The Practice of Therapy

Dr. David Geier
Hey, I'm Dr. David Guyer. I'm an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine special specialist and a medical expert on TV and various forms of the media. And I am super, super excited to be on the practice of therapy podcast, we're going to talk about how therapists can help people help the public in a bigger way through TV, radio, podcasts, newspaper, magazine interviews, and potentially not just help people publicly, but also helpfully get them to work with you as patients and clients in your practice.

Gordon Brewer
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcast. And I am so excited for you all to get to meet Dr. David Guyer. And I can just the short conversation we've had, so far, I know this is gonna be just an exciting person for you to hear and just really hear what he's been able to do with being able to get into talking to media and really establishing yourself as an expert within your community. So, David, welcome.

Dr. David Geier
Oh, thanks so much for having me, I'm really excited to talk about this media has been something that sort of grew out of just a side passion, and it's now been something that has become helpful in my primary practice as well. And I'm, you know, hoping that I can share some of that success for people trying to do that with their, their practices themselves.

Gordon Brewer
Oh, awesome. Awesome. So as I, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've kind of landed where you've landed,

Dr. David Geier
you know, when I was growing up, but you know, I'm the son of a doctor, my dad was a radiologist, my mom was an or nurse, and then turn nurse manager. But you would think that, that's going to push me straight into the medical field. But growing up, I actually wanted to avoid medicine at all costs. I was going to be a work in business, I was going to get my MBA and work on Wall Street. But my freshman year of college, I had an episode and I won't tell the whole story. But I basically went into what's called an Aflac Duck shock while running one day, where I had this life threatening allergic reaction, managed to get to student health, they basically saved my life with you know, epinephrine, and and, you know, some getting me to the ER, and everybody stabilized it. But what was really disheartening, so everybody knew what was going on. But I went through a battery of tests and never got an answer to what what caused it, you know, in fact, the allergist I saw after the fact said, well, let's just hope it doesn't happen again. And again, I was a freshman in college. And to me, that just wasn't good enough, I, I felt like, you know, somebody that's played sports his whole life and exercised his whole life, you know, just to be told art, you can't run again, you can't, you know, just in case, this doesn't happen. That wasn't acceptable, acceptable to me. So I switched to premed, and went to med school. And now I'm doing what I love to do, I went, you know, after doing my orthopedic surgery training, I did a fellowship in sports medicine. And now I help people feel and perform their best, whether they're, you know, they're getting older, whether their body is breaking down, and they're having injuries, or it's medical conditions. And that's so gratifying getting able to being able to tell somebody that, hey, I get to, you get to go back and run again, or you get to go back and play soccer, again, is so gratifying. But that's a one on one relationship. You know, I may see, you know, in 3035 40 patients a day, you know, maybe seven or eight of those are new patients. So I'm helping a lot of people. But then I realized by being on the radio, or being on TV and some other things that I've really learned how to do, I can help on a much, much bigger group of people. And so I was just doing it, because I like helping people. That's why I started a website and a lot of social media. But then I realized that those people wanted to go further and wanted to see me in my practice, and I realized how important this was to building my practice. So I really went full steam ahead on the media, I've really, I put a lot of time into it now, probably more than you would need to if you're just trying to build a practice. Now I get there isn't a day that goes by that some one of my patients doesn't say that they read my newspaper column or read my or saw me on my daily on the medical expert of TV to TV networks here. You know, and I do daily appearances for them. So they, you know, they people hear it or see it all the time. And that's really gratifying, both from I got to help people and yeah, builds my builds my practice.

Gordon Brewer
Wow. Yeah. Well, it's one of the things that it speaks to that I think people hear from me a good bit is the importance of building a niche, and really establishing, you know, in my mind, at least, marketing is really making sure that people can find you because there's more than enough people out there that need our help. And this really is communicating to people how you can help them. And, you know, the media is, you know, I think for some folks that might be just kind of intimidating to think about, you know, getting on a radio program or a TV program or, you know, any of that sort of thing. So, you're in you're working with, with people and coaching people through this, how do you where where's the starting place for this?

Dr. David Geier
It really depends on what people are trying to achieve. And when I talk to people and coach, you know, different experts, and it can be physicians and and counselors and therapists, but it can be accountants or financial planners or real estate agents.

