's a design feature that we must include in our hospital? And so our team at the time had, had a, they helped us design what we have now. And it does go back to that vision. You know, we spend more time, at least I know my wife and I do, spend more of our waking hours at the office than we do at our house. So it is important that we had a place that brought us joy when we were walking in or leaving at the, in the evening. Um, so we incorporated a lot of natural lighting. We, um, you know, our Casco well kennels that we have, everything is, everything in our hospital was laid out and picked with a purpose. And that purpose goes back to our, our core values and our purpose statement.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

I love that so much. Something that you said really stuck out to me that I feel like Is a huge missing piece to a lot of teams when they come to do social media in particular is you had buy in from the get go that was something you were very intentional about and you laid the foundation for the culture from the from the get go and I will talk about this here in a few minutes because I want to dive into that more but I feel like That intentionality from leadership trickles down down to the support team and how they feel about coming to work and how they feel about promoting your clinic, right? Like I, I don't know about for you, but when I was working at the clinic at my clinic, I was a huge ambassador for the place that I worked because I loved it so much and I wasn't afraid to tell people, yeah, I work at X and X clinic. Right. And, um, it was something that I wasn't ashamed about. And I'm not saying like, you know, people feel ashamed about what their work, but I, I know some people that aren't excited about work and don't want to tell people about it. So, um, yeah, I, I love that. For you, is that the case with your team? Are they excited to tell people, Hey, I work here. Um, and really just promote the clinic for you with word of mouth

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

not, not only are, as it sounds so, is it braggadocious, I guess, so please don't take it as that, but not only do the people that currently work at our office, uh, feel that way, but our many, many of our, not all of our, but many of our former employees also feel that way and still recommend us, even those that were let go by me.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Wow.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

it has taken, not everybody, but many of them have come back and said, man, that was the best thing that ever happened to me, you know, and they still talk about the work environment that we had. And, and so, so, so yeah, I believe it because that's how we are very clear of who we are and we're, we're very clear through who we are through our hiring process. Through our onboarding process, through our client education and communications, our social media, everything explains who we are and it's real, so we don't, we're not faking it because we're online. Um, and so when people do join our team or clients do come into our hospital, they're like, Oh yeah, uh, this is exactly what I thought it was going to be like, because I've been following your journey since you were in that old house. And I'm like, Oh yeah, they're like, demoing stuff at two o'clock in the morning. And then. before the next day before your team opened up. And so it's real. And that, that's what I would tell people that are watching this is as you work on your social media marketing, uh, just be yourself and People will appreciate it. It doesn't have to be polished. It doesn't have to be perfect. People are so curious about what we do in our vet hospital. You can just show something that you think is totally boring and run of the mill and people are fascinated by that. And so and if you're just if you're just true to who you are, then I trust Any of my team to post on our social media accounts. Um, I love it when I see them talk about, uh, in our community, Facebook groups, uh, when they're like, oh, when people are looking for veterinarians, they say, come check us out. You know, I love working here or in the technician job posting Facebook group. Um, when someone asks about working in Tennessee and my team with, you know, we're in that, they, I think they know we're in that group now together, but when my team gets to there and responds first, that's awesome. It makes me feel good to see that they really enjoy working with us. And we have, we have long term employees. So that's also, we've been open for, uh, We're now six and a half years in and most, many of our people have been there. This is their first job in Vet Med and they're still with us, whether that be six years, five years, three years, um, or even just a couple of months now.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yeah, I love that And I also love to hear that there's a low turnover rate. Like, of course, that's always going to happen in business and with practices, but I love just that there's that passion and that your team is willing to stick up for you, even if they're not working with you anymore, that, that speaks volumes. And honestly, like we, I feel any way that we could spend a lot of money on advertising and spending so much time on social media, but really it's down to the word of mouth and how the community. Views you as a practice.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

I feel that that's true now more than ever. You know, when, when you and I first started working together, uh, I think that we could still control the narrative a lot more than we can now. Like make, you know,

