Griffin Jones and Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh discuss how she is successfully running her practice solely accepting cash-only patients. The days of losing money due to insurance companies’ refusal to pay are far gone for her. The secret to Dr. Eyvazzadeh’s success is her massive top-of-the-funnel marketing strategy and her efficiency of weeding out patients that aren’t a good fit before she or her staff spends time with the prospect. What matters most in fertility marketing isn’t what most people expect.
In this episode, we cover:
Who would be able to run a cash-only only system
How Dr. Aimee has developed a massive top of funnel engine
Why success rates aren’t the marketing factor most think
Why Dr. Aimee attracts 15% of her patients from out-of-town
This episode is sponsored by:
Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.
Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh’s Information:
Company: Aimee Eyvazzadeh MD, Inc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-eyvazzadeh-12715932
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_EggWhisperer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctoraimee/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/eggwhisperer/
Mentioned in the episode:
NoHold ( https://www.nohold.com/)
[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: Insurance employer benefits can't live with them. Can't live without them. I don't know. Today. I have Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh on Inside Reproductive Health. She was on the show about a year or so ago. It was episode 88, if you recall and I just kept asking and trying to figure out why does she have this system for patient attraction of all the content that she's putting out there of this brand and messaging. If she's not trying to scale an enterprise, she would certainly have more patients than she knows what to do with it. If she didn't especially being in the San Francisco Bay Area. Well come to find out. It has partly to do with the fact that they only take self pay patients at Dr. Aimee's practice.
And that's when the light went off. And we talk about the funnel that's necessary today. What kind of market that you have to be in and a couple of other requirements for. Being a self pay only REI practice. Many of you wonder about this and you wonder if, well, I keep getting lower reimbursements on this service from this insurance company, this employer benefits company.
Well, there might be a way for you to just forego that altogether. And I recommend that you listen to Dr. Aimee's take before you do that. So I really hope you enjoy today's show about being a self pay only practice with Aimee Eyvazzadeh.
[00:02:12] Griffin Jones: Dr. Eyvazzadeh Aimee. Welcome back to inside reproductive health.
[00:02:17] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: It's always great to be talking to you, Griffin. Thanks for inviting me back.
[00:02:20] Griffin Jones: If anybody has listened to episode 88 and a lot of people listening now will in episode 88, when I had Dr. Aimee on the first time, I'm just trying to get after, like, I keep asking you questions, like why build a brand like this?
Why build something that is otherwise meant to scale? If you're not trying to scale, like you're not trying to. Open more offices, hire more docs, things like that. And I could, like, I kept grilling you. I was grilling the crap out of you the whole episode, and I still couldn't figure it out why after the conversation.
And then sometime after, like in one of those detective movies where there's a benign clue that set something off and the client's like Washington street that's right. The suspect was from DC. And then he runs back to the headquarters and it was like that when I learned about your. That you are a self-pay practice that you don't take insurance and other types of you know, like the employer benefit coverage.
And I was like, that makes sense. It all is starting to make sense now. So can you talk a little bit about that model and then I'll talk about how I perceive it from a branding perspective with the questions I have there.
[00:03:32] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. I mean, the thing is that I don't own an IVF. Right. And so when you accept insurance, you have to accept the rates that they're going to give you.
And if you don't own the lab, it's hard to carve out the global fee for the physician fee and then the lab fee. So I was taking insurance up until 2013 and then I started paying for my patients, I guess. Because I felt so bad that their insurance was denying the claim on the ICSI. For example, the patient expected that to be paid, but the IVF lab expects to be paid $2,000 for ICSI.
And then I was writing the checks out and I'm like, this is just, it doesn't make sense. Like why would I be paying for people to do IVF with me, I just can't, you know, sustain a practice like that. So then I said, you know what? I have to go cash only. And if people want to receive care for me, they're going to have to, you know, forego the insurance.
And we're so lucky in the bay area like, everyone's my friend here. There's so many fertility doctors. So if there's a patient that really needs to use their insurance, I happily make, I call them warm introductions to doctors that I think will be a really good fit for them after I meet with them and talk through their story with them.
So, you know, I do a lot of, you know, first consults for fertility patients, you know, second opinion consult. And then I just hand them off to a doctor that accepts their insurance.
