How do you transition a successful aesthetic business model to the high-growth, high-value world of Longevity Medicine? In this episode of Grow Smarter, host Andrew Hong speaks with Marcus Repp, who successfully scaled his first clinic into an $8 million revenue generator in three years.
Marcus shares the exact blueprint for this strategic shift, breaking down the consumer trends, the financial pressures forcing the pivot, and the crucial operational and marketing moves required to safely integrate services like GLP-1s and hormone optimization into your practice.
1. The Pivot: Why Traditional Medspas Must Evolve
Marcus argues that the pivot to Longevity Medicine is no longer optional; it's being driven by massive financial and patient pressures:
- Reimbursement Decline: The primary driver is the decline in insurance reimbursement and the rising staff overhead needed to "chase pennies". This forces traditional providers to abandon the insurance treadmill.
- Patient Demand: Patient demand for cash-pay services—specifically peptides, GLP-1s, and preventative diagnostics—is outpacing traditional services. If a clinic can't provide it, the patient will leave.
2. Marketing the Shift: Bridging the Aesthetic "Want" to the Longevity "Need"
The key to a successful pivot is changing your messaging from "want" (aesthetics) to "need" (healthspan).
- The Busted House Analogy: Position longevity as the foundation. If the foundation is busted (hormone imbalance, pipe issues), the beautiful front lawn (Botox) won't save the house.
- The Cross-Sell "Permission Slip": Use in-clinic symptom intake forms to give the practitioner a neutral "permission slip" to discuss deeper health issues. This avoids an awkward sales pitch and opens the door for a cross-sell.
- Education, Not Selling: Use email newsletters and in-clinic educational loops to simplify complex terms (BHRT) into relatable symptoms: "Do you deal with brain fog, energy issues in the middle of the day?". Education is the tool that sells ethically.
3. The Scaling Blueprint: Packaging and Technology
Marcus's rapid $8M growth was built on systems that simplify complex offerings, making them repeatable and scalable.
- 4 Core Buckets: Simplify your offerings into foundational, scalable programs. Marcus's model used medical weight management, hormone optimization, libido optimization, and medical aesthetics.
- Symptom Messaging Wins: When packaging services, dial in on symptom messaging instead of technical medical terms (e.g., thyroid deficiency) to avoid overwhelming patients.
- The Word-of-Mouth Engine: Marcus achieved a peak of 300 new patients a month with virtually no marketing spend. This organic growth was powered by successful longevity patients who became "walking billboards" with their friends, often resulting in "two-for-one" sales (e.g., a wife getting optimized, which then motivates her spouse).
4. The First Mover Strategy
Strategic Investment: An effective long-term strategy involves making investments in Longevity Medicine keywords today, even if the current search volume is lower than traditional terms. This is a deliberate sacrifice of short-term traffic to "capture the domain authority" and market share in the next wave of Medspas.
And a surprising truth has emerged: most practice websites, even the ones that look professionally designed, are silently sabotaging their own growth.
They’re not just underperforming; they are actively sending ideal, high-value patients directly to the competition. This isn't a rare problem, it seems to be the norm. And it usually comes down to the same four critical, yet easily fixable, mistakes.
Want to connect with Marcus Repp and Elysium Longevity?
- Website: Elysium Longevity.com
- Instagram: @ElysiumLongevity
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Read the Full Transcript
Welcome everyone to the Grow Smarter Show brought to you by Tobii Marketing Media. As a founder, you know the pressure of making every marketing dollar count. My mission at Tobii Agency is to help healthcare and wellness entrepreneurs have more confidence in their marketing media investments. So welcome back to the show. The conversations today around aging has fundamentally changed. It's no longer about simply looking younger. It's about extending the time we spend healthy, our health span alongside our lifespan.
This movement is creating massive opportunities in the cash pay healthcare market. The global anti-aging and longevity market, which sits at the core of today's discussion, is projected to grow from $77.3 billion in 2024 to over $537 billion in 2034. North America leaves this change valued at just $10 billion in 2024. So today we are joined by Marcus Rep, the founder of Elysium Longevity, an incredible entrepreneur and systems expert. He is an industry leader who not only recognized a significant trend, but also built an $8 million practice by leveraging it. Marcus built his first cash pay clinic from a two room startup into an eight room, 4,000 square foot facility, generating over 8 million in revenue in three years. He's a veteran in the space, having spent over 13 years partnering with more than a thousand clinics nationwide on practice growth, clinical training, and even FDA clearances. Now, through Elysium Longevity, he's empowering other healthcare providers to launch and scale their thriving cash-pay clinics with the exact playbook that he used. We're honored to have him here on the show today and to discuss the business case for Longevity Medicine.
Speaker 1 (01:59.054)
So Marcus, welcome to the show. Great to have you here,
Thank you, happy to be here.
So we met at a conference and I remember your story kind of sticking out to me because at the time you were scaling your practice. But the story that stuck out the most to me was that you kind of got your feet wet in the kind of healthcare, medical device sales industry by buying an Airstream and towing that sucker around Texas.
selling medical devices. So you've come a long way, obviously, right? So tell me a little bit about your journey and kind of getting started in this world to kind of where you are today.
