E19: Building A 7-Figure Business | Courtney Garner
Want to know what it really takes to build a successful small business?
I’m sitting down with someone who’s been with me every step of the way—my amazing wife, Courtney Garner.
Together, we own and run multiple businesses, and today we’re talking about what it’s like to leave a stable job and jump into entrepreneurship while juggling family life.
You’ll hear firsthand how we balance it all, the leadership lessons we’ve learned, and why exceptional customer service is the key to staying ahead.
Plus, I’m revealing one of our secret weapons—how automating Google reviews boosted our SEO and brought in a steady flow of local customers. Want in on that strategy?
Grab our free Google review script template athttps://www.seangarner.co/reviewscripts and start automating your reviews for fast results.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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EPISODE 19 TRANSCRIPTION
Small Business Ownership
[00:00:00] Sean Garner: So what does it take to be a successful entrepreneur and small business owner? Maybe you're really good at your craft and the skill set that you have right now, but you're thinking about going out on your own and starting your business. I'm pretty pumped about this episode. I have my very first guest I've ever interviewed. It is my lovely wife, Courtney Garner.
[00:00:17] Sean Garner: Courtney is a family nurse practitioner. She specializes in thyroid dysfunctions and hormone therapy. And she's going to tell us her journey of being a nurse practitioner and starting her own medical practice on a laptop in her parents' dining room, all the way to building a very successful seven-figure medical practice. Let's get into Marketing Domination with my lovely guest, Courtney Garner.
[00:00:39] Sean Garner: All right. So I'm very honored and excited to have my beautiful bride, Courtney, on here with us today. Thanks for coming on here, babe. I know you're busy.
[00:00:53] Courtney Garner: Yeah, I'm glad to be here.
[00:00:55] Sean Garner: So what I want you to do is start off by telling us how the transition went from you being a nurse practitioner and working for somebody else to going off and doing it on your own and building this brand that you've built with this business here.
[00:01:13] Courtney Garner: So yeah, I think it was an interesting journey in that I really led for other companies before I started my own. And you know this really well because we walked through this journey together, but for a long time, I didn't have the intention of doing this on my own.
[00:01:27] Courtney Garner: I think we both kind of felt like, hey, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, and you've got a busy career as well. So maybe it just makes sense for me to work for other people. Then I think my eyes just started being opened to, hey, there are some challenges and things I'm really passionate about that are just not aligning with where I'm working.
[00:01:46] Courtney Garner: I was really fortunate and blessed that when we were in Miami, Florida, I got to help start a company and became the COO of that company. I actually pulled out of practicing medicine for a couple of years while I led that and saw it become a seven-figure business really quickly. I traveled all over the country teaching and growing this company.
Challenges Faced in the Medical Field
[00:02:08] Courtney Garner: I went through some really big obstacles with that and learned a lot at the same time. But it's just, I think, every stage and every position I held, it was one of those things where I thought, "Hey, I've learned some skills. I’ve learned some things I really want to do, and some things I don't want to do." There were things that, if I were in charge or had an opportunity to lead, I knew how I would want to do it.
[00:02:34] Courtney Garner: That experience really helped narrow my focus and passions. It was like grinding my teeth and cutting the diamond, in a sense, through working for others. Then, finally, there was a lot leading up to that—COVID happened. I got put on furlough, and we had our third child who was six to eight weeks old at the time. It made me think, "What the heck am I doing?" I was putting my career, my paycheck, and our family’s finances in someone else’s hands. I had this great skill set, I knew how to lead, and that gave me the confidence to say, "Courtney, you need to do this on your own."
[00:03:21] Courtney Garner: I needed to make it my own and do it in a kingdom-focused way. From there, the path just kind of rolled out. It was definitely a big transition. It wasn’t easy when it finally happened—it was kind of a stressful situation—but God paved the way, opened the doors, and I’ve grown even since then.
[00:03:38] Sean Garner: So, you were very successful, obviously amazing at what you do. You've got a great skillset, experience, and everything that it takes for the skillset that you have. First, tell everybody a little bit about what your actual medical practice is and your style of medicine. Then also, the leadership lessons and things you learned at some of those other companies—how that helped to launch you into being an entrepreneur now.
