What’s the secret to turning passion into profit? In this episode, we dive into the inspiring journey of Chris Pistorius, a marketing expert who transitioned from AOL to founding a thriving agency that helps dental practices flourish. He shares the exhilarating leap into entrepreneurship, the power of niching down, and the importance of balancing profit with purpose. Packed with humorous anecdotes and practical insights, we also discuss innovative strategies for employee engagement, effective client communication, and the value of holistic consulting for heart-led businesses.
🎧If you’re looking to infuse your business with purpose, passion, and a touch of humor, this episode is for you!
Key Takeaways from this Episode
- The essence of a heart-led business
- Transitioning from telecom to AOL and beyond
- The leap of faith into entrepreneurship
- Niche marketing success in the dental industry
- Balancing profit with purpose
- Innovative employee engagement strategies
- The importance of client communication in a digital age
- Consulting beyond marketing: A holistic approach to business success
About the Guest
Chris Pistorius, CEO of KickStart Dental Marketing, is a digital marketing expert with over 20 years of experience at Google, AOL, and MapQuest. He helps small businesses thrive in their local markets through his agency, which is recognized by top platforms like UpCity and SEO For Growth. Chris is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing for Dentists. He shares his expertise as a popular podcast host and in-demand speaker, passionate about helping businesses grow and succeed online.
Additional Resources
- Website: www.kickstartdental.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/chrispistorius | www.linkedin.com/company/kicsktart-dental-marketing
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/kickstartdentalmarketing
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kickstartdental
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UClvXBKc6Wmcr-qL2v0JWmJg
- Book: The Ultimate Guide To Internet Marketing For Dentists
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Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.
Speaker (2): 0:01
Welcome to the Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let’s go. Let your heart guide your business journey.
Tom Jackobs: 0:42
Well, let’s braise for some digital delight folks. We’ve got on board the dynamic Chris Pistorius, the unrivaled master of online marketing, educator extraordinaire and podcast Paragon. Get ready for the daredevilry of running a Heart-Led business. As we chat, chuckle and charm your day away on today’s exciting episode of the Heart-Led business show. So buckle up for a joy ride through his journey, jam packed with jargon, busting genius. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Pistorius: 1:10
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Tom Jackobs: 1:12
I’m really excited to talk to you about your Heart-Led business and how you’re helping other Heart-Led businesses as well. But the first question is always what’s your definition of a Heart-Led business.
Chris Pistorius: 1:23
I really think it’s anything that you really have a passion about, anything that you can kind of sink your teeth into and think that you can make a difference or make people’s lives better or support a cause that you really believe in. I think any one of those things is really by definition, a Heart-Led type business.
Tom Jackobs: 1:40
Yeah. absolutely. I love that. That definition. Yeah for sure. So tell me about your Heart-Led business and what inspired you to start it.
Chris Pistorius: 1:47
Yeah. So I’ve really been in marketing and advertising. Almost my entire career. I started off in telecom and quickly figured out I probably wasn’t smart enough to do that. So I switched gears and I went to work for a, I’m going to date myself big time here went to work for AOL America online back in the, you used to get the little discs in the mail, you know, remember
Tom Jackobs: 2:06
Was that you?
Chris Pistorius: 2:06
Yeah. So. Yeah, no, that wasn’t me. No, I did. I was doing advertising stuff with them and that was back when, you know, the internet was still, you know, pretty infant. I still think it is but really infant then. And you know, it was banner ads and, you know, people, businesses knew they needed to probably advertise online, but they didn’t know how or how much money to spend anything like that. So that’s really where I started getting my advertising roots. Yeah. And I learned a lot. Unfortunately, though, I also learned a lot of what not to and you know, working for a big corporate company, as I’m sure a lot of your audience does or has in the past, I think sometimes you get lost a little bit in terms of trying to hit a stock price or a, you know, certain profit number and you do whatever you can or whatever you want. You’re willing to do, to hit those numbers and you lose your priorities of what you’re really there for. And that’s really the Heart-Led part of it is helping small businesses, helping them get to that next level and helping business owners have more time with their families, be independent wealth, independently wealthy, things like that. So that was kind of my history and how I got started in it.
Tom Jackobs: 3:08
Wow. Oh that’s great. How long were you in at AOL before you went out on your own?
Chris Pistorius: 3:12
Yeah, so let’s see, I’ve the agency will be almost 16 years old now. So, a couple of years before that, so about 18 years.
Tom Jackobs: 3:20
Okay. Wow. What was that transition like for you going from, you know, working for a large corporation and then starting your own thing?