Yeah, so I've always been interested in healthcare. I worked in healthcare since college, originally had planned to go to medical school and the landscape in healthcare as a physician was changing a lot of that time. And fortunately I had exposure to a lot of healthcare providers working in the ER setting in college. And they really encouraged me to think deeply about becoming a healthcare provider. And so I pivoted and shifted to more clinical lab sciences.
Speaker 2 (03:12.91)
worked in a hospital lab, got to a point where I was managing working with vendors for our supplies and equipment. And one of my vendors just kind of put the bug in my ear of, you know, considering doing that line of work. And so I started putting my resume out there. My gosh, this was probably 23 years, 13 years ago. And I got a phone call from a company called Allergan one day when I was driving home from work and never heard of them.
And I was like, well, why not? This is kind of in the direction I want to go. And eight interviews later, I got offered a job to work in their injectables division, which they were launching a new department in Austin. So I started there, which was really kind of a golden start in the aesthetic industry. So I've done everything from injectables to devices, to medical skincare, to body contouring over those 13 years, and really just learned that side of the industry and the ins and outs of it. And that was.
kind of at the peak of what I call the meds ball wave.
So tell me about you you you obviously had gotten involved in starting your own practice and you had some partners along the way but you know, there's what I really want to talk about today is actually sort of the and we'll have another episode where we'll talk more about tactics and things like that But I really wanted to focus more on kind of this bigger picture around Longevity medicine right and you know, I would say maybe five or six years ago when I heard the term
Longevity medicine and a lot of these terms kind of get crossed over and maybe used improperly anti-aging medicine regenerative medicine, right? The first thought that came to me was always stem cells and people going overseas to get them done and whatnot But I think the reality of it is this idea of longevity kind of like I spoke about in the beginning Because of content, know YouTube podcasts and
Speaker 1 (05:14.882)
just people being more curious about their health. This to me has been a very interesting sort of space. so, you know, when you talk about this longevity is kind of surging the longevity economy, right? What do you sort of see as kind of the big, the two or three big consumer trends that are kind of driving the shift of consumer interest in longevity?
Yeah, what's very fascinating about this is exactly what you said, that shift in interest. And I think what we're starting to see is a very empowered and educated consumer in this space. know, these giant databases of information like PubMed are, I think, no longer being
Utilized by just healthcare providers, you know, we see it in podcasts now where the patients are watching or they are consumer that are that is hosting a podcast like this the tick tock content, you know, rob Huberman and his lab notes that he provides to people for their subscription ronda patrick's another example of somebody that is really sharing the education. So a lot of these patients when they come to us, they're already self diagnosed.
quote unquote, and looking for the solutions proactively. that's a huge thing that I think has shifted significantly that we're not the basis of their foundational knowledge anymore. We're just validating their curiosity now and positioning our clinics as the trusted interpreter of that science to validate what outcome they're trying to improve, which is the quality of their life. So I would say that's the first one.
And that ties right into the next part of it is that the shift that has occurred from sick care to preventative care. know, people don't want to wait anymore to get treatment for something whenever they're having the impacts or the symptoms from it. People are looking for better energy, you mental clarity, that cognition and their performance and just day to day aspects of their life. And so, you know, I think a big thing that
Speaker 2 (07:27.766)
that we as clinic owners have the opportunity on is to really highlight those outcomes that people can get from these types of preventative care, which is that vitality, that resilience, and just boost in their productivity in day-to-day life by being preventative versus just treating symptoms once they arise. And those two points kind of lead into the third.
point that I would make in this and is that this cash pay concept has really become normalized. The consumers that are paying for their aesthetic treatments or they maybe have a Peloton pay the subscription or they have a whoop, like these are people that are already ready to invest in their health because they're doing it in other areas. So they're, they're the ones that we're seeing very easy conversion when it comes to peptides, GLPs and some of these advanced.
lab diagnostic testing that people are wanting to do. So I think the message has shifted now that, you know, patients, the consumer is really ready to focus on investing in their quality of life versus saving money and planning for medical bills later in life when things go wrong.
You know, like our generation, we, I think we're one of the first generations maybe to, I wouldn't say question kind of the traditional medical establishment, but I think we have options that are available to us that use different modalities to not only address the symptoms that are related to a lot of these things, right? Like health issues, but address like functional kind of like root causes of them, right?