The The biggest

thing that you want to think about whether it's marketing and social media, like he's, I couldn't agree more about what he said about having a niche, whether you're trying to market yourself and get your name out that way, or you decide to go into the media, you really need to know your message, who you are, what you do, and and why you do it. And so I really stress, figuring out what that message is, and it basically comes down to who you help and why and especially if it's a fairly narrow who, rather than I just help everybody, that can be really important, because people, yes, they'll go to your website, or you know, see you on TV. But what gets them to say, hey, I want to see her I want to see him is if you really feel like you can help them. And so not only talking about how you can help them, but showing them can be very helpful. And you can't do that unless you take the time to figure out exactly who you are and why you do it.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's, again, echoes a lot. The kind of my message with with folks is really figuring out your why. But first of all, but guess, yeah, just being able to really clarify how you help people, and what you're passionate about, too. And so what to kind of take us through a little bit of your process for doing that with folks. But there's,

Dr. David Geier
there's some strategies, and I'll give you one that I can try. But a lot of it just comes down to sort of brainstorming what I just said, Take literally a sheet of paper, you know, maybe have a glass of wine one night, just write down everything that comes to mind, even things that seem kind of crazy, it may be based on your ideal patient, it may be, you know, things that problems you like to deal with in the office. But as far as AI, there's not one unique formula, but you know, something along the lines of I, you know, do something, some action for some group of people. So that so like I say, I help people feel and perform their best, regardless of age injuries, or medical conditions, his sort of purpose or mission statement, and there's formulas for it, it can be I do this for that, you know, there's lots of ways to do it. But those are just something one to two sentences, like and like you say, the more narrow it is for a specific group of people. And the more you can explain why, yes, it's going to potentially get people to hopefully choose to see you and work with you one on one. But it also helps the media it helps those reporters that helps the news producers, the radio producers, think of you when some topic comes up if they you know rather than I you know, no x therapist, but I don't know if he or she could talk about divorce or you know, whatever it is, if you get known in a certain niche and can really articulate that, it helps everybody involved, it's gonna really help you expand your presence in the media and then hopefully get them as patients and clients.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah, I think it's, uh, you know what, I think a good I love the idea of the exercise of just sitting down one night and, and just writing all of this out or just being able to think about how you help someone. But what one of the things that I think is an important portent step in this is just really thinking about who are your ideal patients or clients? And what, you know, what, what are the problems that they're having?

Dr. David Geier
it what are the great things about that exercise, because that's so important. I mean, you know, in my world of sports medicine, I sometimes cringe when I get somebody that comes into me that is beyond the where I can really help them they've got bone on bone knee or hip arthritis or something and really need a joint replacement surgeon. You know, obviously I talked to him about it, I do the best I can but at the end of the day, I'm not the type that can help them and so it can be good to know that from a you know, just like you were talking about marketing earlier to really market to the right people and and not and when you're talking specifically the media. Not every medium is going to be right for the potential ideal audience. I mean, if you're going after new mothers, you know, for instance, or young married couples that may be a different magazine or a different TV show than say, if you're talking about work related burns. Retirement type issues, things like that. And those are, you know, knowing exactly who you help makes an enormous difference in your ability to market it, whether it's the media or anything else.

Gordon Brewer
Great, right? Yeah, it's such a such an important piece. So if somebody is thinking about reaching out to media, regardless of which type, what, where's what's the starting place,

Dr. David Geier
before I would sort of do the art, I want to be on this TV show talking about this. And sometimes there's just a topic that is so timely that you want to, you know, you're going to capitalize on it, and you just reach out to a producer of a TV station, or a radio show host or a reporter in a newspaper. And that may be good for a one off appearance, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that they may approach you, which is always a good thing as well. But I'm a big believer in developing relationships with relationships with writers and reporters and journalists, you know, whether that's newspapers or magazines, newspapers, radio show hosts, and producers and TV show producers, reporters, that kind of thing, because the value of the media isn't in being seen once that I mean, that can help. There's no question about it. But just like advertising, the key is in the repetition. And so if you start to develop, like I just did a, an interview yesterday with the NBA, one of the NBA writers for USA Today. And you know, I got back to him right away, we talked about LeBron James, you know, his injury. And that was great. But I spent maybe the last five minutes talking about, you know, the different things I can talk about and help him. And he's already thinking of other stories that he's going to use me as an expert, that's where the value of the media is in developing those relationships. So that they asked you back over and over and over when they have a topic in your field. And so before you start with the individual tactics, really identify, you know, the types of media that would be helpful for building your practice, where you can contribute information that would be helpful, and then starting to identify the people and building those relationships that pay off for years.

Gordon Brewer
For Right, right. Yeah, and I think, you know, just thinking about folks that will be listening to this particular podcast and mental health, right now is just a huge, a huge opportunity, because mental health is just really in the forefront with people on on on, you know, in, you know, and I can imagine that there are a lot of, you know, like local TV stations, and, you know, newspapers and that sort of thing that would love to be able to talk to somebody that an expert in mental health. And so that's, I think there's a great opportunity there.