Chris Pistorius: 3:27
Well, scary as hell actually, because at the time I had, I had two little kids married and leaving a pretty good job that I, And going to from that to pretty much zero, no insurance benefits, no money coming in, anything like that. So it was pretty scary from a personal side of the, the house, but, you know, I knew that. There was this fracture, you know, because before the internet, you know, small, medium sized businesses could really put an ad in the yellow pages. They could do a little bit of direct mail and that was kind of the marketing campaign and it worked well for them. It was simple and straightforward. And then enter the internet and there’s 500 places of small and medium sized business can advertise and it’s expensive in some spots. And how do you know where to advertise or how to advertise? So I saw this fracture happening and I was like, okay, there’s going to be a gap from the fracture. And I think that somebody like me can help fill it and untangle the web a little bit for small, medium sized businesses. And that’s what kind of led me on the path I’m on now.
Tom Jackobs: 4:23
Okay, cool. So, describe kind of who you’re, who you help right now.
Chris Pistorius: 4:27
Well, my agency now is focused on the niche of dental. So we do, we help dental dentists and orthodontists. We’ve decided to niche down about eight years ago or so. We were a generalist agency then where we took on all kinds of new clients. The disadvantage to that was that we’d have to learn a new industry every time we took on a new client. And sometimes that was a disservice to the client because we have to catch up a little bit. And it takes some time to do that. So we felt like we needed to really niche down and become an expert in something and we did it. So we went dentistry and that was several years ago and we haven’t really looked back.
Tom Jackobs: 5:01
That’s awesome. And so how is the Heart-Led piece of the business? How does that come into your business now?
Chris Pistorius: 5:08
Yeah. So we take on a lot of clients that are lost. You know, and this is especially true in dentistry, but I think a lot of people and other small, medium sized businesses are going to understand this. You know, typically you start a smaller, you start a business because you’re really good at something. Right. So let’s take dentistry for an example. They go to school to learn to be a dentist. The problem with that is that they don’t go to business school at the same time. There’s very little education done on how to run a business. They want to go be dentists, but guess what? They’re not experts in how to hire and fire and do marketing and do accounting and things like that. And so the Heart-Led part of this was, you know, allowing dentists to do what they really love, which is be a dentist. While we help fill their chairs, if you will, bring in new patients. And it allows them the opportunity if they’re successful to spend more time with their, more time with their family, not having to stress all the time about money, not having to worry about, you know, how they’re going to make payroll the next month. And so that really satisfies our team of seeing a struggling practice come to us and then in a couple years, they’re not only doing great, but they’re buying another practice and maybe another location or bringing in an associate dentist and expanding. So that’s really where the Heart-Led side of it, I think comes in.
Tom Jackobs: 6:18
Awesome. Yeah. And so have the early on, or even to this day, are there times where you struggle with wanting to bring on a client, but maybe they’re not a good fit and just maybe a, you know, a struggle internally on Heart Led versus Profit Led? Like, does that happen and how do you handle It?
Chris Pistorius: 6:36
It does. We’ve gotten pretty good over the years of really doing a good discovery call with potential new clients and understanding exactly what it is that they want, what they expect, what their goals are, things like that. And that helps us weed out some potentially problems for us. An example of somebody that’s maybe not a great fit is somebody that’s you know, I’m doing 20 new patients a month now, and I need to get to 50 by next month. So, yeah. That expectation is just isn’t going to work. It doesn’t work like that. There’s no magic pill. There’s no get rich quick type thing. It’s a big boy marketing campaign. I like to talk and it takes a little time to, to get those results. So we do a pretty good job of interviewing that side of it. You know, profit wise and you know, I don’t, We have to make a profit to continue going. And if we continue going, that means that we can continue to help more and more people and dental practices succeed and spend more time with their families and be independent, well, independently wealthy. So I’m not worried about the profit side of it. Cause I know as long as we are in business and we’re profitable, then we, that gives us the opportunity to help more and more.
Tom Jackobs: 7:36
Okay. Was there ever a time where you’re like. Yeah. You know, even before, you know, during your corporate time where it was just like, I just want to make the money and we’ll do whatever it takes to do that. And then the follow up question to that would be how did you make the shift then to know that you needed to be Heart-Led?