And you know, got your feet wet obviously in med spas and we've seen the explosion of med spas or that's sort of, and they've been adding more services to themselves, right? And then you sort of saw this rise of like integrative medicine, functional medicine, right? Which kind of crossed over a little bit into DPC, which kind of is like the traditional kind of physician kind of care, right? But what I think the point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of these, like let's call them,
Speaker 1 (09:36.302)
like non-traditional healthcare organizations that aren't your traditional physician, they're NPs or they partnered with a provider, an entrepreneur has partnered with a provider to start providing other types of services that traditionally may not be linked to each other, but as we go more into this integrative care market, it makes more sense to have these kinds of services all under one roof. And I remember when we first met,
you kind of use the statement of like, want to help you look good, or help you look good and feel good from the inside and out, right? And I think that it's like, it's not like you only go there, get your Botox and your fillers and all that kind of stuff done, but you may also be getting hormone replacement therapy, or you might be getting some of those services done under the same roof, maybe even with the same provider, right? Where do you, as this like functional medicine model and integrated medicine model and meds balls has sort of evolved,
What do you see in that market right now with all the clinics that you work with and all the experience that you had and even running your own spot? What do you see in the trend now with integrative medicine and functional medicine? And what does that potentially mean if you're looking to get into longevity medicine or add that as a service to your clinic?
think we're at a very unique crossroads right now with healthcare in our country and people recognizing how much better it can be. You know, I can say the system's broken, but I think people really are just looking for something better. And there's still such a huge gap in education and awareness on really what longevity medicine is, what functional medicine is.
But the root of what people are looking for is prevention and improvement now, earlier in life. And so the messaging behind it, I think, is a huge opportunity. And I foresee the next decade of being the next wave of quote unquote med spas. You know, when you and I met and we were doing some work for my business, we really struggled with how do we define our clinic? I consider my clinic
Speaker 2 (11:51.544)
truly a longevity clinic, but consumers don't quite understand what that means. you know, even functional medicine, concierge healthcare, that doesn't explain to kind of the broader population of what it is. It's actually, in my opinion, kind of exclusionary just based on the verbiage of people thinking it's not attainable. So I think there's a huge area of opportunity to really figure out how to position and market and brand this type of healthcare.
because one of our, part of our core values is accessibility for patients in this because it's so impactful. So I think it's, if somebody's already practicing in this or they're trying to integrate it or maybe marry the meds for concept with longevity medicine, there's a lot of opportunity. That's kind of the fun part being in the early stages is it's just trial and error. figure it out.
But I think the people now that are ready to be these early adopters and kind of push that forward can have a very unique advantage of kind of, I guess I would compare it to like First to Market if that makes sense.
No, it's interesting that you bring it up. I'll give you a little case study. So one of my clients, she's traditionally was like more integrative medicine, functional medicine, right? And we were reviewing her website right now. so initially when we built the website, there's a lot more, like when you talk about search engine optimization, getting found on Google, there's a lot more people looking for functional medicine and the
sort of related topics of functional medicine as opposed to longevity medicine, stem cell therapy, know, peptides that might be specific to regenerative medicine and whatnot, right? And so we actually like drafted the first version of the homepage and she kind of looked at it was like, you know what, I think this is a miss. And I was like, okay, well, what did we miss? She was like, I kind of want to message us more towards longevity medicine, know, anti-aging, regenerative medicine.
Speaker 1 (13:59.628)
medical aesthetics that are kind of related to that. And, you know, we did the research and I went back and I told her like we do with all of our clients, like, hey, there's certainly search volume out there for this, but it's like a fraction of the search volume that you're getting for the other terms. So we can certainly build the keywords and the content all around this, but just know that our volume is probably going to drop, right? Our traffic is going to drop. And as a marketing agency, you kind of have to warn your client about that if you're going to do something like that, right?
credit to her, she was just like, great, you know, I want to get and I think, I there's going to be more interest in this and I want to be seen as kind of like the first mover and I want to grab kind of the domain authority, like around this. So I'm good with it. You know, she's built an awesome practice over the last three years, very similar to how, you you scaled your practice, Marcus. But I just thought that was very, most of the practice owners I talked to, even the ones who've achieved like pretty decent earnings over the years,
They're not willing to take that sort of like longer term thing, you know, give up something today to get something that's going to be bigger tomorrow. So I think, you know, to, you know, the consulting that you do in your practice and whatnot, like, you know, I think that's a really important point is that, hey, look, you have an opportunity now to get ahead, right, and to capture market share here. I don't think this is going away either. It's obviously a trend.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let's talk a little bit about Alessia, right? And you're sort of the company that you've built. So your messaging is really focused on this idea of healthspan and lifespan, right? Not just aesthetics, right? And certainly aesthetics are a piece of having more of this integrative model, right? But how do you think providers should communicate the value of healthspan, right? And you know,
Speaker 1 (15:50.956)
If there's a customer who might be buying more of the traditional kind of aesthetic services, or even the traditional kind of functional medicine services, how do you sort of pivot the messaging to them, or how would you recommend you expose them to that kind of what you were talking about before?
Yeah, I think it's just you reframing, you know, what the traditional aesthetic client comes in looking for into kind of more the context of vitality. You know, this isn't just about looking younger. It's about the energy, the metabolism, the hormone balances that naturally empower you to look and feel your best. an easy analogy that just came to mind is, you know, you can have a house with a beautiful front lawn and landscaping.