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Mm hmm.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

uh, and through our market, through our posting and our marketing. And what I've found now is that it's really hard to track whether things are working or not. Engagement's hard to really come by. Um, and yet we're still churning out content. And I think that the really important thing about social media is to have a consistent presence and don't worry about whether you're, um, It. I don't think it's, I don't think you can track ROI on it anymore. It's, it's really, really hard to track ROI on social on the time that you spend on social media and, but I don't think that that should be a reason that people should stop doing it. I want, again, I want to use social media to help tell our story so that we. Um, the people that aren't a good fit for family pet health go look somewhere else and the people that are a right fit for family pet health become more curious and want to reach out or they start looking for more content and it's easily found.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Um, you said something there that was so powerful and I want to dive in deep because I feel like a lot of practices want to attract everybody in their community or work with anybody, but I am firm believer of repelling people. Um, if. If you don't want to work with them. ha

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

go, go Google, go Google family pet health, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and read our latest one star review. And that is an example of where we didn't communicate with the wrong person the right way. What does that mean? When somebody calls and says, how much is it to get my cat spayed? The question that our CSRs are supposed to ask is, Oh, thanks for calling. Uh, is is price you're going to be your main determining factor in who you decide to and if that person says, if that person says, yes, then we say, well, we're not the lowest price in town, so, but let me save you a lot of time and I will give you the three cheapest veterinarians in Rutherford County we know them. Yeah,

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Oh. Yes, I love this so much. I love that so much. I want to pause there real quick, Michael, because that right there, like I know there's a lot of practices looking for clients, but if you don't want to work with somebody, if you just get the sense that they're not going to be a good fit for your practice, just because of that question alone, I love that you said, okay, we're not going, basically you're not going to be the best fit for us, but here are other places that can serve you well. You are serving that client. Just with that answer and you are Attracting the kind of clients you want to work with because people are going to say oh, okay Well, they're not going to be the cheapest But they took the time to even direct me to a different direction for saying we're not for you or we're booked for eight weeks Sorry, bye Um, like I know I might be stepping some on some toes there But I I love what you said there because as a former veterinary assistant I didn't want to work with certain clients because they made me feel uncomfortable or You They just weren't very pleasant people, and I hate to say that, but they just weren't happy people, and they took um, want me, cause me to come to work because of that, so, I there, so, please continue.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

So instead of giving that line and finding out we told her our price and she laughed on the phone and hung up The whole call from the from the time that the first ring until she hung up was 54 seconds And so she left that phone call and went straight to Google and left a one star review and I'm like man Don't you have anything better to do with your life? But, but no, she didn't. So she left us and told us that we were price gouging. And so my first response, I was in a bad mood that day. And, and, um, so my first response, I typed it out and I hit post and I was, I looked at my brother and said, Hey, will you read that review? I just, the response I just left. And he read the first sentence and he go, and he leaned back in his chair and looked at me and he goes, Rewrite it. I was like, man, he goes, that's, that's not your voice. And I'm like, all right, all right. And so I did, but the response that I gave her first sentence, I don't remember what her name was, Amanda. I think I was like, Amanda, we wish you the best of luck in finding a good veterinary partner. Next paragraph. That's it. That's it for her. I didn't address any of the other junk that she said. So my next paragraph was. Um, for those of you reading one star Google reviews, let me, let me take this opportunity to tell you about the family pet health difference. And then I listed what makes us different. The fact that we have six licensed technicians, that they're the ones that are doing the monitoring, that we do pre and post op pain control and, and all these different things. And it's in that one star Google review, which you know, that's where people go to look. They don't look at the five stars they because I do it they sort by lowest and read those And and go with it because even though I disagreed with her coming and leaving a one star review. She didn't lie I mean she she said that we're price gouging but we're not but she but what she said She gave the right estimate, which is of how much it cost to get a cat spade. Um, and, and so there was truth in her, there was some truth in her post, but it gave me an opportunity. I kind of flipped that. It gives me an opportunity. I'm not talking to her. She's never coming to Family Pet Health, but there are people that are going to be on Google reading those reviews, and how I respond to someone like that is going to tell them more about me than just about anything else that I could do. And we have had people that when we ask every single incoming client, how did you hear about family pet health? And more than, more than 10 that I can think of have said your response to one star Google reviews. That's how they found, or that's what made them come to Family Pet Health. And so, I, I think that everyone out there should respond to every single review, even if it's just with a thank you. And, and, you'll get, you'll learn how to deal with Google reviews. Um, but use those to your advantage, even the one star ones. Mm