Chris Pistorius: 7:53
Yeah, I think early on, like the first year of business, I was like, I need to make money. So that’s why we took pretty much on any type of client we could find. It had a heartbeat and the check went through. You know, so we had lawyers and dentists and auto repair people, and I had people spending 200 a month and 2000 a month, and it was kind of a mess, but I knew I needed to ramp this up so I could, you know, function, right? And be a business. You know, I think that once we understood what we’re getting into and that we’re actually good at this that’s when we got serious about not just creating a job for myself, but that’s when I started creating a business where it’s not just me, I have a team of people that, you know, are smarter than me and can do a way better job than me in the things that I don’t like to do and I’m not good at. And that’s when it really clicked for me that, yeah we’re creating something special.
Tom Jackobs: 8:38
Okay, cool. So the Heart-Led, you know, I’ve interviewed, you know, tons of other business owners, a lot of them, you know, talk about the client and then the employee, like, where is the Heart-Led for you and your business? Kind of, where is that center around for you?
Chris Pistorius: 8:52
I think both clients and employees, we have we’re a boutique agency. We’re not a huge company and we’ll never will be. We’re more considered a boutique. We have 20 people that work here, so we’re big enough to, you know, get things done. But we’re also small enough to make sure that we get results for our clients and we’re achieving the goals that we have for our clients. So I think for me, the Heart-Led part of it isn’t just the clients that we just talked about. It’s also the people that we employ and making sure they’re happy and that they like to get up out of bed every morning and go to work versus the way it used to be for me where I get up out of bed and like,”Oh man, I got to do this again”. You know, that’s no fun for anybody and that level of stress and you know, responsibility, if you will, you know, carries through to family and, you know, it’s hard to turn off at night, stuff like that. So the Heart-Led part of it’s not just clients and making sure that they’re successful, but it’s employees and empowering them to make decisions and being able to advance their careers and I think equally both sides, client and employee is important.
Tom Jackobs: 9:47
Absolutely and you know, Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin brand, you know, he put his priorities as employees first, customers second, shareholders third and he takes that order because if you take care of the employees, they’re going to take care of the customers. And of course, that’s going to satisfy the shareholders at the end of the day.
Chris Pistorius: 10:03
I think it is easy to lose track of that, you know, because, you know, it’s just, you know, you start, if you start looking at spreadsheets too much, I think is when you start losing some of the, well, if we made a cut here, you know, that would boost our profit. And then, but then you’re doing a disservice obviously to the employee and you’re doing a disservice to the client because you’re not gonna be able to service them as well. So I say my opinion is stay away from the spreadsheets.
Tom Jackobs: 10:25
Oh, I love that. Yeah. So what are some ways that you take care of your people to make sure that they take care of the customers?
Chris Pistorius: 10:31
We only do, yeah. So we only are here Monday through Thursday and we do have a rotating skeleton crew in on Fridays just in case anything emergency wise comes up. But that’s a great way you know, a great benefit.
Tom Jackobs: 10:44
is it 20 hours day for four, four days or?
Chris Pistorius: 10:47
No, it’s yeah, it’s eight hours a day, but with the understanding that we’ve got to get our stuff done, you know, so if, you know, you’re at your eighth hour of the day, but you’re way behind in something that, yeah, you may need to work that evening for a couple hours or whatever, but so far it’s, we’ve been testing this now for a few months and so far it’s working really
Tom Jackobs: 11:05
well Oh, wow. That’s really great. What are some of the other ways? Obviously, four day work week is great.
Chris Pistorius: 11:10
Yeah. You know, we offer a good salary. We don’t underpay. I think that’s a big mistake business owners make. Because at the end of the day, people need to make their money and that’s just the way it is. And so we’re pretty competitive with that. We offer really good benefits, but we do some, you know, everybody says they do that anyway, but we offer some kind of cool stuff internally too. We use a system. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it called Bonusly. It’s an employee happiness system. And essentially we use Slack as our online communication tool, like instant messenger. And if somebody does something great, or they help somebody out with something, you can give them bonus points and these points accumulate, and then you can buy whatever you want, gift cards, Amazon cards, clothes technology, thing, electronics, things like that. That’s another creative way to really keep people engaged and happy. And it’s not just the money part of that and what you can get out of it. It’s the, I think what’s even more valuable is really the acknowledgement you get from your peers and the respect that you get and, you know, just seeing everybody in the company, seeing that you did a great job on this project or you did something above and beyond, I think goes a long way with them.
Tom Jackobs: 12:14
That’s really cool. And do you allow other employees to give the points to others? Or is it top down? Is it full 360?
Chris Pistorius: 12:20
No, they get a budget. Everybody in the company gets a budget every month of bonus points and they can give them out how they see fit.
Tom Jackobs: 12:27
Here’s a funny question. Are they required to give them all out?
