Is Your Business Visible Online? Learn To Stand Out with Brad Friedman, President of the Friedman Group

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare-exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:29] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket. So excited that you tuned in again. Today, I have the privilege of hosting the amazing Brad Friedman. He is the president of the Friedman Group, and he is the wizard of digital marketing strategy and coaching. I had the privilege to meet Brad a few weeks ago, and I was a guest on his podcast, had a chance to connect with him, and I said,

[00:00:58] wow, man, you know a lot of cool stuff. I want to share what you know with our audience. So, Brad, I'm so glad you're up for it, and thanks for being with us. Yeah, thank you. It's an honor to be talking to you today. Thanks, Brad. Listen, man, so you are up to some good things over there at the Friedman Group. Tell us about your business. Tell us what you do. How is it different, and why does it matter?

[00:01:20] So I work with businesses that are in regulated industries, which includes healthcare, legal, financial, to help them level up their digital marketing, basically.

[00:01:34] Why we're different is mostly because of me. I'm a little different than who you're going to supply to most marketing agencies because I am a recovering attorney turned digital marketer. I'm a best-selling author, and I'm also a person who owns and runs a business.

[00:01:56] So I have all of that kind of background to bring with me to the table with other business owners to help them with their marketing. I think what we do matters because it's getting harder and harder to be seen in the world that we live in. And we're inundated with ads and all the content everyone else is pushing out there.

[00:02:20] And so what we do is to help you be seen and generate revenue online. I love it, Brad. I did not know you were an attorney before. Yes, I practiced for almost 16 years. Oh, my God. So what kind of law did you practice? Mainly I did family law, but I did some corporate law and a little real estate law and a few other little things.

[00:02:45] That's interesting, man. And then what made you shift to digital marketing from law? I have this character flaw that when I'm not having fun in my work, I move along. I just have this philosophy that we spend so much time working, we should enjoy it. And my dad is an attorney. My grandfather was an attorney.

[00:03:12] And I was an attorney for 16 years. And then I wasn't having fun anymore. The family law work was very stressful. I had three very bad years of custody cases, and I just wasn't having fun anymore. So I actually left the practice of law and went and ran a charitable foundation for several years.

[00:03:38] And then I have children who had me interested in social media because we had this rule that you can be on whatever social platform you want to be on, but I'm going to be your first friend. And I want you to think every time you post something that there's a chance that I might see it.

[00:04:01] So aside from scaring them a little bit, it required me to learn almost every social network that was out there because they were everywhere. And I realized that this was a way for people to be making money. It wasn't just posting fun stuff and showing people what you had for lunch.

[00:04:22] And I looked around and I saw that all the people that I was working with, the lawyers and the CPAs and doctors who were my donors at the foundation, weren't taking advantage of the Internet because of the regulations, because of HIPAA or because of the Code of Professional Responsibility. And so I thought I could leverage my legal background and help these people take advantage of the Internet without losing their license.

[00:04:51] Even if that was just creating a LinkedIn profile that met the standards, like if you were in the financial business, your LinkedIn profile is considered a static ad, according to the SEC and FINRA. So at that time, my pitch to these people was, you know, your 20-year-old next-door neighbor, you know, can't help you with this because they haven't read the regulations.

[00:05:19] And I thought that that was a way that I could really be helpful. So I kind of made that transition. It helped a lot that my daughter had just taken a job in San Francisco with a company that was a startup that was building a social media management tool. And as she progressed through her career, she was able to help me in a lot of things. And we were able to work together on stuff. Man, that is so cool.

[00:05:48] What a great story, Brad. And connecting the dots here makes sense why you like the highly regulated industries. And it's super useful to have somebody with your background with that. What's one thing that most people don't know about the problem you solve?

[00:06:05] I think the thing that people don't know is that they actually can be active on social media without risking losing their license if they just do a few things, you know, follow the rules. Yeah. There's a lot of people, and I talk to a lot of people who just say, oh, too much brain damage. I don't want to have a LinkedIn profile.

[00:06:31] I don't want to be prospecting for clients in that way because I don't want the risk. And there is risk, but it's not that hard to avoid the risk. I love that. And so let's talk about health care, right? Because we do health care, 100% of it. Inside of the health care ecosystem, who ends up being your customers? Yeah. So over the years, I have worked with individual doctors and dentists, their practices.