[00:04:44] Griffin Jones: So it was 2013 that this change happened. Was it ripping off the band-aid all at once? How did you do it?
[00:04:52] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Well, it was slowly because obviously you have to give notice to the insurance companies and then it was no new patients with this insurance up until, you know, I could actually, you know, say absolutely no new patients at all with insurance. And it was hard for me emotionally, because I felt so bad saying no to people, especially patients who were well-established who want to come back for, let's say another transfer. That was really tough to say, you can't use your insurance with me, but again, because they could still use their insurance at the IVF lab, they could easily just transition over and I was there to help and guide them. It's not like I abandoned them in any way, but that, that was tough. It was really hard. My accountant was like, Aimee, look at how much money you paid the IVF lab. So you could do cases there. You actually lost money, you know, helping these patients. And for me, you know, there's a good reason why I don't own a lab.
And the reason is I would do everyone's idea for free, literally. Like I would just be like, oh, you don't have to, but now that I know, like I have to write a check for that patient to have IVF that for me, makes it so that I can still run the office the way I do and take care of as many patients as I can take care of.
[00:05:53] Griffin Jones: So how long did that take?
[00:05:56] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: About a year to go from, you know, well, it was something that I had been thinking about for awhile. And so finally, once I did it, it took about 12 months to get to the point where I can completely just say no insurance at all.
[00:06:07] Griffin Jones: And what is the arrangement with the lab, like in order to be able to do that?
[00:06:14] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: To say no insurance. Well, it's a facility agreement, just like a surgeon has privileges at, let's say a surgery center for me. I have privileges at different IVF labs and the same fees that a patient sees. It's all very transparent. So let's say one of the centers charges the patient, you know, let's say $3,000 to do an embryo biopsy.
Well, rather than them paying the IVF lab, the $3,000 for the embryo biopsy fee, they pay one fee for their IVF cycle. And then I pay the lab for the services performed base on that.
[00:06:43] Griffin Jones: Okay. When I've seen the model of not owning a lab before, very often, the person has one lab that they use. And I think, you know, the three or four examples that I'm thinking of, they all, each use one lab. You use multiple lab?
[00:06:59] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I predominantly use one lab, but the thing is that like, we're all again, like we're all friends here in the bay area and you know, I have patients that, you know, go to another lab because now they have insurance at another lab, but then they want to come back to me and have me do the transfer for them, for example.
Right. Rather than move the embryos to another lab, I can go to that lab and you know, do the transfer for them. So it just makes it easier for the patient. For example, who let's say wants another perspective or, you know, still wants my help after doing IVF somewhere else. And I can still go to that lab. So yeah, I have privileges have many different labs, but it's all just to help the patient and make things harder on me.
But I do it with joy and it's fun for me to just see people and say hi to them again and see how things are going in their lab.
[00:07:43] Griffin Jones: Yeah. Would this work, if you owned your own lab, would you be able to do this self pay model? And if not, why not?
[00:07:52] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I think you could, I mean, if you own your own lab, you can do self pay, but just really depend on where you are, you know, like the demographics in the city that you're in. I'm really fortunate in the bay area, but I'm in a situation where when I make a recommendation to a patient for a treatment plan. Like I think, you know, you're 40 years old. I think you might need two to three IVF cycles.
I think we need to bank embryos. We need to genetically test them. Patients are like, okay, I'll make that work. I'll see what I need to do financially. But I know that there are parts of the country where that's really hard, even for patients to even consider one IVF cycle. So even saying the word a couple thousand dollars can be really a challenge for some people.
So I know I am in a unique situation here. And it's not definitely something for every community, you know, every doctor across the country, but it definitely is something that I've been able to do in the bay area, just because of, you know, the area we're in. And also I do have patients that come in, obviously from out of town as well.
And so they come here knowing, you know, upfront what the cycle fees are here and they're different and you know, in every area of the country, they're going to be a little bit different based on you know, the cost of living in that area.
[00:09:03] Griffin Jones: I don't suspect you'd be able to do that in Akron, Ohio, and that's somebody practices in Akron, Ohio.