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Absolutely. I love that a lot because I feel like people take on those negative responses or negative reviews from people and take it as a personal attack. And the thing is, it's not about you. It's about that person and how they're feeling and what's going on in their world. You just entered it, whether they contacted you, you interrupted their feed, whatever. And they're coming from a place that is not their world. Very happy there's something going on with them. So if we can reply to them with not addressing anything Emotionally just coming neutrally sticking to the facts But really just focusing on the people who will see that review and are wanting to come Partner up with you in your practice And that is going to be just a better outcome and like you said, so thank you for bringing that up because I feel like that is a, a huge hurdle for a lot of people to overcome. This is wonderful.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

Well, this is another one of those reasons that being a high school teacher uniquely qualified me for running a veterinary hospital because I've had, I've had more than one student stand up in the middle of the class, throw me the bird and tell me to F off. And then, and all the other students are looking and pulling out their cell phones to record. so there is nothing that some online keyboard warrior is going to do that's going to hurt my feelings.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Exactly. Exactly. We have a choice of how we are going to react to whatever people say to us or do to us.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

the rule number one in the energy bus is you are the driver of your own bus. You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it. And so, uh, it is sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but, uh, um, just assume the best in people, respond appropriately and move on.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

I love that. I'm writing down that book recommendation cause I would love to read that myself. Now, with that said, I want to talk about traction. I started reading it, and I need to finish it, but I know that the book Traction, um, by, oh, what's his name? Can you remember the author's name? Can you tell me? Gino Yes, okay, I'll put it into the show notes for everybody, but, um, I love how you took the, the premise and the concept from Traction and made it into your, uh, social media manager's goals for her. I would, so go ahead and dive in deep on that because this is really, really awesome to me.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

So the book Traction is written by Gino Wickman. It's about EOS, which stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's a book that's designed for companies that have between 10 and I think 250 employees. But really, if anybody out there is thinking of owning your own business, no matter what it is, uh, I am sold out to the Traction Colt. So you should read, you should read the book, read the book, um, in the book, it talks about, uh, company goals, five, three, one year goals, and, and then for each person on your team, each quarter, they're working on things called rocks. So these are big, big, Big, big things that need to get accomplished that take more than one week in order to help achieve a company goal. So this year for 2024, our company goals, we had, we had two in particular. One was to increase dental compliance by 10 percent and one was to increase heartworm compliance. Uh, there, we had a revenue goal in there and some, some other, uh, fear free goals and, and, uh, hiring a doctor goal. So we had some other things in there too, but those were our compliance, uh, goals. do you do that? Well, you start, you have to break it down into quarters. So, so our social media manager, Haley, Haley Cameron does a phenomenal job of, uh, staying up on our, especially, um, Instagram, cause I don't do anything on Instagram. So she does that and, and. What she does is amazing. So she has a goal. She has her own goals of posting so many, uh, social media posts per week and, and she tracks them and keeps up with them. We do sometimes sneak offer codes in there so we can see if any of them are moving the needle on anything. Um, And so, so traction, so, so Haley's not the only one working on a, on a goal. Every single person on our team has individual goals and rocks. And so some of her goals, uh, like are to produce a video about our weight loss program. And so she's working with another team member who that's their big rock. And they work together to, to, to, um, to, let people know about those things. So, um, Haley, I, uh, sent Haley through your course. And, uh, the Instagram course specifically, because I knew nothing about Instagram. And so she, she, uh, she has just rocked and rolled with that and has done a really great job with, with all of our social media, making the graphics and, uh, infographics and things that are real easily shared. And we're, we're seeing good results from that. And again, it's providing an online presence so that when curious pet parents out there finally go to Google your. practices name, they can find relevant and timely content.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

love that so much. And I bet your team feels a lot more bought in from another perspective into your practices vision, because you have goals and a purpose for them versus just, okay, we've got to pump clients through. We got to get all this done and this done. And, um, So I love that. And I love that you've established a certain amount of posts that you and Haley agree that she's going to meet and that she's working with other team members and that you're encouraging her to, to do that. I know that a lot of our listeners are frustrated because they don't have a lot of team buy in. And that's why I want to ask you more questions about this, because I think there's a lot of work that practices could do, but there's a lot that as, as the support team members could do to ask and prompt our leadership to say, okay, what expectations do you require of me for this? Or what do you envision of my role as the social media manager doing? Because if I recall correctly, Haley is also in charge of the, Doing the events, which I want to dive into. Um, and she's also a receptionist, right? So she's got a lot of other responsibilities, but that doesn't mean that she's feeling so overwhelmed or so bottlenecked about everything that she can't feel excited about work. Um, so feel free to, to talk about that more if you'd like.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