But if your foundation's busted, you have pipe issues and all of that. The house just looks great on the outside, but it could be falling apart on the inside. And I think, you know, that's a simple analogy to get people to understand kind of the difference. But again, I think it comes back to vitality because we're at a time now where
we're exposed to more things than we ever have been to environmentally, know, the things we eat, the cookware we use, et cetera. And some of it's just reframing that messaging, but really getting people to understand how to take charge of their health as a whole. also think, you know, one of the big challenges with this, if it's a traditional aesthetic provider or aesthetic patient scenario, is people are used to
and most aesthetic treatments walking out with their outcome delivered. Right, sure. And when we're getting into GOP weight loss, hormone therapy, peptides, these things are six to 12 months plus of a commitment to really get the long-term impact. And so I think that's a big thing that we have to tie the connection with is
Speaker 2 (17:55.372)
you know, these things are going to be improvements over time. You'll start sleeping better. You'll think clearer, more energy for your family and work. And those are wins that you'll see within a few weeks of starting these things. And I think if you can connect to those things, it turns you into, know, injectables is, that's a want, not a need. Longevity medicine is a need. And, you know, I was thinking about
of the pandemic this morning. And during this shutdown, we saw there were some med spas that were able to stay open as a medical necessity because of other services they did. People need those things. I you're really getting the aesthetic consumer to understand the value of that and then bridging the familiar with the new. know, position these health span services, you know, as the foundation behind the aesthetic treatments.
Are there any aesthetic treatments that like may lend themselves well to, you know, a provider or a practice recommending some types of longevity or, you know, treatments? You know, if comes in for Botox, is there a pivot that you can make them towards, you know, something else related to another, different modality?
I think one of the biggest challenges with that is I don't think people are associating yet. My Botox clinic can help bring my libido back or hormones or get rid of the brain fog I'm dealing with because I'm approaching menopause.
Do think they don't even talk about these health issues with their injector, like their botox lady or whatever?
Speaker 2 (19:40.024)
Some do, you know, it depends on the injector, right? If the injector's currently going through the same things, that's an easy way to be relatable and talk about it and share their experience of, you know, what treatments they sought. One of my tricks that worked really well for us was we just had a general symptom intake questionnaire that all new patients and returning patients would fill out, and it was optional, but it...
broke it down into layman's terms, know, check if you experience any of the following, for example, urinary incontinence, we have an amazing device from BTL that we use to improve that. But instead of do you deal with urinary incontinence? Not every consumer knows what that means or even thinks maybe they would be a candidate. They probably think, I have to be in diapers to even benefit from that. Right. So getting up to pee frequently at night, dribbling a little bit when you laugh and sneeze.
making more understandable things, you know, that they can check and give you the insight into bringing up, you know, something that could be relevant for them. We did this a lot in the aesthetic med spa industry space and they called it like the permission slip to talk about other things. Yeah. You know, maybe someone's coming in for forehead lines, but they need skin tightening on their neck and they just don't want to bring it up, but they checked crepey skin on the neck. The practitioner, you know, can use that as, I saw you mentioned you
you know, we're concerned about this. Did you know? I always liked the, you know we have these things? So that's obviously the in-clinic interaction component. But just having proper marketing in the clinic, one of the things we did good at was with all of our TVs in every room, we had educational loops running that, again, broke it down. If you put something on a TV in your clinic that says we do bio-identical hormone replacement therapy or hormone pellets.
Not everyone really understands what that means. No, especially if you're looking for it. Yeah, you've really got to break it down. know, do you deal with brain fog, energy issues in the middle of the day? You might be a candidate for hormone therapy. You know, talk to one of us.
Speaker 1 (21:51.168)
No, that's so important. You mentioned the in-clinic kind of active column marketing activations, whatever, right? Something that I find that just blows my mind, frankly, when I meet practices that have been around for a few years, they've been successful. They might've had a couple thousand, few thousand patients through them. They don't use their email lists, right? They only send an email list of, you know, we...
re-up on your GLP ones, it's always like they're trying to sell them something to the email list and that gets annoying really quick, right? But if you use your email list and you set up like, you know, a simple monthly newsletter and everyone tells me like, email's dead, I never read email, like who, like, is email even a marketing channel? It's still the highest ROI marketing channel period in the story. But the reality of it is, is that like, when someone gives you that email address, they've kind of
raise their hand to tell you like, hey, I want to hear from you, you know? And so when they want to hear from you, they want information that's funny or useful or helpful. They don't always want to be sold to, right? And I think the, see when practices only lean on their list, when they have something new they want to sell or something that's launched or a promo or an IV drip special or whatever, like, that lessens the equity of that.
right? And so what I recommend is like every month you should send in a newsletter out that talks about a service in a way that you're educating them. Kind of like your point, you're writing something about BHRT for someone who has might be going into get fillers or whatever, you know, on a monthly basis, but you want to write that piece of content for that current customer who knows who you are but doesn't know anything about any of your other services.
And so that newsletter might be, the November newsletter might be all about BHRT. Here's what it could do for weight. Here's what it could do for libido. Here's what it could do for skin or even hair loss, right? Like there's all kinds of things that it can treat. And I think the challenge is educating the consumer first and then starting that conversation with them through education. you don't, like kind of like what you mentioned, Marcus, like you don't wanna...