I don't know them, but, or I could use any other town as an example. I'm not picking on Akron, but I think my hypothesis is that this works in more affluent coastal cities with very large populations. I had somebody asking me about this years ago, it was closer to when I first came into the field so it was probably five or six years ago. And they're asking me if this was possible, and this was my hypothesis that you would have to be in a really large market. And then you'd also have to be in a, you have to have a wide funnel. That narrows down into that short spout coming out of that funnel, that would be the wide funnel, meaning your, your marketing message attracting people, because you're going to have less people that are able to pass through the bottom of that funnel.
And so it's gotta be wide at the top because it's shorter at the bottom. And I want to talk about that funnel with you and the brand. But I have one question that's probably evidence of my ignorance as a non-clinician, but how do you report success rates in that way if you're using different people's labs?
[00:10:23] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I say, if you share with me your age, your follicle count, your AMH and FSH, I'll let you know what your individualized pregnancy rates are. And based on the information that I have about you and I can give that to the patient individually. I don't think it's fair for, let's say a 39 year old with an AMH is 0.1 to compare herself with all, you know, the start data on 39 year olds, because obviously her chances are going to be different.
[00:10:45] Griffin Jones: So that I've think circumvents, a lot of the challenge of success rates to begin with, like the whole controversy around success rates is that you're positioning something like really broadly you're cherry picking data. Everybody complains about what everybody else is posting on their website or how they're choosing.
And, and so it's like, you're, it seems to me like you're avoiding that all together.
[00:11:12] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. I mean, when a patient asks, like where can I find your success rates? I went to start and I don't find you. I say, well, I can't, you can't take the lab that you're going to as a sign of your potential success rate. But I can tell you, you know, just based on the data that I've learned about you, what I think your chances are.
And again, we're so lucky in the bay area. Like every lab here is basically amazing and awesome. So you can't really go wrong with any of the labs around here.
[00:11:38] Griffin Jones: How often does someone ask you that?
[00:11:41] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I mean, my patients are really educated, so those conversations sometimes has come up, you know, maybe like one out of 50 patients will ask me the question.
[00:11:49] Griffin Jones: One out of 50.
[00:11:50] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah
[00:11:51] Griffin Jones: Yeah. That's not a lot. And it was amazing to me cause when I first came into the field, I came through surveying patients. And they talked about success rates in the clarity of success. There was a theme that came up, but like one in 50 is not a lot. And also it's not one of the most traffic pages or the highest converting pages.
There was a discussion about start and marketing guidelines at ASRM couple years ago is the Denver one. And I had my laptop and I opened it up while the speakers were talking. And I went into some of our clients, Google analytics, and it just looked at their most traffic pages and their highest converting pages and success rates weren't in the top 20 for IVF.
[00:12:35] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yes. And I think patients know that it's not so much about what's reported. It's about like how they feel at the clinic. And obviously, you know, that's really important about being heard and cared for, but also like, depending on where you are, some patients just don't have. You know, they don't have a choice as far as like which lab that they can go to because they have to stay close to home for different reasons. So, yeah.
[00:13:00] Griffin Jones: I don't want to say that it's not important because I've heard patients say so many times about how important is, I'm just sharing what, how the behavior seems to map out from what we can actually measure. And it seems like other things are much closer to the main influence of the decision. So, okay.
So you, well, you have this flexibility to be able to accommodate patients at different labs. You don't own your own lab. It took you about a year to, to wean off of the insurance drug. I think that there's probably a louder, a lot of people list. Well, now you might call it the employer benefit drug too. And that can be a mis-characterized, I mean, there's many people that aren't going to get care otherwise, so I'm not dismissing insurance or employer coverage. I think it's a net benefit for people. So I want to make that perfectly clear. I'm just saying on the other side that I do see providers being the ones to get squeezed very often, they're in the middle of this and I've seen some of the reimbursements that people get and it's like, they're not even breaking even as you said, in some cases.
[00:14:17] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: And there is one of me, I have 17 full-time employees. I can't survive on insurance with the volume that I'm at, not owning an IVF lab, it's just not feasible at all. So with the amount of time I want to provide, you know, no matter who you are, every patient to me is VIP.
And I want to make sure that I can, you know, provide that level of care without feeling like Costco, like, you know, just so many people coming in and out. I can't give so much of myself if, if I'm doing that, I'm already seeing a lot of, I'm seeing over 30 patients a day as it is. I do all my own scans.
And so I had to do something to, to actually basically limit the practice a little bit as well.