One of the neat things about traction is that, um, when, when anyone on our team encounters problems or issues, we put it on the issues list. And so let's say that we had set a goal for Haley to do 25 social media posts per week. And she's, that's a number that is re it's a smart goal, right? It's, it's, it's, it hits all it's specific, measurable, attainable, and, uh, relevant and time bound. And The, not only, we don't stop with SMART goals. We do SMARTER goals. So we evaluate and respond, uh, as the ER on that. But if she's encountering a problem that she can't meet her goal, she's gonna put that on the issues list. And the issues list, it might just say, having trouble reaching 25 posts a week. That's, that's the issue. She doesn't have to come interrupt her day, interrupt my day, or anything like that. We deal with issues at a regularly scheduled weekly meeting, and, and when we come up with that issue, we, we start, we identify it. We identify the issue is, she's not posting 25 posts a week. Then we, so we have identified it. Then we discuss it. Why? What are some challenges? What are some things that are preventing you from doing that? Is it another person isn't doing what they're supposed to do, which is holding you back from doing what you're supposed to do? Or is it purely that you don't have time? Um, so we identify, we discuss it, and then we solve it. So together, we may re evaluate and say, Hey, 25 was just too many. So we're going to move it to 14. And we so that's we've we've solved it. We just we lowered it to 14 or it might be all I really need to is 35 minutes On a tuesday to block myself off and I can knock out a whole week's worth of post as long as I have that blocked Well, we can discuss is that possible? Yes, it's possible We're going to adjust the schedule so that hayley can step away from the three other things that she does You And she's just going to put on her social media posting hat and get it done and then go back to Her regularly scheduled programming, right? So so we identify it We discuss it and we solve it and we do it in specific scheduled meetings so that it's not Blowing up our work day Because ultimately we're a veterinary hospital. We're supposed to be getting clients in the door and to a room so our medical team can take care of them and then we check them out and get them out the door. That's our goal. That's what pays the bills. Our social media is not paying the bills. But social media might be what's helping us keep our books full. So it, it, that's where it's like, is this important or not? Well, I couldn't, it's important. I know it's important, but I can't tell you exactly what the ROI is on. And I just know that we're going to keep doing it.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

exactly. Yeah. And it's just taking that time to assess. Okay. It, how effective is this going to be right now? And are we using our energy and time wisely on social media or is there somewhere else we can focus or, you know, just taking that time to reassess. And I feel like there, that's an essential step to marketing as a whole. Like, I know a lot of practices feel like they should do social media just because that's what they've been told or that they've heard like, Oh, everyone's on social media, that's where all the money's coming from, but they don't really stop doing that. and pause and say, okay, is this an effective tool for my practice? Because I can tell you there's eight hospitals just in my town alone, so it's kind of saturated in that regard. But, so, social media might be an important role for us, but for someone who's out in a rural area that has, like, they're the only competition, right? They're, it's just them. You know, social media might not be such an important tool for them. So just taking that time to see, okay, how is this going to apply to my situation? How can I make it possible? And how can I still be consistent with it without burning out and making it, you know, the bane of my existence, right? So I love that. So with that, I do want to pivot a bit. But, um, as I mentioned, Haley's also in charge of managing events. So I know that you guys recently, a few months ago at the time of this recording, just finished with, you know, walk my dog tap challenge. Um, and now you're doing trivia nights. And so I would love to hear from you on how both of those events, um, have been going for your practice and what kind of return on investment have you been getting from those?