[00:04:05] Courtney Garner: I’m in functional medicine and have a passion, a niche I figured out early on in my career—helping people with their hormone health, whether it’s thyroid or sex hormones. Early in my career, I saw a lot of patients coming in with fatigue, feeling like their mood wasn’t right, whether they were irritable, anxious, down, emotional, or tearful. They felt like they couldn’t get control of that part of their life—things like weight gain and everything that comes along with it.
[00:04:39] Courtney Garner: It bothered me because I thought, "This isn’t how I want to live my life either." I saw so many practitioners just throwing a pill, an antidepressant, or some random thing at patients—band-aids—or saying, "It’s just part of getting older, part of menopause, or just being a busy mom or dad and being run down." And I thought, "Wait, timeout. There’s a root to this." What if we tried to pull people into biological alignment with how God created them to be? What would happen? How would their health and quality of life change?
[00:05:00] Courtney Garner: That’s really what I get to do every day, and I love it so much. Now, being a business owner, I get to do it in a way that’s kingdom-focused. I’m able to openly pray with people when I feel led and when it’s appropriate—it’s not every patient, but there have been instances where, owning my business, I’ve made a spiritual impact on people’s lives as well.
[00:05:42] Courtney Garner: And that’s so rewarding and fulfilling to be in that position now where I can do that freely and openly. As far as leadership lessons, there’s so much I could say. I think what I would tell you is I learned how to love people. I learned how I didn’t want to be treated. I had some job positions where I was harassed at work, treated really poorly by my bosses—or in one case, by my boss’s spouse—which was really ugly and honestly frightening.
[00:06:03] Courtney Garner: I got pretty much spit on for being pregnant for the third time and having another child. So, going through those things as a woman gave me empathy for other women. It made me ask, "Can I create a company where we’re mindful of people’s work-life balance, where we love them, and understand they need to leave early sometimes to pick up a kid or handle something?" Can we find a way to work around those things?
[00:06:22] Courtney Garner: So there was some of that. I’m not anti-hiring men, but I’ve been drawn to hiring a lot of women because I had such a bad experience in the workplace. I think there’s a beautiful way we can do this, and it’s about leading well—communicating vision is huge. Reminding people of the vision is important. When employees lose track of their vision, mission, purpose, or the wins, it’s tough.
[00:06:40] Courtney Garner: If we’re just always putting out fires or grinding without stopping to realize, "Hey, this patient got better," or "this amazing testimony came out of the situation," we miss something important.
[00:07:27] Courtney Garner: Then it can become a grind and people can lose their passion. I feel like that's a big part of my role as a leader, of leading the way and going first. I work the hardest in the company. I work the longest hours. At some point, that will probably shift and change as we develop leaders who can do some of that for us.
[00:07:48] Courtney Garner: But I just felt, as an early entrepreneur in a small business, that was my role and my job. I hope that brings clarity to that. That's a lot of points in a couple of minutes.
The Work and Sacrifice Behind Building a Business
[00:08:02] Sean Garner: No, that was good, babe. Talk more about that part of it though—the amount of work required. I think a lot of business owners, when they shift from working for somebody else to doing it on their own, they think because they were really good at the skillset or high up in a company, that just going out on their own will naturally start bringing results. Obviously, it helps to have those things, but be honest and talk about the work required to build the things you've built.
[00:08:34] Courtney Garner: I think we're in an interesting situation because we both have businesses we own individually, and then we have projects we do together. So, we're unique in that factor. We still have three kids, we're involved in church, and all the things.
[00:08:49] Courtney Garner: The schedule is very, very full. It's tough. I see a lot of young people now, especially the generation 10 to 20 years behind us. There's this big entrepreneurial push, and I don't know if it came from social media, Gary V, and all these big people saying "Hustle" and whatnot. They see this flashy lifestyle but have no idea the sacrifice it took to get there.
[00:09:18] Courtney Garner: The investment it took to get there isn’t just money; it's time. You give up yourself. It becomes like a child you're trying to nurture and grow. It's been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, honestly. But I love it, so I'm happy to do it in many ways. That doesn’t mean there aren’t days where I’m thinking, "Oh dear God, this is brutal," and I'm exhausted and would rather stay home, but I can't.