[00:15:00] Griffin Jones: Why do all your own scans?
[00:15:03] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I feel like, you know, I went into IVF or fertility medicine wanting to take care of patients and wanting to do my own scans, my own retrievals, my own transfers. And I feel like sometimes the date of loss in between scans when you have inter observer variability, and sometimes, you know, other people making decisions about, you know, what you should do based on data, not other people, but sometimes the data is not consistent because they're different people scanning.
And I feel like that's always been important. And those are the things that I see when I review records and I can see things like, oh, that's interesting. You can see that, you know, you can tell that different people were doing the scans throughout the cycle. Like I had a patient once and many times where she would find different people scanning her in one cycle and that I think it could have affected her care.
And so that's why it's important to me to scan my own patients. And it also provides that, you know, they hear from me. I have that sparkle checklist. You probably know it, I give them all the elements of what's going on the size of their follicles, the protocol. Am I happy? The lining, when the renewables going to be, with the lining looks like you know, all that kind of stuff.
They'll get that in real time without wondering what's going on.
[00:16:08] Griffin Jones: Well, it seems to me like you're in a position to be able to make that decision for yourself that doesn't seem like pure efficiency, but that's okay. This is your business, your practice. And you're in a position to make that decision because you're not being squeezed on margins and other areas, or are having to bring in a tech to do it for to be able to pay that bill. So I suspect that there's probably a lot of people listening that envy you, that are in that smaller practice group. And especially like the one to two doc groups that if they're selling to private equity, it's not at a big, multiple, maybe it's enough for them to be happy with retiring, but it's not the same as like these seven doctor groups are getting.
And I suspect that there's a lot of, one to two REI practices, listening that envy you and want to be able to do this, but they're also scared. They think that well I might not be able to meet that. And I might not be able to, to make ends meet that way, meet the volumes that we'd need to do if insurance or an employer benefit company, isn't paying for it.
So, do you see this drying up at all? Do you see on the horizon? I don't think that there's enough cash pay patients out there as employer benefits, increases insurance coverage and mandates increase.
[00:17:28] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: No, I don't see that. I think there's plenty of patients for all of us and it's never about competition. I don't necessarily see me as someone that people would envy.
I feel like if anything, they might feel sorry for me because I work the number of hours that I work seven days a week. I see patients, Saturdays and Sundays. I'm not taking a single day off this year. The only day I'm not seeing a patient is on Christmas day. And so most people don't want that kind of life.
And so I've chosen that for myself, for my own reasons, just because of just my personality and who I am. But I think most people would like the option to not scan every single patient, but still be able to communicate that with their patients and you're right. They might have that fear that they can't do that just because there is just not something that they actually want to do. Most of my friends were like, I don't want to do what you do. I don't want to see patients seven days a week. I want to break. You're crazy. And I'm like, yeah, I I'll take that. I'll take it as a compliment.
[00:18:21] Griffin Jones: Yeah. I know that you're a meteorite.
And it's like, when I hear people talk about like entrepreneurs or people that just have seemingly unlimited bandwidth and energy. That's at least how I perceive you. I don't know deeply personally, but I also don't see how you do, like, it's not a requirement that you have to scan your own patients because they're not taking insurance. Right?
[00:18:42] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: No, not at all, but I think patients come here because they want that. They know that they're gonna get that.
You know that they miss that in their last cycle, they missed, like they share experiences where they did an entire cycle and never saw a doctor once. And then they met the doctor that was going to do the retrieval for them. And that's not the doctor that they met at their new patient, 15 minute video call, you know, and so people want that. And so they know that they're going to get that here. So that's why they come.
[00:19:09] Griffin Jones: Well, staying on the topic of the scans. What's the difference between the physician being with the patient the entire time for their scan versus having a tech do it? And then the physician popping in and saying, oh, hey, catching up for three minutes.
[00:19:22] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I mean, it's efficiency. I mean, I can do a scan, communicate with the patient. I actually do my own blood draws. So within like 15 minutes, I can have it all done. The patient feels heard and she's sharing her symptoms. I'm telling her what to do next and I can make the decisions right then and there without any delays.
So I think it's more efficient than having someone do it. I pop in, I say, oh, I'll meet with you the end of the day, we'll have another interaction. It just seems more efficient to doing all the same.