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

So the walk my dog challenge for us started in 2020. It was, uh, we, we totally, um, saw it in, on, in a, in a chat. Somebody mentioned it offhand in a Facebook. And I was like, wait, can you, what was that you said? Walk my dog. What's, what's that about? And, um, so they they were friendly enough to just share with us their framework. It's, it is a, it's a community event. It's open to anybody in the whole world. You walk your dog, you log your miles. you win free prizes. It's that simple. So we created a landing page on our website. We use whisker cloud. We talked to them. They just created a Google entry form. So people, we would just say family, pet health. com slash walk my dog. And it takes you to the entry form and they put in their, their contact information, name, email, and phone number, their dogs. name, breed, size, uh, they put in their age group as well, and that gets them entered. Then we, we have this whole email, uh, system. Now we're five years, this is our fifth time to do this, so it's all pretty automated at this point, but, uh, we, for eight, Yeah, we do it for eight weeks, and at the end of the eight weeks, we have a big dog party, we pass out t shirts to everyone that walked 50 miles, everyone that walks 5 miles gets like poop bags, 10 miles is um, a squeaky ball, and if you walk 70, 50 miles is a t shirt, and 75 miles is a free exam. So, that's a big deal. And they're even allowed to donate their gift certificate for an exam to someone else. So, you know, maybe they love their vet on the other side of town, but they have a friend that's on our side of town. Like, hey, I won this from Family Pet Health. I'm not going to drive over there, so you take it. So, it's, you know, a little marketing thing there. But, uh, we walked to the moon and back last year, and this year we walked around the world. And, I don't know, 55 times. 100 miles. Um, so it's, it's pretty cool. Uh, but the cool. thing about it, and I think what you are wanting me to maybe talk about probably is that it's not just family pet health, but each week we identified local business, partners in our community. They had to be small business, independent, small businesses, um, mom and pops, if you will. And we went to them, told them what we were doing and asked them if they would like to sponsor a One of the weeks of the walk my dog challenge. So each week has a, has a small business sponsor. They give out a picture prompt. And so you on your walk with your dog, you take a picture and you post it, you tag us, and then. We do drawing some, sometimes it's five drawings in one week. Sometimes it's one drawing at the end of the week for everyone that posted a picture. Uh, for example, Simply Pure Sweets, my favorite place to eat breakfast in Murfreesboro. They, uh, have these giant cinnamon rolls, which are really bad for my diabetes, but, um, they, they, uh, give away five of them. So it's a picture of your dog stopping along the walk to enjoy a snack. Uh, Evans Plant Farm. Take a picture of your dog stopping to smell the flowers and they give them a big, like a really nice gift basket. They're always our first week sponsor cause it's still not just summer heat. So plants are still a big thing at that time. Gets people excited. Um, a local, uh, animal photographer donates a session. So there's all sorts of real estate agent gives a hundred dollar gift card to a home improvement store. We had, um, uh, um, a yoga studio or actually a bar like studio. Um, they gave a whole month, uh, free membership, uh, doggie daycare did a, you know, free, free grooming or something. So it was, it was great. And so what we're doing is leveraging. their social media to put people, redirect people back to family pet health. So we may not have reached their clients on our own to get them to register. But when they say, Hey, it's our week to sponsor the walk my dog challenge. Uh, go to FamilyPetHealth. com to sign up and they send that out to all of their email lists or social media contacts which is redirecting them back to our website. So, we partner, we've done this five years, we partner with our favorite local fear free dog trainer in town and uh, it's a joint venture and it has been a real success. Now the ROI on it. Can't really tell you. Um, I will tell you that it hasn't garnered as many new clients as I thought it would. Like, we have a lot of people that get that 75 free or 85 free exam and a small, only a small percentage of them have ever been redeemed. And I don't really know the reason why. I might look into that more if I have time, but Honestly, people are pretty bonded to their vets and we're not doing this to try to steal people away. We're just doing it to help the community. Obviously it started in 2020. We didn't know it at the time, but when we were planning this, it turned out to be a huge thing. The local newspaper wrote a story about it and everything because it was right in the middle of COVID. And, but we didn't know that at the time when we were planning it, that it was going to be so cool. And now we've just been. Doing it. Like I said, it really doesn't take a lot of time. Um, cost me less than a thousand dollars in prizes, maybe, maybe 2, 000 in prizes to do it, but. It's good content and, and, uh, and people really enjoy it. We've had people that do it every year, so we're going to continue it. I do know that Haley wants to have an evaluation meeting, uh, this, this go around, because I think we're going to require some of our community partners to be more specific in how they share it. Or they can't be our partners anymore because we do all the work. We just need them to share it. So, so that's that, that walked my dog challenge. Yeah, The walk my dog challenges. It's been a lot of fun and we'll continue to do it. I just, we're going to make some changes to it this year. Now that. The Trivia Night is um, an idea that I had, I don't even know what I was doing when I had the idea, but we sponsor trivia, so it's dinner and trivia at our office, we have a, in the new building, and people should go check it out, go to FamilyPetHealth. com. building project and take a look at the, take a look at the floor plan. It's all posted there. You can look at it, but we built a garage on the end of our building and it's about 1200 square feet. So it's bigger than the actual building that we were in over before we moved. And, um, so, It's it's kind of flex space. It is literally a drive through vet service garage, but it holds About a hundred people with tables and chairs And so we we offered Four local non profits that are animal related for the, well, one was trade school related, but, um, for local nonprofits, we said, Hey, we'll provide, we will provide the space and I will pay for this guy that runs trivia. I'll, that will be my donation to your organization as I'll pay for the trivia guy. So all you have to do is sell tickets and And we're, we're going to make this a lot of fun. So far we've had, we've, we've successfully held two of these events. Our third one is Monday and we've already raised about 5, 000 for just the first, uh, first sessions that we've done. And that money goes straight to those animal, uh, groups. And, uh, we're really proud of that. It's been a lot of fun. And that has. That event has. resulted in at least three new clients in two events So I consider that a huge roi because it cost me about 200 bucks for the trivia 200 I got Those clients to come so the lifetime value of our client of ours is way more than 200. So um that that's been really great and the best part is is that We're, we're serving our community, which is a big part. That's one of one part of our mission, uh, is that we want to be active in our local community and be a place that people come for more than just vet care. So having these trivia nights has been a lot of fun. Um, it's a blast. You should go to our Tik TOK and you can see some of the highlights, uh, from those trivia nights so far, and they've been really great. And we've been able to raise some, um, large sums of money for, for, by their standards, uh, for some really great local nonprofits.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Awesome. I love this so much because, Even though your practice to anyone listening may not have the space like Michael does to host events, there are ways for you to continue hosting events in your local area that is community based, um, and still getting your name out there. And I really like how you're using the walk my dog challenge to get, uh, To use other people's audiences in your local community to really push out your own name, um, and to really get your name out there. And that is a really cool hack, to get more followers to your account. If that is the goal of yours, um, I will be doing an episode on that a little bit more because I definitely have some opinions about that. But, um, overall, it really Helps you to get more reach to people in your local community, because Michael, I'm sure you can attest to this really focusing on your local community, whether it's just on social media or doing just events is going to be a better return on investment for whatever you're putting into social media, because if you're focusing on the people in your area, You'll get more clients that way versus just everybody in the world, because everybody in the world's not going to be able to do business with you. As you can tell with just your walk, your dog challenge, you know, people aren't coming across town for some, what, whatever reason that may be to do business with you, but people know what you're about. You're building that brand awareness through that. And I think that's really the best thing that you can do for your brand overall, because if you're not getting clients, but people are telling, um, their friends and family about you, it's a much easier buy in for people to come to you versus just cold search off the internet.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