Speaker 1 (24:12.726)
be directly selling to people as you're trying to help them with their health, it feels pretty greasy, right? So you need to find other ways to kind of like soft market them like some of these services.
Yeah. And I think one of the biggest challenges I always saw with healthcare providers is, of all levels, from MD to, you know, even estheticians, is they went to school, they were educated, they were trained to save lives. Right. And a lot of these providers that are now in this space come from pretty traditional healthcare hospital, ICU, ER backgrounds. it's kind of a block of selling.
but I think if you educate properly, the education does the selling for you. And for example, menopause, all that the message has to be is, hey, you're not alone. This is completely normal, you know, because there's a lot of these women that go in and get injectable treatments that are probably being put on an SSRI by their OB-GYN and telling them that's all in their head, why they're feeling the way that they're feeling.
instead of actually addressing the hormonal shift and changes that are happening. And so again, like this is such a unique area of healthcare that impacts so many areas of people's lives that, you know, just letting people know it's okay and it's normal that you feel this way because a system has not been providing you the support that you need to have. And that's where we come in. And I you can do that very strategically and effectively.
And also ethically, think that's a huge thing these healthcare providers run into is the ethics of asking for cash for these things. I'm like, this is providing an underserved market something that they desperately need.
Speaker 1 (26:04.13)
You know, it's funny you say this because there's education piece and I think back to where we started talking about TRT or when TRT started to get like kind of in the mainstream, right? I wanna say like, I started hearing commercials and all the sports talk, know, XM Sports Talk Radio, right? You know, the ESPN in the morning, know, Colin Cowherd and Fox and all that kind of stuff. And they were doing reads for, you know,
TRT, know, supplements, Like testosterone supplements like 10 years ago, right? And then as they started doing more of these reads in the mainstream, you started to see functional medicine clinics pop up and all these other things. And it is just like educating, you know, and obviously there's a lot of men who are listening to sports talk in the morning. They knew who their audience was. And I just feel like that created an enormous amount of demand because they were like, you know, are you feeling tired? Is your libido low?
And in like that 30 second read, they would explain that, as you get older, your T-levels start to drop. It has an effect on this, this, and this. You actually don't need to feel those symptoms anymore, like if you balance your hormones, or you balance your testosterone, right? And so that was 10 years ago now. And I think, you know, there's a lot more people who are familiar with BHRT, right? HRT, all the different ways to get it done.
So I think educating, especially if have a captive audience and people who've given you money already and they're continuing to buy services from you, they already trust you, right? So if you're putting something new in front of them that is already kind of in the cultural zeitgeist, if you would, you have a pretty good shot to potentially drive some additional revenue from that aesthetics patient over onto these new modalities.
Right. It's interesting. I have a tiny story on this. This weekend, I was at a game night with some friends and most of them were new people to me. And this one individual, she was telling me how much she's into functional medicine. Because obviously people ask what I do and they hear what area I work in. all the time people just want to... Yeah. And it's like, okay.
Speaker 1 (28:14.946)
Marcus, look at this.
Speaker 2 (28:19.514)
especially, you know, usually Ozemp comes up within five weekends of people, you know, learning what area of healthcare work in. And this individual was telling me, you know, how she's really into this and she's very textbook functional medicine patient, which is a of a subset of a patient, not the mass, very specific subset. And she was telling me, she's like, I want you to talk to my husband who was at this, same dinner party.
And she was like, he thinks anything that's cash pay is a hoax. I never thought it. they take cash. Oh, fascinating. And so even today, there is that perception too. That's fascinating.
I see. Interesting,
Speaker 1 (29:03.53)
I always thought the opposite. always thought it was the people who could only afford the most premium services would go to cash pay or get the best services get cash pay.
And these are people that are of a very high income demographic. And that's his perception. And probably somebody that he would greatly benefit from, he's of the age where hormone replacement therapy would probably be a big benefit for him. So the TRT commercial you just described, he's probably the person that's like, that's a hoax or a scam because they're just taking cash. So there's still that out there, which surprised me.
Well, that's actually good segue to the next question I have for you, which is, you you've consulted with over a thousand clinics over the years and probably seen a lot of their business pressures, right? And I think specific to this discussion around longevity medicine, like what do you think are sort of the two biggest pressures right now that might push a traditional practice or a med spa to move into this sort of more cash pay focused longevity model?
Yeah, the number one thing that I even saw 16, I think years ago when I started in the med spa space, because I dealt with primary care doctors, OBGYN docs, ER docs, opening vendor accounts with whatever company I worked for because they were getting into aesthetics or opening a med spa. It's the reimbursement decline. know, insurances are paying less, they deny more. It requires more staff overhead to chase pennies.
And they quickly realized that they're not able to scale or retain their important staff members on this insurance treadmill. And technology, which it's even probably crazier today with AI involved in the mix. 16 years ago, healthcare providers were like, insurance has formulated medicine. If we don't have this in the chart, it gets tied because of this. it's like taking the thought process out of.