[00:19:47] Griffin Jones: How many of your patients come from outside of the bay area? If you had to ballpark percentage wise?
[00:19:54] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: A lot. I mean, I think this week I have at least five in a hotel, doing a cycle with me. So if I were to say percentage wise, probably at least 15, maybe even 20% are from of town.
[00:20:07] Griffin Jones: So that has to do with the funnel that you have from the top. They're finding you from social media, from your podcasts, from your mainstream media appearances.
[00:20:19] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: That's right, exactly right. So people seem to like code in the New York times or you know, some other piece you're right on the news of the today show. Then they'll see my name and they'll reach out and they'll do their Facebook research. They'll go into the groups on Facebook and then have people also say, oh, I went to her and then it's more affirming for them to reach out and set up an appointment.
[00:20:37] Griffin Jones: I should have asked Dr. Eyvazzadeh, if, she uses EngagedMD, because technology making life easier for your patients and making the work experience better for your team is EngagedMD. In a nutshell, you've got a limited amount of time to cover with each patient, EngageMD allows your consults to be more productive.
So you can do what you're meant to be doing nurses can doing do what they're best at you're spending less time answering the same questions. You're then tailor, fitting that time to more educated patients, patients with truly informed consent because enrolling patients in EngagedMD is easy. It takes like 20 seconds.
Then they get some of their time back. The patient that is because they're watching the video modules with their partners on their time. They're completing the knowledge checks with their partners. All of this is sequential. They're signing and submitting. And EngagedMD documents, everything so that your physicians, your nurses, your team members, don't have to get back to doing what should be involved in a technological solution.
Anyway, if you go to engagedmd.com/irh, they will give you 25% off your implementation fee. That's EngagedMD.com/IRH now back to our conversation with Dr. Eyvazzadeh
So you've got this massive top of the funnel, which I was asked, which is what I was grinding my brain about. The time, we talked on this podcast, why, why? And it makes complete sense because the wider, the funnel that you have, the more you can have mechanisms in place that allow people to self-select, if there's one type of not one type, but if there's a narrower funnel of people that may be able to be a good fit for your model. And we do that with our firm, like Inside Reproductive Health is for everybody. I want everybody to listen to it. I want the drug reps listening to it. I want docs listening to it.
It's mostly practice owners and execs, but I want everybody in the field to pick this up like it's the wall street journal. That a business person reads or watches, Forbes. I want people to watch, listen, to read Inside Reproductive Health every morning. I want this like weekly podcast to be just the beginning and I want to create a lot more content for big top of the funnel, but then I have a very, you know, kind of narrow bottom of the funnel. I don't really have sales calls with people because I don't have a sales team. I don't want to hire a sales team. I have my delivery team. I have people that manage accounts, but I don't want to hire like this entire sales apparatus. So I've got this big top of the funnel, social media, the podcast, the speaking, and then the middle of the funnel is all about our points of view, of how we do things.
And then the bottom of the funnel is like, if you want to engage us, here's this $600 engagement that that allows you to test it out. And I don't really talk with people. If somebody wants to send their marketing director, I don't talk to them to me, that feels like an insurance equivalent of like, no, that's not a good fit for us.
And, you know, I might talk to a principal for 15 minutes, but it's just about our process. And if they want that $600 offer, that's, if there's no commitment that gets people in and hopefully I've created enough content to help them decide for themselves, if they're a good fit or not. But how do you narrowed down that funnel when you have such a huge top of the funnel? People are seeing you from all over the country. How do you start to narrow it down? Well, We don't take this insurance. We don't take these employer benefits. This is why do you weed that out so that people aren't pissed at you when they're contacting you.
[00:24:29] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: It's simple AI. So I have an amazing AI tool. So for anyone who's listening, who is interested, I work with no hold. N O H O L D. And I'm working on systems to automate many things that are inefficient in the practice. And so we've started with new patient onboarding. So it's basically a virtual assistant that we've created with their help, of course, they actually created it, but all the language comes from me and my assistants here, so that patients at the start of the onboarding process understand what their they're onboard. And for, and their onboarding for an experience with a physician that will not take insurance. And so before, you know, when people were picking up the phone, my new patient coordinator would get all the information and then tell them, by the way we don't take insurance.