Dr. David Geier
Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more, there are no just COVID. You know, it's created all kinds of health issues and everything else. But the mental health side, in fact, you know, I and I actually may explain this here in a second. But one of the things I do probably three, four times a week is I just go through an RSS feed that I have, you know, you have different categories medicine, health, fitness, exercise, things like that. And one of the stories I saw, I don't remember the exact number. So obviously, don't quote me on this, but it was something like half of married couples say that their relationships have been strained during COVID. And I saved it because that's something that I'll probably talk about on one of my daily medical segments on my abc channel. But having said that, I mean, that's like gold for a therapist, I mean, and I mean, you could just say, you know, send the article as a pitcher, especially if it's a reporter or producer, you have a relationship with, I guarantee you, they'll have you on at some point to talk about that, or they'll send somebody to your Alright, I mean, and that takes very little work. So if you're thinking, hey, I want to start doing more media stuff, even before you start pitching, create some kind of system I use Evernote, but the tool doesn't really matter. But just any kind of interesting article, you see any kind of interest new study that you see, just keep it somewhere, clip it, save it as a PDF, put it as a file in Evernote, I had my my notebook in Evernote called media pitch content and what kind of interesting article I sent to it. And then if you know, and the good ones really, this sounds kind of corny, but you'd like People magazine is a fantastic source, trusting knowing what celebrities are going through. And then you send that to a reporter or producer and say, Hey, a rod and j row are going through these marital troubles. This is an act very uncommon, you know, 40% of married couples throughout society have this same issue. I'm just making that up. Yeah. And they like things that you can potentially tie to celebrities, but then you're making you're teaching and you're helping people about that same topic, more broadly in your community. Right,

Gordon Brewer
right. Yeah. I don't know. If you're familiar With this, you probably are. There's a, there's a, when you mentioned RSS feed, this reminded me of this. And I'm getting off on a little bit of a tangent, but there's a service out there called herro. Yeah, che aro help a reporter out. And I know in the past that has been, in my own practice, just being able to respond to those things. It's just a, it's an email that you get every day when you sign up for it. And I guess he could you can Google it. And we'll have links in the show summary here. But the people can you can just respond to different topics that reporters are actually looking for an expert in. And so, yeah,

Dr. David Geier
yeah, heroes great. I used to use it a lot. And I still get those emails and try to read them as much as I can. It's gotten so popular that it's great. But I mean, I've gotten national magazines, national newspapers, I mean, Fox News, I did it look for the ones that say anonymous, those are almost always the big, big media.

Gordon Brewer
So interesting. That's

Dr. David Geier
the trick with heart. There's two tricks with with horror that it's kind of worth noting worth noting, excuse me, you have to respond to those emails really quickly. There's so many people now that respond to those that you're probably not going to get used unless you, you know, basically respond to the query in the first 30 to 60 minutes. And they almost always now, it's Yeah, I used to be able to respond to one and say, Hey, I'd love to talk about this, I can help you with this. And we could talk about x, y, z, you know, it's sort of this sample, this pitch template that I had to respond to it. But now they pretty much always list the questions in the query, and you just respond with the answers. And you may not know for a month or two, if they might work for your name, that may be the only way you hear about it, right? Just know that going in. But yeah, you can get big sources. And you may say, Well, what is USA Today going to do to help me build my practice, but you can put that link on your website, and it builds a lot of credibility. So yeah, I'm a big fan of Haro, it's a little bit of work, but boy, it can have some big payoffs,

Gordon Brewer
right? Yeah, that yeah, that's, uh, but I think, you know, the really the thing is, is, is being able to take the take the time to, like you said, to reach out to, to producers, to editors to the media and, and just really be able to say, I'm here to help. When you have, it's really no different than it I know, and an upcoming another episode, we're talking with a, with a, with a doctor that has developed a tool for assessing mental health problems. But one of the things that I think is, from a marketing standpoint, is to be able to develop relationships. I mean, that's really all it is, is marketing is about developing relationships, but I know for, particularly for mental health providers, developing relationships with primary care providers in their community, because a lot of times, that is the front line for people that are having mental health struggles and that might need meds and all that sort of thing. So developing those relationships. And same thing with media, I would say, I would think Yeah,