Speaker 2 (31:11.106)
healthcare of the medical provider and they're like.
choose your own it's like that choose your own adventure
Yeah, what if then this? yeah, yeah. Conditional logic stuff now and it's like, it's, know, the human body is in that way. And, you know, there's a lot of frustration with that. So I think that's number one. And then, you know, what they're really starting to see is the demand. The demand for cash pay services from the patient consumer side is outpacing traditional services. I'm an example of that. I have been on my own healthcare plan.
through the marketplace for probably six or seven years now. And I'm even considering changing that to maybe a higher deductible or catastrophic plan because most of what I do I pay cash for anyways now. And they're starting to see that. So, you know, they're asking for GOPs, peptides, more advanced diagnostic and kind of performance healthcare. And if a clinic can't provide that, they'll find it.
Yeah, and you know, we, know you've worked with a lot of different types of clinics. I've worked with a lot of clinics that were founded by NPs, right? And that's a unique model because they can actually do a lot of what the traditional physician could do, but then you meet NPs who might have a specialty in integrative psych or they might have a different, you know what mean? They can start to bring together, you know, some of them are very into holistic medicine, you herbal medicines and remedies and things like that, right? And so,
Speaker 1 (32:42.254)
Like they have a lot of tools, I think, and again, I'm talking about the NP-specific practices that have gotten started, but I just feel like they've got a lot of tools in their toolkit that maybe a traditional medical provider may not, because it's not in that sort of, if then, that sort of logic, right? It doesn't even exist in the universe, right? And I think...
this trend of people getting more information on their own, right? The internet has democratized information for everyone, right? So now we're getting this information on our own. I think we're also seeing, you know, I think, you know, the pandemic and COVID, there's a lot of mistrust that has always been placed in the kind of the traditional medical establishment for better or for worse, right? Like, you know, like you can debate that all day every day. But I think the reality is that people have, are asking questions, which I think is a great thing. And that
You know that they're free to kind of choose right like what what what type of care they want to have and Some of the stats that I mentioned at the beginning of this right like this whole longevity medicine Market is you know getting increased tenfolds in the next ten years right? That's not going away and I sort of see it like you know
You saw the med spa sort of boom, there was a lot of aesthetics, right? Injectors, Botox, fillers, things like that. And then we had this wave of the GLP-1s, right? And there's obviously a lot of challenges, you know, going on with the pharmaceutical industry and all the people who need the GLP-1s. then, you know, mixed in all of that was this idea of functional integrative medicine. look, I don't think competition has ever been more fierce, right? When I meet...
We would do a lot of marketing for very similar clinics. And there are some practices where I just have to tell them like, look, we can do search engine optimization for you, but there is a lot of competition in your area. This is not going to happen in 30 days, right? It's going to take you three to six months to really get to the top of search. You're going to need to invest ahead of, right, you seeing that ROI, right, on some of the marketing things that we do.
Speaker 1 (35:00.02)
If your market is getting more competitive, right, and I think all of us are feeling the squeeze right from the competition, a lot of times what entrepreneurs are going to do is they're going to be like, okay, how do I innovate or how do I bring something to the market that is different than the competition so that I'm not necessarily competing with them? And there's a book out there, it's called Blue Ocean Strategy. Any entrepreneur should read it, right? It's just about
thinking about instead of fighting someone directly head on, like how do you kind of create your own market, right? So if you're in an area where, look, this idea of regenerative medicine, longevity medicine, you know, there's a lot of things that fall under this general umbrella, but you may want to start making those investments, start educating your community, right, about some of these things so that as you're...
starting to think about transitioning and building some of these services in your practice, like you've actually created some demand for it. Because I think to what Marcus was saying earlier is right, is that there's still some confusion out there or just, I don't want to say ignorance because it implies a bad thing, but just people don't know about it yet, right? It's still kind of on the cutting edge. So if you're feeling competition, feel like, you know, talking to Marcus to understand like, cause I think he's felt the competition before.
but also more importantly has seen the right pivots in this space.
And I think one of the things that I mentioned at the beginning was, you know, these consumers are more educated and informed than they've ever been. And, you know, add chat, GBT in the mix of that. You know, it's wild. It's a whole nother, you know, ninth degree of a WebMD culture. And, you know, it's the clinic's responsibility and opportunity, quite honestly.
Speaker 2 (36:52.312)
to validate their patient's curiosity and position themselves as the trusted interpreter of all that information. And, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do at Elysium Longevity is build a community of providers to support in that effort because I don't really believe in competition. The magic in my clinic is, is my employees and my providers and how we do it. I can give my blueprint to somebody a block away and they're not going to able to do it the same way that we can because of the people I have and the culture that I have.
And so I really believe in supporting that in this space and hopefully creating somewhat of, even if it's a tiny community of providers and business owners in this space that want to be collaborative and share in this effort. Because again, I think we're very early in this opportunity.
Yeah, so when we record on our next episode, we'll talk a little bit about that blueprint, right? And sort of the guts of it, if you would. We'll get into the real tactics. But if we were to pick out one of the items that you felt was most contributed to your success, right? Is there an operational or kind of strategic marketing piece that
a provider might overlook when they're trying to transition into this kind of longevity model.