Yeah, and, and so,

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

I, I love that. Yeah.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

a meeting space to hold 75 people, then clearly you're not going to have a trivia night in your exam space, right? But just like our, our, our vendors have CE at restaurants, you can find a restaurant that will provide you space. Um, find a school gymnasium, find, you know, find, uh, just find a space to do it. And, and it doesn't have to be a restaurant. It can be just a warehouse space. As long as it's climate controlled, you're good, right? And, and bring in food trucks and do this. It's, it's easier than you may think that it is, uh, and like Cheyenne said, it's, it's just leveraging other people's, uh, Social media and contact email list to at least plant a seed with your, with your company's name in it. They may not, uh, the Beasley Animal Foundation is a low cost spay, neuter and vaccine clinic. That's just down the street from me. I used to consider them competition and now I consider them friends. Like one of our doctors is on their board of directors. They are literally like the closest. Other they're the closest other vet clinic to our office. So but rather than see them as competition We looked for ways to partner with them. They have an oliver It's called the oliver trust and it is an account. It's just a spay neuter and vaccine clinic. So when they diagnose, um, a cracked canine tooth or tumors or something else they say hey, you need to find a full service vet and When people say well, I don't have any money the oliver fund You Uh, the Beasley clinic can call me and say, we're sending Cheyenne down to see you and she's approved for up to 800 in care. Our team knows that if that person's coming, we, we don't do many discounts, but we work really hard to keep that low. And then we just send that bill to Beasley. So and they have several other vets in town that, that are, that, that work with them as well. So they're able to do that.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yeah.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