Is that okay with you? And you're right. Like, that's not how it should be. So from the very beginning, It's you know, welcome to the practice. Click here. If you want to be a new patient, then the very next thing says, Dr. Aimee does not participate with any insurance companies. It's self pay only. Please click here to continue.
And if you don't want to continue, we send you a really nice message about my IVF classes of courses. EggWhispererSchool.com is where people can go. So if people don't want to engage. Like formally through being a patient, you can certainly take one of my classes that I do on IVF or egg freezing or fertility testing.
[00:25:52] Griffin Jones: So are they seeing this only after they contact the practice or is there some content that you put out in different forms?
[00:26:02] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah, so it's we actually don't do any consults without patients going through the website first. So if someone were to call the office, we would simply say, please go to the website and click schedule a consult, and then they'll find the information right there.
And then they can continue the process. It's about 10 to 15 minutes of questions that they answer. And then my new patient coordinator will get them into the portal, send them all the forms they need to sign and get the medical records and schedule appointments.
[00:26:28] Griffin Jones: This is another benefit too. That's another bottom of the funnel requirement that I think people would love, but the top of the funnel isn't big enough.
And this is another way of looking at why you want the top of your funnel to be larger. So most people today are busier than they have been in years. They have more new patients that they know what to do with in 75% of cases. If you have a wider funnel, the wider your funnel is the tighter, you can make the, the requirements of the middle and the bottom of the funnel.
And for most people, I think that they would love that if their patients had, to do that before they scheduled a new consult, but they don't feel like afford the attrition for those that wouldn't do it.
[00:27:24] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. And you can include even insurance, you know what I mean? It's not just using a tool like this isn't just for people who are like me, you can use it for insurance and then it would capture the insurance information right away. And then it could, that information can go to the insurance. The insurance folks in the office that, you know, check benefits and tell the patients with their benefits are before they come in to prevent again, that the hard part of having insurance is when you get to the clinic and then you're told something that is different than what your insurance told you, and then there's issues surrounding that.
But, you know, I'm so lucky that I don't have to deal with anymore.
[00:27:57] Griffin Jones: So there seeing this, which in the no hold was the AI?
[00:28:02] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah, no hold,is the company that I use. Yeah. So they're the one that set it up and they're working on onboarding other clinics as well.
[00:28:08] Griffin Jones: And so that's still at the bottom because of the funnel, because that's when people are contacting you, do you have it in like the middle of the funnel?
Like the videos that you do or do you let people know, even before they contact, we don't accept insurance?
[00:28:21] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: No, it's not something that I advertise or talk about on my podcast because my podcast is really for, you know, education for everybody, for the masses. I don't put it out on my blog articles, like in asterix, by the way, Aimee doesn't accept insurance.
It's just something for patients who are ready to meet with me, then they can get onboarded and they'll find out at that point.
[00:28:43] Griffin Jones: Do you ever get people that are pissed at that point?
[00:28:48] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I haven't, I mean, if they're pissed, they don't let me know. I mean, certainly they're sad, you know, sometimes people contact me through Instagram for example, and they're like, do you take my insurance?
And I say, no, I don't, but I'd happy to give you a second opinion on your case. And then I'm happy. to like do that warm intro with a doctor in your area that I feel like would be best suited for you or but I've never had anyone get pissed at me in space. I mean like, no. That is no.
[00:29:13] Griffin Jones: Yeah, it must be my face.
There's a lot more easy to get pissed. And maybe it's the beard. Maybe it's maybe it's the, the hair. I don't know, but I do getting people basically to go from the top of the funnel, to the bottom pretty effectively. And that could have your, you were joking, but it could have to do with your persona. Maybe I know that we've had to invest more in the middle of the content because sometimes it do get people pissed at me when they're reaching out.
And they're like, and it tends to come from the industry side more because we serve the industry side and we think a lot of what we do translates to it, but we have definitely, we think we still know more than any regular marketing agency, but we have not built the systems to the degree that we have for practices and so we tend to do, a little bit more consulting upfront, and so it's a bit more expensive and some people are like, well, it sounds like you're just charging to get to know our situation. Like, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. I charge you to get to know your situation. And I think what you have to do to be able to do something like this, where you are inevitably going to have to turn many people away.