[00:07:01] And I also, for a few years, worked with a health care company that operated a number of different health care facilities. And some of the doctors that I worked with have now been bought up by that health care company. Yeah. That seems to be happening a lot these days that the health care companies are taking over the doctor's offices, handling the back end for them,

[00:07:27] and making it the pitch that now you can just focus on coctisine medicine and we'll take care of everything else and 90% of your income or whatever the number is. Yeah. So a lot of M&A in the space for sure. And we've seen a lot of changes. A lot of those decisions go up to the top of a large integrated delivery network. And so what's your favorite segment to work with? That's a really good question.

[00:07:54] I mean, I really enjoy just working with the little individual practices just to see what kind of things we could do to, even if it was just make the patient experience a little more pleasant. I mean, it's a tough thing with HIPAA just because of the privacy requirements and all of that. But there are some things that I was able to do with them that made it a little more fun. That's good. No, I love that.

[00:08:23] Yeah, it's nice to be able to make that impact and see it directly with patients. Look, Brad, we love to learn from successful people. And so we'd love to hear from you. What's a favorite business resource or business hack that you'd recommend to our listeners and why? So I think I have two things I could share with you that are my favorites. Yeah. So the first one would be a tool called Agorapulse,

[00:08:49] which is a social media management tool that allows me to schedule social media posts and, more importantly for me, track the results. Yeah. So I get a lot of data from it. It's the best tool I've found from that data perspective. A lot of places that you schedule. Agorapulse lets you really find out your return on investment. So I use that every day, pretty much.

[00:09:18] And then the other tool I use every day, the other hack, I would say, is a tool called Magi, which is basically an AI aggregator tool that allows me to use all of the different AI models, including image generators, from one place. So I log into Magi and I can use ChatGPT. I can use Cloud.

[00:09:41] I can use any of those tools from one place for one very low monthly charge. So those are my two hacks. Those sound really interesting. We'll definitely have to look at it. And on the Agorapulse tool, Brad, so when you do posts, you get analytics on LinkedIn or Meta or Facebook or Instagram, whatever, on the back end. How does the analytics from Agorapulse differ? Well, it doesn't differ much.

[00:10:09] It actually pulls that data from those places and puts it into their very readable format with charts and all kinds of graphs and pulls out key things for you, shows you your likes, shares, and comments. You get to put in there a little number of what you think the value is. It calculates your ROI. But it pulls that data from those places. That's great. Yeah, because, look, I mean, you go into these platforms.

[00:10:38] It's kind of not very well organized. So it sounds like they've really streamlined the process for the users. They have. And for me, I use this for clients, too. And then at the end of the month, it creates like a slideshow that I turn into a PDF. And it has got my logo on it. That's nice. Agorapulse, maybe, too.

[00:10:59] And I can send it off to the client or I can meet with them and go through it and show them how we did every during the month and what worked, what didn't work, what I want to tweak, or what we should do going forward. I love that. That's so cool. Well, we'll definitely have to check that out. Folks, are you getting the ROI you want out of your social media? Well, if you're not, or maybe you don't know, Agorapulse. Brad, thanks for that recommendation. And then this Magi one also seems fascinating. Yeah, it's great.

[00:11:29] So you're like leaving us with some homework here. And I love it. I love it. Look, there's a lot of health care leaders listening to us right now. If they want to learn how to better their social media and get to know you better, what's the best place our listeners can get in touch with you?

[00:11:47] So they could go to the website, FriedmanSocialMedia.com, or the best way to really get in touch with me is my email, Brad at FriedmanSocialMedia.com. Amazing. I'm also on LinkedIn and all the other social networks, but those would be the two best ways to get in touch with me. I love it, Brad. And folks, you know where to go. Check out the show notes. You'll see Brad's information that he shared with us, his email.

[00:12:15] We'll put his LinkedIn profile in there, as well as a link to his website. He's the man with the plan on social media. So check him out. And he used to be an attorney. So definitely when it gets time to go into the weeds on regulation, I think he's your man. So check him out. Brad, such a pleasure to have you with us. This was a lot of fun. It was fun. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[00:12:38] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth.

[00:13:05] Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.