[00:09:36] Courtney Garner: There’s always that pull, especially as a mom, to figure out how to make my kids' events and still get everything done. I don't have it perfectly down. Every season is a little different. There have been times when we've had emergencies or critical issues with the business, and you and I had to come to an agreement that I needed to handle those things.
Balancing Business with Family and Faith
[00:10:14] Courtney Garner: You've taken a great position, and I'm grateful for it. I've said, "I've got the kids, go do it." There's a lot of that, but it's a grind. We're in year four now, four years and a few months of doing this. For the first two and a half to three years, I probably worked 60 to 70 hours a week. It was really intense—working late nights and then up again in the morning, trying to get out the door and do all the things.
[00:10:37] Courtney Garner: It's probably 55 to 60 hours a week now. It feels a little different, though, because we have three kids in three schools, so we're running all over the place. But it's still a grind. It's still a hustle. I'm still the one taking the hit when something doesn't go right. Work hard. And I would tell someone, especially young people, that I love the entrepreneurial vision and the hustle. I think it's a great idea.
[00:11:16] Courtney Garner: I don’t necessarily think a big college education is required for every person. That was my path because I needed a license, and I became an expert in this niche. But just because you're great at your craft doesn’t mean you'll be great at running a business. I think it has to be God-led.
[00:11:34] Courtney Garner: Young people could benefit from taking a step back. Maybe take a sales job or a position where you're serving someone else’s vision, learning skills, and gaining experience under someone else's leadership. There's so much value in that. Many young people want the big lifestyle but aren't willing to put in the work or serve someone else’s vision until they develop the skills to handle their own.
[00:11:58] Courtney Garner: A lot of businesses fail early. People burn out or constantly change what they’re doing. It's important to take a season or two, or even three, to serve someone else’s vision, even if they know entrepreneurship is their calling.
[00:12:36] Sean Garner: That's good, babe. I think a lot of people don't understand the work it really takes. There's very few people, except for those extremely close to us, that know the work, sacrifice, and time we've put into everything. From the outside looking in, it's easy to see something like a vacation on social media, but they don’t see everything else that happened.
[00:13:00] Courtney Garner: I had to take a vacation just to actually unplug, like, "Hey, I'm going away, everyone. I'm turning my phone off."
[00:13:07] Sean Garner: It's to say, "Don't bother me. I'm gone."
[00:13:09] Courtney Garner: I need to rest. I need to retreat. Our kids need us. They don't always get all of us through the week. We do our best with that, and I think we're intentional. We're improving on it all the time. Those times as a family, as a couple, and for me as an individual, have to happen. It's not from being flashy. It's about pushing really hard, then pulling back and taking a step back. A lot of times, God gives me a bigger vision, clarity, and I come back to work with a sharper focus and know the issues I need to tackle for the next quarter when we take time to step away.
[00:13:51] Sean Garner: And so now, knowing all of the work that it takes to do what you've built and what you've done versus just being able to like clock in, clock out, work the nine to five and do your skill set now, and maybe it's an easy answer because you know what the end result is, but would you have still done it?
Vision and Growth of the Medical Practice
[00:14:13] Courtney Garner: I don't think I chose this. God chose it. I think that's probably the hard part for me is that it would be a lot easier for me to just clock in and clock out somewhere in a lot of ways. But I think there was such a vision and burden on my heart of doing this in a specific way. That I would never have achieved if I was under someone else's roof, right? Like the time to be able to pray for people and different things like that. And just the environment that we've created here at the clinic, in that it is a hopeful environment. It's an environment full of peace, and I've cultivated the aesthetic of it. The smell of it, the taste of it, all the things. And so I never would have been able to accomplish that under someone else's roof, and I tried. I tried to help people, I tried to show people, right? But I can't totally change someone else's vision. When God begins to download that, it's like, okay, I know this is the vision for me to carry forward.
[00:15:05] Courtney Garner: And I need to kind of walk in that. And I forgot where I was going with that, but those are my thoughts.