It's interesting because I really believe in selling outcomes and treatment packages, which worked really well in the aesthetic space for a long time. know, somebody wants their face to look better. I can give you five things that can improve that. And we can execute on that over 18 months for this certain type of price. You know, you can buy it all a cart as we go, or you can buy it upfront. Obviously we want that purchase upfront to lock in those appointments and that dedicated revenue. However,
Speaker 2 (38:44.32)
I think in this space, patients can get overwhelmed with that if you sell everything. So making sure there's really clear programs and how I broke my clinic down was into four buckets, medical weight management, hormone optimization, libido optimization, and medical aesthetics. And those are four very foundational things that almost any person walking through the door can benefit from.
So really making sure that the offerings are digestible, but also scalable because we have a lot of weight loss patients that have become hormone patients and vice versa. you know, hormone ties into libido optimization and vice versa. If somebody has an issue with libido in their life and they think it's more of a functional thing that maybe they want to do something like a P shot or an O shot for, we got to really look at your labs and see like, what's the root of this.
So I think having just a very clear articulate messaging and kind of pathway on this, and it really just comes back to like, what is the patient's goal? So making sure that's very clearly defined. And I think if practices can dial in on that symptom messaging, that's where it gets really easy because when you throw.
you know, urinary incontinence, testosterone deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, know, thyroid, like all these technical medical terms at patients, think it just gets overwhelmed. And it also crosses into other specialties, right? Some practitioners are okay with treating thyroid. One of my practitioners is very confident treating thyroid in our clinic. but that can be confusing for patients. I think if you just have it as a, this is what we offer. help you.
improve your health span, then we can talk a little bit more about what that means. You really win that way. But I think that's the biggest thing is paralysis by too much information.
Speaker 1 (40:47.478)
Yeah, so here's a question for you. I think packaging is actually one of the biggest challenges that I, from a market, so usually I come in and I have to deal with the packages that they've already put together. as a marketer, I'm kind of like, give me what I need to market, right? But then when you realize like, hey, the marketing is not working and we've done everything we need to do, we've optimized everything, the messaging, the visuals, the targeting, all of that, and it's not working.
That usually leads me back to the idea like, wow, are we competitive pricing? Is the packaging too complicated? Do they know what they're buying? And I guess when you talk about packaging and longevity services, how should a provider maybe think about trying to package? Think about the root symptom or cause or root issue that they're trying to address.
Should it be focused more on the scalability and do they have the providers to actually provide the services that are related to it? How should a provider think about maybe packaging some of these services if they're thinking about making it, waiting their way into this?
Yeah, I think, you know, very clear, defined things is important. It really starts with a very robust and comprehensive consultation. And that's another challenge that I've seen, you know, with providers that don't feel comfortable charging a thousand dollars for a functional medicine console. Yeah, right. You know, you're going over three to four different disciplines of healthcare.
which a patient would, a la CARP, do a consultation for each if that were the case. And that's over a thousand dollars. Yep. So I think it starts with just a good comprehensive assessment. And, you know, if this is an aesthetic patient that you discovered, you know, might be a hormone candidate, you can have a hormone consultation. But if you do proper lab work, you're going to find a lot of other things.
Speaker 2 (43:00.396)
I think it's just making sure the alignment's there and what the patient's looking for and what your goal as the practitioner is. But I think we also make that mistake in consultations when someone comes to us because they're like, just want to improve my appearance. I feel younger on the inside than when I look on the outside. We can throw them a $10,000 package on the table when they're just maybe considering doing something like microneedling. Right.
I think you really have to understand the goals of the patient and where they're at at that point in time and meet them there, but be the facilitator along the way of, know, okay, you know, these are the things that we talked about making a plan for them. I think it's a big part of it that is actionable and that the patient feels comfortable and knowledgeable on. mean, I, for example, I went to an ortho cause I have
a problem in my neck and they referred me to a specialist. And when I walked out and called the friend of mine that's an ortho in Austin, I couldn't even explain to him what they were referring me to get done because it was just so much information. was so much information so fast. And I've worked in healthcare for almost 20 years. You know, and so like that's a great example. And so I think we need to remember that we speak a different language than consumers.
I do the same thing with marketing, right? I to use marketing jargon that people don't understand.
That's a great point. If it's relatable to like, for example, I love the menopause point or perimenopause, you know, do you lose your keys? Do you lose your thought in the middle of sentence? You know, do you feel like you have brain fog throughout the middle of the day? Like, are you just exhausted before dinnertime, you know, dealing with, you know, household and your kids? All of that is something that is a mass population that deals with.
Speaker 2 (45:00.642)
Yeah, your mom, sister, your cousin. I think that's one of the things that one of my practitioners did really well in my clinic was she lived that life as well. Right. And she could really meet them where they were with it and were late. Yeah. And we always use the power of our own testimony.
Yeah. That's a fantastic perspective from the consumer perspective. So I'm curious, you know, there's a provider out there, they maybe run a clinic for a little bit. Why do they come to you? Like, what are some of the things that are on their mind when they come to you? Is it like, I'm, you know, the meds ball market is way too competitive now, I got to be looking for other things to do.
or I have an interest in longevity medicine, but I have no idea how to pivot my practice towards it. Like what are the kind of initial conversations that you have with someone who might, because I know there's a lot out there who are thinking this exact thing right now, you know?