My point is, like, just think outside of the box, look at, look at community partners that are doing good work, people that you want to be associated with, and just go up to them and say, Hey, I heard this crazy idea about a food truck trivia night. Would you like to, like we'll help, we'll help put it together. Yeah, we'll help put it together, but the money stays with you. Why wouldn't they do that? That's like what, you know, so, um, yeah. And if they're a non profit, they can, they can, uh, like all of ours are, are 501c3s. They set up, they do all the collecting of money, the ticket sales and all that. All we help do is produce it. It's a, it's a really cool, it's a really cool, uh, creative way to have fun and raise money for non profits and do some marketing on the side there too.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yeah, oh, such a great idea with the food trucks, because I know a lot of practices have parking lots, right, so if you just close early one day or decide to open up, like, on a Saturday, if you're not open on Saturdays, normally just host an event during the summer, if it's not too hot in your area, um, and just have a food truck come up and do trivia night or whatever that may be for you. You know, that's a great opportunity right there to support your community and bring people to your practice. They get an idea of what's going on at your practice and they get to know you and your team. So that's wonderful. All right, Michael, I have one more question for you and, um, we'll land the plane here as the cool kids say. But, um, I would love to talk about your podcast if you're open to that, because I feel like that's a lot of, uh, that, that podcast that the concept of the podcast is that. Area where I feel like a lot of practices could really lean into. Um, so I would love to know how that's going for you and how that's opened the door for your, your clients as, or at least in the way that's been a good ROI is what I'm trying to get at.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

Yeah. So our podcast is called the Family Pet Podcast. It's a podcast for curious pet parents where we believe the more you know about pet health care, the better pet parent you can be. You can tell I've said that a few times, right? Um, it, our episodes are about 25 minutes long, which is the average length that it takes someone to walk one mile with their dog. Walk your dog. Walk my dog. So, uh, yeah, so the podcast, honestly, I'll be completely honest with you. The podcast started because I miss teaching. I miss talking. I miss, like, Educating people and I miss my classroom. So the podcast was a way to keep me from going back to teaching. But, uh, um, so it was, it was something that I had thought about starting a podcast with my kids where we, we were going to call it tales of tales, tales of Tennessee, T A I L. Of Tennessee and we were just going to tell fun stories about animal related stories about Tennessee animals, but um, anyway What we realized was that we needed it for our office So the first I don't know 15 episodes were the 15 They were the answers to the 15 most asked questions in the exam room. And the, the thought process was we would make an episode about all of the things that we constantly are talking about in our exam room. Then the next time someone asked about it, we would say, Oh, well, here's a little handout. Scan this QR code. It'll take you to our podcast. And you need to listen to episode three, which is all about heartworms. Or you need to listen to episode one, which was about the rabbit hemorrhagic disease. And, um, it had made it, that was a big deal. It made its way into Tennessee for the first time. So the podcast has continued to, to be strictly for. Pet parents as an educational opportunity to teach them about pet health care So they could take better pet better care of their pets and be their pets hero and it has been so much fun I have met so many cool people in vet med when I told them I have a podcast and I want to talk about That one weird thing that they're the expert in. They're like, yes, I would love to talk about Ehrlichia. And like, nobody ever wants me to talk about Ehrlichia. I'm like, well, I want you to do a whole podcast about Ehrlichia. And they're like, this is amazing. So, um, yeah, so, so it's been a lot of fun and it's certainly built my network up of veterinary professionals, people that I can call when I need advice or, or some con consulting on a case or something, uh, it's been really cool to have that. It is hard. It, it takes a lot of time. So, Even like right now, if somebody went to our podcast, you would see that I haven't posted in about, it's probably getting close to five weeks because I have been going nonstop. But once school starts back and we get our family back into a more normal routine, we'll get back on, On track posting them, but it is it's the our latest podcasts are better audio quality better flow than our first ones But again, it doesn't have to be perfect. You just need to have good audio. That's the main thing Your content doesn't have to be great But your audio needs to be crisp.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yes, 100%. And nowadays, it doesn't have to be polished. People don't want polished content. They just want to see that you're present or entertaining them or giving them some quick wins or something that's adding to their life. And they're, they're golden. I think that's the huge shift in social media in particular. Um, And I think podcasts are a perfect place to have on social media, or use social media to promote to your podcasts, um, just because people want that raw, um, authentic conversations like this, um, so I, I think that the podcast is going to be a huge opportunity for you. And I wanted to ask, are you, um, transcribing those podcasts into your blog and making those, um, rankable search engine content?