[00:15:12] Sean Garner: So, with that though, when you went out on your own and built WellSpot Functional Medicine, it's not a copycat of the businesses you've worked for in the past. It was very, very unique to that. So this is one thing that as I was coming up with these questions, I really don't even know all of the answers to. Now, you can look back and see how God has been faithful and what this thing has become. Four years ago, when you started this on a laptop in my parents' kitchen table! The beginnings were so humble.
[00:15:48] Courtney Garner: The beginnings were so humble. So now what people see of this clinic is an unbelievable difference.
[00:16:00] Sean Garner: But did you have—so because of that, and I know how much it took and what the sacrifice really was, and it's true humble beginnings to what it is now—did you have the vision for where it's at now then, or were you just like, "Hey, hopefully this can just make enough money and replace my income?"
[00:16:20] Courtney Garner: That's a really good question. I think in the beginning, we were financially a bit strapped at that moment. Just to give the story, we were in Miami, we had high rent, I wasn't really making money while on maternity leave, and I had a gut feeling I wasn't going to go back. You and I were arguing about that for months of like, Hey, I think something's wrong here and they're not happy. I'm pregnant, all these things. It was really just…
[00:16:48] Sean Garner: Ignorance is bliss. It's always sunshine and rainbows.
[00:16:51] Courtney Garner: Yeah. And you're like, "You're going to go back. You make them a lot of money. How can they..." Right? And then I got put on furlough the day before I was supposed to go back, and we knew I wasn't going to have a paycheck. So, in that moment, we kind of thought, "Okay, we need to move and get out of here." We didn't know if it was Dallas or where we were supposed to go, but we just knew we needed to raise our family in a different environment and get into a more affordable, economical place to live, especially if I was going to open my own practice.
[00:17:19] Courtney Garner: That's just the reality of it. And so I think in the beginning, it was probably just more like, "Hey, can I make a living doing this?" And, "Can we create a lifestyle?" I remember a conversation with you on the balcony, overlooking the ocean of our condo in Miami, where we both just kind of had this vision of, "If we could create businesses that gave us time, freedom, and we could move about, what would that look like?" That's the type of life and vision that we want to have for our family and our kids—having some freedom of time and movement. So originally it was like, "Hey, I got to get some income so we can eat, and we can buy a house, and we can do all the things," and I can be a partner to you in that.
[00:18:01] Courtney Garner: But also, there was a piece of it where it's like, "Hey, I think I might be able to create a real business out of it." My vision was short-sighted in a way. And I think it was an interesting season because when COVID happened, the emergency mandates really opened up the doors for telemedicine to become a more acceptable thing.
[00:18:23] Courtney Garner: So it made it a really economically great way for us to start this practice. You pulled $5,000 out of your company, and we put it into what, at that time, was Restore U, name and brand. You helped me build the website. When we were talking about marketing, it was like, "I don't want to be self-centered. I really want to be seen as like, 'How can we help the customer?'" And we both kind of talked through this idea of StoryBrand, which you're certified in now. And you helped me build out all of that copy, all of that vision of like, "How do we communicate what we want to accomplish here?"
[00:19:01] Courtney Garner: And so I think part of that was really Holy Spirit-given. And then part of that was a partnership with us and just figuring out how to brand that and how to get across the message that we really wanted to. So we launched that from my mom and dad's kitchen table. And we got to do telemedicine and do it and start this business in a really inexpensive way.
[00:19:19] Courtney Garner: So we never had an ounce of debt to it. I worked part time in an urgent care. And then we did this on the other part time and then tell it could kind of grow. And I hired my first employee and like, we just do all the things once up at a time. And so I think I knew where I was going, Thought I wanted to go with it. I knew I could make a good living. I didn't know I could accomplish financially what we've accomplished. I didn't initially have big vision for a large clinic. I thought maybe micro clinics or maybe a space and just kind of keep the finances and, all of those things.
[00:19:52] Courtney Garner: And it evolved over time, right? To what, what it is now. And God's given me even bigger vision for it. So, yes and no, right? Like there definitely was this just like, Initial like crap. I don't have a paycheck. Let's try to get my paycheck back. And then it was like, okay, what could this be?