Yeah, I would say for my business, the biggest element of what grew our business in the very short timeframe that it did. And we, at a peak of our growth, we were seeing 300 new patients a month. And that was all from word of mouth. I was not spending any money on marketing. And the word of mouth is so powerful. And with GLPs and hormones, they're walking billboards.
with how they look and how they feel and how they're showing up day to day in their lives with their friends and family members. And so that's why I think like those are my two core areas of building one of these businesses is those two disciplines.
Speaker 1 (46:45.336)
So if you're, let's say you might be doing, you know, just very pure aesthetics right now, but, you know, everybody's asking for GOP wants and you want to figure out a way to do it, right? There are some practice operation things and some messaging things and, you know, compliance things maybe that they need to be concerned with, right? And maybe you can help them with something. Obviously technology, I've worked with Marcus a lot on different technology projects. And I think an interesting thing to the audience that's,
listening out there today is that Marcus has this unique like experience understanding kind of the guts of the practice operations, but also understanding the technology and systems and overall, I call it tech stack that you need to do to not only build a practice, but a scalable one. So your hair is not on fire, you know, when you are getting 300 new patients a month, right?
And so, I think that's something we can obviously talk about next time we talk, Marcus. But I just wanted to maybe highlight to the audience, like, why do people come talk to you? So it's really around if you see interest in hormones or you see a demand there, you want them to kind of figure out how to pivot your practice towards there or with the GLP ones. So that kind of...
Yeah. I mean, in a great example on the hormone side, a female comes to us, she gets optimized, which typically brings energy, vitality and libido back. Yep. And that individual goes home and wears their spouse out because of the libido improvement. And that spouse ends up coming in and becoming a hormone candidate.
And then that spouse tells their friends, yeah. Then that spouse tells their friends, you know, my gosh, you know, my wife got on this and this is what happened. And now I have to, you know, it's, I think people forget how foundational intimacy, libido, feeling good confidence is in our everyday life and in the form of currency that it is and how we show up in life that, you know, traditional healthcare is, it's just so dismissive on it.
Speaker 2 (48:54.686)
And it should be just as normalized as talking about your cholesterol, in my opinion, in this space. So the more we do that and the more comfortable we make patients having a safe place to talk about that, that also delivers effective therapies that are safe. I think everybody wins with this. that's that kind of comes back to my foundation of just being that trusted resource with consumers and how we did that in our business initially.
was we did everything on ourselves or a family member before we averaged it on a patient so we could talk from a place of experience.
Yeah, no, that's great. No, think that Like authenticity in healthcare now, I think is More important than ever, right? Building trust Well, marcus has been a great episode Obviously, we're going to get you back and we'll talk about a few more things and some of the cool work that you've done We'll really get into the weeds there But you know two kind of big takeaways for me from this episode were number one obviously there's a big sort of trend in the
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (49:56.93)
Longevity medicine market, but there's a lot of messaging and education that I think needs to be done if you're thinking about jumping into this space It's not just I'm gonna put the service on my website and hire an NP or hire somebody who is there qualifications to provide the service It's there's work that needs to be done to build a pipeline Depending on the market that you're in too, right? So that's the first thing and the second thing is that you know
the GLP-1s, you know, the weight loss stuff, as well as the hormones, peptides, all that. There are so many different lifestyle things that those touch that allow you to sort of what we call cross-sell in marketing. they came in for one thing that was a lifestyle-related thing, you might be able to help affect them on the inside with some of these, you know, longevity medicine services that Marcus is talking about. We can get into
more of those on the next episode. But there's certainly an opportunity out there, but I don't think it's one of those like shooting fish in a barrel, right? Like you kind of have to corral them a little bit. You got a message to them. You got to, you know, bring them together and you'll, but if you make those investments, I think early today, you know, in the next five years, you know, like Marcus said, like this is the next wave of med spas, right? So if you think about like where med spas were when Marcus got into this,
place and we're kind of there right now of longevity medicine. So if you're forward thinking enough, like you can start to make these investments today. Marcus, tell us a little bit about where we can find you, your website, your personal or company socials, whatever you want to provide.
Yeah, my website's AliziumLongevity, E-L-Y-S-I-U-M, Longevity.com. Also same on Instagram. Those are the two places. And you know, I have a community that will be launching soon on that website as well for people that want to learn, collaborate, and be impactful in this arena together.
Speaker 1 (52:01.87)
Cool. Well, Marcus, we'll have you back on another episode where we can talk a little bit more tactics. if you're a healthcare or wellness entrepreneur ready to grow smarter, we're here to help. We specialize in building foundational marketing assets from professional websites and local SEO to pay ads and HIPAA-compliant CRM technology. To get a personalized assessment of your business, head over to tobyagency.co. And don't forget to subscribe, and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for joining us today, Marcus. We'll talk to you soon.
Thank you.
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