Chris Pistorius: 12:30
No, they don’t have to use them at all if they don’t want to.
Tom Jackobs: 12:32
Interesting. That’d be kind of an interesting study to do to see like the happiness of people that are giving a lot of them away versus those that kind of don’t give them away.
Chris Pistorius: 12:40
There is one rule. You can’t give them all
Tom Jackobs: 12:42
Well, Of course.
Chris Pistorius: 12:43
I tried that. It doesn’t work.
Tom Jackobs: 12:44
I did a great job today. I get 20.
Chris Pistorius: 12:46
Yeah, exactly.
Tom Jackobs: 12:47
That’s really great. You know, I always like to hear different ways of people taking care of their employees. Like for us, we have a incentive trip based on performance. I do performance based pay as well. So it’s, you know, just kind of keeping everybody engaged in what the goal is of the company, but also making it fun and enjoyable for people to just kind of get up and do the work.
Chris Pistorius: 13:08
yup. That’s awesome.
Tom Jackobs: 13:09
Cool. Yeah. So, on the customer side. Like, how do you ensure that they are, they’re happy with what they’re what you’re doing and keeping them engaged and Heart-Led as well?
Chris Pistorius: 13:18
Yeah, I’ll be honest. That’s one of the biggest challenges that we have is how do we systemize an approach for all clients in terms of communicating to them what they’re getting, you know, what kind of results they’re getting, things like that. And it’s important because what we sell sometimes isn’t tangible. If you go back to my Yellowbook reference, or Yellowbook Yellowpages reference, right? 20 years ago when you bought a Yellowpages ad, you could go to page 695 and your ad was there every time, right? You could see it. It’s there. But when you do ads on Google, for instance, you may never see your own ad. It’s just, you know, depending on how it’s set up or your budget, things like that. And it’s not as tangible. So it’s almost like this industry is a constant, you know, how do we prove ourselves to make sure people understand? So how we’ve done it is that we have a client success team and they are required every week to send the client by email weekly wins. Like what we did this week, what went well, what didn’t go great and what we plan to do to change that. And every week we send those out every Friday. And it needs to be something unique, not canned, things like that. We also do a monthly zoom call where we go over one on one with the client results and things like that. But we have also created a really intuitive dashboard that people can log into, and it’s not just like a, you know, logging into like a Google analytics account where it’s just all like. What am I looking It’s very simplified. You know, this is how much money you spent. These are how many leads you got. You know, these are how many verified new patient appointments were scheduled on the first call and it breaks it down like cost per lead and cost per acquisition. It shows where all the leads came from. You know, was it Google? Was it Yahoo? Was it Facebook? And it just kind of puts it into real business metrics and they can log into that anytime, just kind of see what’s going on, what they’re doing, but the problem with all this is that it seems like each client almost wants to communicate in a different way. Some like, want to talk to you every day, which is really hard for a business our size and some, you sign up and you don’t talk to you for months and then there’s others that are scattered in between. So it’s really hard to scale that part of it. Because it’s hard for us to one off each way of communication. But this, the way that we have it set right now and how I just described is, it’s doing a really good job for most.
Tom Jackobs: 15:31
Yeah, that, that’s really cool that the weekly wins. That’s a really cool, I might borrow that as well sharing that. Yeah. Cool. Do you find any of your clients that in, in obviously health and wellness, practitioners, dentists included in that oftentimes are just very much givers and a lot of times just give, you know, don’t think about the profit side at all and a lot of times that’s how they get into trouble with their business. Do you find that you need to do some coaching around, you know, it’s okay to make a profit in your business and you know, and be Heart-Led at the same time?
Chris Pistorius: 16:01
Yeah, I think absolutely. Most, I won’t say all, but most dentists that we work with aren’t business people. You know, they got into this industry you know, certainly there’s some to make money, of course, but there’s also a lot that just wants to help people and a lot of dentists spend a lot of their early career doing trips, like to third world countries and helping for free, things like that. So you do have to help engage them of like, look, you know, it’s kind of the way that we think about our businesses, the only way you’re going to be able to continue helping people is if you make money because you still have to pay people. You still have to pay your rent and pay, buy equipment. You need to be able to make money to pay for those things. So we do have to do a lot of, we do a lot of like consulting on profit loss and expenses and where should your overhead be and things like that goes beyond really the scope of what typical marketing agencies do. But yes, there is a lot of that in healthcare because a lot of these folks are Heart-Led and they want to help but they kind of got to be told that, you know, the only way you can continue doing that is to make a profit.