[00:20:10] Sean Garner: So now that it is... I love you, babe.
[00:20:13] Sean Garner: And I love everything that we do together because whenever, I mean, that's the thing. We've been married for 19 and a half years. I think everything that we do is awesome. Look how good you look. But, what it's become now though, is, yeah, it was you on your laptop at Mimi's house on the kitchen table.
[00:20:37] Sean Garner: And now you've got a staff of like, what? Six, five, six, seven, and then a lot of...
[00:20:43] Courtney Garner: Contractors that are working remotely as well.
[00:20:46] Sean Garner: So we got all that stuff going. And now that it's become here, you're on almost like a two or three-month waiting list for new patients.
[00:20:54] Courtney Garner: Yeah, we're almost booked out to 2025 right now.
[00:20:55] Sean Garner: It's awesome. What's the vision now? So now that you've made it, what is kind of the vision now for it? Has this success helped open up bigger vision, or is it now, let's do new things? Where's the vision at for it now?
[00:21:16] Courtney Garner: Yeah, so I guess we haven't talked about this too. Restore U became Well Spot Functional Medicine recently.
[00:21:24] Courtney Garner: And that kind of got birthed as a sister company to Well Spot IV. When I look at my life and try to kind of buy back time, I'm not sure that I have 100 percent clarity on what the functional medicine side becomes. I think there are ideas. Can we do supplement sales online? Can we build courses? Can we give masses of people a taste without it being 100 percent of my time? Because I can only take care of so many people personally without it just being overload or not giving the level of service I really want to give to people.
[00:22:00] Courtney Garner: So we're kind of at that threshold point. Does it look like hiring another practitioner? I don't know that I have complete clarity, and I'm just kind of open to whatever God says and wants to do. My focus right now is processes, people, and what the IV side looks like. I'm focusing on branding and just building that up, and seeing how it evolves and grows. I definitely think the functional medicine side has tremendous potential of becoming a multi-clinic site.
[00:22:25] Courtney Garner: I'll hold a little bit of that vision close to my heart because I just don't have 100 percent clarity on where we're going, but I think there's potential. My eyes are open to how big we can build this. Not from the sense of how much money we can make, but how many people we can impact. How do I find ways to impact more people without tearing apart our family or taking me away from the kids more? So, I think that's where I'm at.
Creating a Brand that Surpasses Name and Logo Changes
[00:23:01] Sean Garner: It's awesome. So talk about the building of the brand that you've created and built, because I think what's interesting and unique is the name has changed. Now we're also getting a bit more clarity on what the whole corporate structure could look like with everything. But you've built a brand that surpassed a name change, logo change, and all of that stuff.
[00:23:24] Sean Garner: Tell about what that was like to actually, and everything that was required for you to build this brand that you have now, but then also more specifically for medical professionals, nurse practitioners, other physicians, and stuff that have their own private practice. Because I think one of the things I hear a lot when talking to them is they think that it can't be done because they are very, like, most of them are hardcore medically minded.
[00:23:47] Sean Garner: They don't think they have a marketing or business mindset, or if they do, they think they're hand-tied because they think for some reason, because of HIPAA, they can't do marketing. We're not blasting patient lists or anything out there, but they struggle with building a brand in the medical practitioner space.
[00:24:04] Sean Garner: So talk about how you've done that—building a brand specifically in the medical space.
[00:24:11] Courtney Garner: I don't know that I honestly... it's hard for me to give a specific context because it's just kind of evolved. I think from the functional medicine side, that was a really good core product, a really good core move we made. So for me, it was about having a really good product. That was the most important thing. I never wanted to add money in ads or fuel a fire I didn't have control of.
[00:24:23] Courtney Garner: So it was about getting a really good product. I had a clear vision of how I wanted to serve people, what it would look like, what the offers would be, and the business model I wanted to create and building out, starting to build out some processes, right? Where we could just give, have a great product and give really good customer service. And so I think that was first and foremost. And I think people way underestimate that. I mean, I think it can happen easily when people kind of get into this space of online product sales, right? Where they're just like rapidly wanting to dump a fire and dump money into something, but they don't have a process built, right? And the same thing can happen in a, in a medical community. When you first start, you know, you might think, okay, I wanted to offer this type of medicine and this type of product, and then you realize like: “Oh, wow. But I'm getting overwhelmed and overloaded really quickly because they don't have the systems in place.” So if you add money in marketing, in some capacity to that, it can become a little crazy and out of control. You can end up causing a little damage of people just not having a good, a good customer service experience and then word of mouth, right?