Dr. David Geier
yeah, I mean, the relationships are the key, both from the, the media, like I say the value is, is getting them to ask you back over and over. I mean, if you look at my media page, you know, so many like the today show site, I've been on seven or eight times interviewed by the same reporter. And that's true with all these different magazines and newspapers. And then obviously now in TV and local radio, in my newspaper column, the values and the repetition, but you don't get that without showing how you can help that media source that reporter, that producer, then on the flip side of that, building that relationship with the viewer with the listener, that's the real value of the media over advertising. When you watch an ad, you know, somebody is trying to sell you something. And there's nothing inherently wrong about that. But people generally trust what they hear in the content of a new show much more than the ads around those segments. And so if you can get, you know, once a month or something, you know, where you're, you know, you're on a show, whether it's radio, TV, whatever it is offering just simple tips to help people they may not need that tip now. But then when circumstances in their lives, put them in that situation, they're going to remember who you are, you're going to be the first person they think of to say, Yeah, I like him. I like her. I like how she explains things. And I feel like she can really help me that's really the value, building those relationships with with people listening or watching or reading over a long period of time. That's where your patients are going to come from.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Right. That That is so true. And I think it's, you know, one of the, the, you know, just as I've learned through podcasting is is that it creates a relationship even though we might not talk directly. There's something about with the media where you feel a connection that wouldn't necessarily be there just through an ad or whatever. Yeah.

Dr. David Geier
Yeah, absolutely. podcasts are so conversational, that that can be really helpful. Even more that because TV, let's be fair, you're going to get two to four minutes tops, and you're not really going to be able to sell it all radio, you get a little bit longer, but you can't have three or four minute answers on radio. You can sell a little bit but but podcast, they can really get to know your story. And I'm a huge fan of telling your story and why things are important to you. And so no, I couldn't agree more about podcasts. I know, there's a lot of resistance to podcasts among at least in the physician world, where they're like, Yeah, but you know, what good does if I'm in South Carolina, what good did listeners in California do me, but you can't really look at it that way people use it to kind of get a sense of who you are, how you help people, you know, do they like how you share information and that kind of thing. And that's where I really feel like podcasts can be super helpful.

Gordon Brewer
Right? Right. And I know for for most of us that are in this kind of mental health field, we really got, you know, for the most part, just a caring heart. And so it's a great way to just kind of help out and, and share information. So Well, David, I want to be respectful of your time. And I know, we can, we can talk about this for hours. But tell folks a little bit more about how they can get in touch with you and maybe some of the services that you offer for people that might be interested.

Dr. David Geier
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I would do, just simple ways to get started, especially if you're already doing you know, some of you know interviews in the media, I do host a podcast, it just started a couple months ago called the the Media Pro show once a week, I just do a quick, you know, five to 15 minute, just one tip on something that you can implement right away. So I think the one that just posted Monday was on how to have good sky Skype or zoom interviews, because that's To be fair, how TV is going right now with COVID. And what the background should look like camera type specifics, audio specifics, that will make you look better than 99% of the experts interviewed remotely on TV. So simple things like that. I think that show like literally you can listen to it go into work or driving home. And it's very short, but really practical tips. And then you can certainly go to my website, media pros coaching, calm, I've got a free sort of, I think it's three or four pages 20 or 30 tips about just simple things to do. And remember before a TV or magazine, newspaper, interview, whatever it is things that not only make you do a great interview, help you do a great interview, but get them to ask you back over and over again, simple things, some of them very self explanatory, some things that I've learned the hard way over yours that can be really helpful that's free on my site. And there's a link there that you can go if you just want to talk to me and kind of see what I think your your opportunities are, I'd certainly love to talk to you for 30 or 45 minutes and just see, you know, what your message is, and maybe how the media, you know, I might be able to give you a few strategies to help you

Gordon Brewer
get started in the media. Awesome. Awesome. And we'll have, of course links in the show summary in the show notes for this, but tell folks, your website that.

Dr. David Geier
Yeah, the website is is the name of the program media pros coaching.com. If you want to find out about me specifically, I'm Dr. David Guyer, Dr. David Guyer, calm all across social media at Dr. David Guyer. But for the media stuff specifically, I have really gone to not just doing a lot of media to get my message out and to help people you know, that are trying to feel and perform their best. But I've really taken to heart that I I feel like experts in all kinds of fields, really, and especially in the like you say the mental health world can really help a large number of people through the media. And if I can at least get people interested in doing that and pointing them in the right direction. Please let me know how I can help because I think there's a real need for people that can explain all this information in ways that people can understand.

Gordon Brewer
Wow, great, great. Well, Dr. David guy, I'm so glad we had you on the podcasts and hopefully we can do this again.

Dr. David Geier
Yeah, I'd love to anytime and I really enjoyed it. You know, I I always enjoy talking to people that really care about helping people. And I think that's one of the great things about you and your profession is that you it's a tremendous service that we it's and it's an honor that we get to help people in our ways, and that people trust us to do that. So I'm always excited to work with people and talk to people in that are doing you know, great things like that. Awesome. Awesome.

Gordon Brewer
Well, again, check it check out the links in the in the show notes in the show summary and thanks again, David.

Dr. David Geier
I really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Gordon.