Tom Jackobs: 16:59
and that, I mean, that’s really heartlet of you to be able to offer that coaching and the advice to really help them and to help people. And ultimately that helps your business as well down the road. That’s the advice that, that you give?
Chris Pistorius: 17:12
they are always nice and they listen, but you can almost kind of tell that, you know, in one ear out the other, you know, and I don’t have any problem with that. It’s just, you know, it’s in our best interest too, because the more successful they are, the more successful they’ll be our client for years versus, you know, months. And that, so it does help us too. But you know, we’re actually getting ready to launch a, there’s this platform out there called School, S K O L and it’s a face, but you’ve heard of it. Yeah. It’s like a Facebook type thing, but it’s different but anyway, we’re getting ready to launch a channel there. That’s going to be a subscription based where we do a lot of like, you Heart-Led type conversations on business and running a dental practice. And, you know, where should your overhead be? Where should your profit be? And dentists can go in there and just learn tons of stuff at any time they want to. It’ll be included in our marketing programs as well, but we’ll also do a subscription base just for people who are, you know, want to learn more about that. And we’ll do some free stuff on there as well. I think that will help, you know, maybe gain some momentum
Tom Jackobs: 18:09
Yeah. I think that’s really, that’s very smart of you to do. And I, a good friend of mine has a friend of mine has a marketing agency as well, specifically for fitness and he does a lot of like masterminds does sales coaching as well, and just all these other things other than marketing, which is the core business, but in a way to elevate the industry and elevate the clients so that they’re super successful helping more people and that’s, I mean, about a definition of Heart-Led Business. You know, you’re helping them elevate their business so that they can help more people and stay in business.
Chris Pistorius: 18:41
Absolutely. And there’s a lot of like front desk type stuff. like we do some front desk training as well because if you think about it, when you do marketing, who’s your first line of, you know, defense? It’s the front desk people. And if they’re not adequately trained and they don’t really, you know, know what to do with new calls, then they’re in trouble too. So we’re going to do a lot of that, you know, front desk training for practices as well.
Tom Jackobs: 19:02
Were you the one that told me about the call that you listened to from the front desk that front desk person or the caller was, oh yeah, how do I get to your place? And she responded, you can Google it. Was it?
Chris Pistorius: 19:13
Oh no, I don’t think that was me. But that doesn’t surprise me at we listen to every call that comes in to our clients and some are just nightmares. It’s not good. That’s crazy. And the poor dentist, I mean, the dentist is back there doing their work. They don’t have time to listen to every call and, you know, so they, you know, they don’t really know. So I think the more kind of services like that you can provide the better.
Tom Jackobs: 19:32
absolutely.
Chris Pistorius: 19:33
You can Google it. That’s funny.
Tom Jackobs: 19:35
Okay. Well, I dialed your number, so yeah. Common sense is not a common trait for me. Well, Chris, how can people learn more about your agency and what you do? And, you know, ultimately that school program sounds amazing as well.
Chris Pistorius: 19:48
Yeah, when I do these podcasts, I always tell people like, you know, yeah, I’m in dental and you know, there’s probably a lot of audience members that aren’t dentists but I’m willing to help any small, medium sized business in terms of just giving you free advice. Am I going to charge you anything? Just hit me up and I’ll be more than happy to do a strategy session with you and just answer any questions you have but the best way to do that is just go to my website. It’s kickstartdental. com and right on the home page there’s a schedule a strategy session button there. They’re all done by me so feel free to schedule a session with me and again I won’t charge you any amount of money to give you some free advice.
Tom Jackobs: 20:22
Oh, that’s a super generous of you. That’s awesome. Helping everybody else being Heart-Led and love it.
Chris Pistorius: 20:26
that’s right.
Tom Jackobs: 20:27
So Chris, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us, your years of experience in being a Heart-Led business. I certainly appreciate it. And I know our listeners appreciate that as well. So thank you so much.
Chris Pistorius: 20:37
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Tom Jackobs: 20:39
No worries. And thank you listeners for tuning in for today’s episode. I certainly appreciate it. And I know Chris appreciates you listening in as well. Make sure you’re checking out everything that Chris is doing down in the show notes. We’re going to link his website and all the social media that he has going on as well. So make sure you’re checking it out and take him up on that offer. That’s, it’s always good to connect with other people and see what you’re doing and how you could improve as well. And then if you could do me a solid favor and share the show with a friend or a colleague who you feel the information could inspire to help them as well and it really helps us build the audience as well. So thank you for that. And until next time, lead with your heart.
Speaker: 21:17
You’ve been listening to the Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.