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

Just recently switched to Riverside as our recording platform. And it does, it does make a transcript. So we do auto generate the transcript. It's got some errors in it and stuff, but we do use that to upload to Spotify and YouTube. It's a, it's on, we just put it up straight up on YouTube now too. So, Again, it doesn't have to be perfect. People understand. I know, you know, when we read subtitles, when we're watching TikTok on silent, during a meeting, uh, they don't always get it right. But you are intelligent enough to fill in the blanks the way they need to be. Resort words, right? So, just do it. But, but, So, Yes. we do use the transcription, um, we have it on, uh, anywhere you can download a podcast, we're there. And then we do have it on YouTube. as well. So again, when people finally decide that they're ready to search and learn more about this crazy vet clinic that has the outdoor patio seating for their exam rooms and a garage, like who has a garage? And so they're finally ready to do that search when they type in family pet health Murfreesboro, Tennessee, everything that populates is going to be, they're going to have a wealth of of options. to choose from of how they want to learn more about us.

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

I love that. I think that the podcast, um, whether you guys, whoever's listening, does a podcast, does a YouTube channel, does blog, I think it's really important nowadays. And I know it takes a lot of extra time and you already pressed for time with social media, but I would love for you just to open your mind to doing some form of long form content, like a podcast, YouTube, blog, like I said, and really leveraging that to get some uh, good organic reach through that on the internet, um, but you can use that for your social media, so that can be a fuel, that can be your topic for a social media post, you can repurpose that content so it's not such a heavy load like, okay, I have to create a podcast, I have to create something new, no, you're just repurposing something This huge cake and then you're just cutting it up so that it's easy to distribute. So weird analogy but Michael, thank you so much for coming onto the show today. I really appreciate you just sharing everything that you've been doing at Family Pet Health. And, um, I know you've mentioned it a few times, but if people want to follow you and connect with you in particular, where is the best place they can connect?

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

The best place is just go to familypethealth. com And you can find all of our social media channels. You can email the the website just email us there. They'll get it to me And I do want to I would be remiss if I didn't make a one final plug or one plug here before we go That everyone out there that's watching. This is obviously interested in veterinary medicine Join us on Facebook at the Veterinary Leadership Book Club. So you just do a Google search for, yeah, uh, do a, do a, do a Facebook search for VLBC, which stands for Veterinary Leadership Book Club, and we read a book. Uh, and we talk about it together. We, we, we reframe all of our questions related to vet meds. So we read traction. That's before I implemented it at my office, we read through it in the book club, um, we've read everything from traction to green lights by Matthew McConaughey and yes, we were able to successfully. Relate Matthew McConaughey's green lights to vet med. It was fun Um, we're currently reading qbq which is the question before the question and it's been a lot of fun So, um, I would encourage everybody to join us there on the book club as well, but you can reach me at family pet health. com

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. I wanted you to bring that up and I will add a link to it into the show notes for everybody. But yeah, thank you so much, Michael. And I hope to talk with you more and maybe have you back on the show later.

michael-shirley---family-pet-health--he-him-_1_08-01-2024_144914:

I will do anything you need. I'm here to help you. I appreciate our friendship and and you've definitely helped family pet health Like I want you when you. look at our building and and hear our stories, you know Definitely know that you. helped us to achieve that. So I appreciate that

cheyanne-flerx_2_08-01-2024_124914:

Thank you, Michael. Appreciate you. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Bye.

Wave Link MicrophoneFX (Elgato Wave:3)-11:

Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you found value from this episode. today. And if you did, would you consider sharing subscribing and even reviewing the podcast? I want to be sure that you don't miss the next piece of marketing content that I have to share with you because I've got a lot planned and I would love to be able to support you on your marketing journey. So if you wouldn't mind sharing this and following and doing all the things possible.

Wave Link MicrophoneFX (Elgato Wave:3)-13:

And sharing the podcast with others.

Wave Link MicrophoneFX (Elgato Wave:3)-11:

That would be wonderful because I want to help as many veterinary professionals as possible. So I can't do that without your help. So. if you'd be willing to do that, that would be amazing. But in the meantime, I will catch you on the next episode, and I wish you the best week possible. Bye.