And in your case, you're sending people to other channels that do need care in order to be able to do that. You have to have other places that you can refer to them and have resources for them. So I don't feel bad about turning people away because I put out a hundred and thirty episodes of Inside Reproductive Health and articles upon articles have really in depth points of view on physician outreach systems and IVF conversion systems and things that take me 20 hours to create.
And so I feel like, you know, if somebody is like, well, we think we should just be able to talk to you. It's like, if I haven't given you enough information to decide that 600 bucks or $1,500, then I haven't done a good enough job, but I do have those things to be able to give them for free. And the vast majority of people are understanding and so you have that. So you talked about some of the things that you do, what are some of those resources that you give people when they are in a position where they can't afford to pay out of pocket?
[00:31:27] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Well, my IVF classes. So I have a live class every month. I have an egg freezing class, for example, fertility awareness class, like teaching people, what level, you know, what to get checked, you know what to ask your doctor.
So those classes are pretty affordable. They're anywhere from like 30 to $60. And then have my blog and then my YouTube channel and then the podcast. And so, you know, those are the different ways that people can engage with me without paying to, to see me formally as a doctor. I always tell them, obviously that whatever I share with them is not to be considered an expert opinion because I'm just sharing information and not medical advice and soon hopefully in the next, you know, six months, I'll have an app where people can engage with me more formally without the being fully onboarded as a patient. And that might be a price point, kind of like a subscription model where they can get their questions answered. And for me, it's going to be helpful because right now I get questions, there's so many different social media channels, and it's hard. I feel bad. Like, I want to reply to people, but I just can't. Cause I can't go back. Like if I ask, you know, someone will be like, you know, what do you think about this account? Well, I can't engage back and forth with them because I'll lose with the number of messages I get.
I won't be able to go back to that. But with an app, for me, it'll be really nice because I'll be able to track the questions and be able to answer them. And then that would be a really fun thing and hopefully remember the entrepreneurial side of me, you know, I don't plan on working forever. Right. We all end up not being able to work at that mean I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, but this could be something that.
[00:32:54] Griffin Jones: I thought you did plan on working forever, I thought you are just gonna, do a retreival and then keel over.
[00:33:01] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: That's probably what's going to happen my grandfather, God, rest, his soul did that.
[00:33:04] Griffin Jones: I remember that story.
[00:33:06] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yep. So I, hopefully will not, you know kill over like the Peloton guy. I hopefully won't do that, but you know, that might be something, you know, cause I don't have a practice to sell. I don't think there's much to sell when it comes to, you know, what I do, but that might be something that would have value in the future for somebody.
[00:33:24] Griffin Jones: Well, if you want it to, you could absolutely sell that brand as a huge funnel for somebody. So there's something to sell there. Well, I have that for another topic, but I think that having the subscription model something that's low cost, having all of the free content, including the classes, something that's free is absolutely necessary to do something like that, you do it, we do it. But if somebody contemplating this idea, Yeah, you have to be able to give people something, especially because they're turning to you for something so serious. And so I don't think that you can do this without doing that. I mean maybe you could viably, but I think it would be a liability to reputation.
And also, I think you probably feel pretty crappy if you had to turn people away, completely empty handed.
[00:34:13] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Right.
[00:34:14] Griffin Jones: So I still think that some people are envying. I still think that some people are listening to to this thing. And while I wonder if we could pull this off, you talked about how much you're working, but is that a requisite for being a self pay only group. I feel like to me, it seems like just you, like that's just Aimee Eyvazzadeh but somebody could work the same as, as, as they did when they're taking insurance. Right. Or sometimes even less because you would have less staff now, you'd have to have less billing staff and so much less resources dedicated to that. It seems like you could work less.
[00:34:53] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: My issue is saying no. So I have people like that will reach out today and they'll be like, I just found out my IVF cycle didn't work. Can you get me in for a cycle this weekend? My fear is going to start and I'll be like, yes.
So I can't say no and not work as hard as I'm doing. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, I'm trying to say it's like, that's the issue that I have is if someone needs me, I'm not going to say, well, call me in March and then I'll put you on a list. There's no list with me. Once you're in, you're in and I, you know, once you're my patient, I will get you in right away.
And so that's, the issue is just the number of, patients ask me, like, how many people are you doing IVF at at one time? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't count. I don't think about like, when I'm going to see my last patient of the day, I just like look forward to each encounter and just keep going. And I don't have that kind of monitor in my head.
[00:35:44] Griffin Jones: Does that number keep going up then?
[00:35:47] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah.
[00:35:48] Griffin Jones: It gets more than it was last year than it was two years ago than it was three years ago.
[00:35:52] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah, it is.
[00:35:53] Griffin Jones: Okay. And so for you, it's just squeezing those patients into whatever minutes you have in the day for other people, that's going to look like an increasing wait list.
Which many of them are already dealing with? I think for some people there think, okay, well, is my market big enough? Like the New York, San Fran's LA. Those are the markets where I see this working. I don't think the Fairbank's Alaska's or the Buffalo new York's or some of the smaller markets, but then I'm wondering about the Houston's, the Dallas's, the Charlotte's, the Atlanta's and I think you probably could, if you had the right funnel, especially if, as you say 15% of your patients are from out of town.
[00:36:36] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Right. And I wake up, you know, I start seeing patients at 6:00 AM. So if I have, let's say my equitable scheduled at nine, and I have patients between nine and 10, I'll just start an hour earlier to see them. So it's not unusual for me to start at 6:00 AM and then I'm not, I don't, I basically don't stop working until I sleep.
[00:36:53] Griffin Jones: Well, other than that, of your inability to say no, because I think other people would just say, okay, well, let's make that a wait list. And even if we get to that, it's a good problem to have, because it, this wages are concerned that we wouldn't be able to meet the volume without having the insurance or the benefit paid patients.
Is there anything else for people to consider before they jump into this. And one thing I'm thinking about is the debate I had with Dr. Hariton on this show where I see more people doing this because I think that there's too many people that feel that are at a point where they're like, well, this just economically the decision is made for me.
And So anyway, before they make that decision, what else do they need to consider?
[00:37:40] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: You can't do what I do and own a lab. You just can't. I mean, I couldn't possibly.
[00:37:44] Griffin Jones: Wait the minute but we are in the episode that I asked if you could do this with a lab and you said you could.
[00:37:48] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I mean, no, no, you could go cash pay, but you can't do it the way I do it.
You can't see as many patients without cause the lab would take more like it would just be another thing to deal with. Like I'm already dealing with the practice and the HR stuff with employees and hiring and day-to-day stuff. I couldn't also then focus on the lab. And deal with that as well.
You know what I mean? So the reason why I can do this and do it as much as I do is because I don't have the responsibility of overseeing a lab at all. You know, I don't have to worry about staffing the lab and you know, what's going on there because other people who are really good at it, way better than I would ever be, are doing it for me.
[00:38:31] Griffin Jones: I just love people in business that makes their own thing. Like to me, that's what being an entrepreneur is about or a small business owner. They're not exactly the same thing, though. They're on the same spectrum, but the. Ideal of either is being able to craft something that you want. And if you craft something with a huge scale, you have to meet to the demands of the marketplace.
But if you're crafting something, that's, it doesn't have to scale to the entire market. You could say, all right, well, is there a segment of the market that allows me to do exactly. I want to do it doesn't matter if, if it's not for a hundred percent of the market, if I can even craft out 1% or two temper, whatever, it might be just enough to support the vision that I want to meet.
That's what I really admire about different business owners that do that. And I think you are just like, you're the example, the standard of who that person is. So how would you want to conclude to our audience? That is mostly. execs in the field. And a lot of them are practice owners, whether they're thinking about this or whether they've dismissed it, how would you want to conclude about this model of building a practice that self pay and so that you can run it the way you want to.
[00:39:54] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I would just say, don't be scared. You know, the patients will come. If you provide the best care, they're gonna find a way to work with you, even if it means not working with their insurance. And so if you care about people, they're going to know, and they're going to feel like they're not going to leave your practice if you make the change.
[00:40:11] Griffin Jones: Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh. I know how damn busy you are and so I appreciate you obliging me to come back on Inside Reproductive Health within less than a year of each other. Thanks so much for coming back on. And I hope people really enjoyed the show.
[00:40:27] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Thank you, Griffin. Pleasure to be on hope to see you again, maybe in another year.
[00:40:31] Griffin Jones: It'll be my pleasure.