[00:25:50] Courtney Garner: So for me, I'm really big on integrity. I'm really big on justice. I'm really big on being the person of, if I told you I was going to do something, I would do it. And so I think leading with that was incredibly helpful. Because we had such a good word of mouth and part of that probably came from people knowing me as an artist in my field or niching or being an expert in this narrow field of mine.
[00:26:18] Courtney Garner: And then as we started introducing this way of doing it, it was rapid fire word of mouth. I would say that 80 percent of my practice is built on referrals. With the functional medicine, I've had to do no marketing except for you building a really good funnel, a lead generator, the website, and an email campaign. That was our initial structure. Everything else became word of mouth and social media content.
[00:26:42] Courtney Garner: I'm not even the best at social media content, but it's creating authentic things that really show what you do, what you specialize in, and how you can help people. That was the initial part of it. I think if we can lead with those things... as a medical practitioner, our heart, we didn't get into this for money or fame. We just wanted to help people and have some autonomy and authority to prescribe and do what we do.
[00:27:17] Courtney Garner: I think a lot of practitioners will shy away from the idea of this big fancy marketing scheme because they're not business-minded that way. They want to focus on being an artist, being really good at their job, and caring for people. Especially nurse practitioners. It just comes from that loving, caring, nurturing place. That can be challenging for a lot of people.
[00:27:34] Courtney Garner: Then I see people do the opposite, where they never step foot in a practice and then they market, which drives me crazy. It's probably my pet peeve in medicine because I think there's so much value in cutting your teeth on clinical application and being really good at getting people better.
[00:28:00] Sean Garner: I don't want to show too much behind the scenes, but just letting everyone know what you have. From the marketing funnel system, you've got a seven-figure medical practice without paid ads.
[00:28:15] Sean Garner: Praise God. But from the marketing and the business systems and stuff, I remember in the garage gym, on the dry erase board, we wrote out the brand script and the brand messaging. Then we even sketched out what the website would look like on the board, built the website, created the lead generator. You've got the hormone therapy quiz for men and women, and they get plugged into an email sequence. That was the baseline of your marketing.
[00:28:56] Sean Garner: But the thing that I think has made you so successful with this is you're very system and process-oriented. I think it's because you were a COO, learning how to run an operational medical company. You put such a premium focus on your offer. You're not just a normal medical practitioner where people use their insurance and come in for regular appointments.
[00:29:13] Sean Garner: You created this unique, smart way of packaging what you do into a membership, a cash-pay membership offer that's really clear to understand and provides a ton of value. Then you over-deliver and serve all your people. That's why you get so many referrals. When they are referred, they come into the funnel, they see how it all makes sense, they get plugged in, and you have all these great follow-up systems.
[00:29:34] Sean Garner: That's what I think has really been key for part of the success you've had—you're very caring, babe, and I love that about you.
[00:29:44] Courtney Garner: Thank you. I think, and you brought this up too, right? Of like, just the focus of marketing towards your customers and making them the hero. You do that really in a beautiful way.
[00:29:56] Courtney Garner: And so, I think that mentality of just like, how can I make someone better? And how can we go above and beyond to serve people and love people? I’m not going to land 100 percent of the shots I take in terms of 100 percent success rate, right? But we have a really high success rate, and if someone's not getting better, we dig deeper to help them find the help they need or know their testing options and go further.
[00:30:25] Courtney Garner: I will go above and beyond to make sure that people who have entrusted themselves to me get everything I can give. The business model for that has worked really well. And, yeah, I think building that foundation of the brand and then having vision for opening facilities that offer other services—where it’s not necessarily my time, like IV therapy or sauna—is really what the WellSpot IV brand came out of.
[00:30:59] Courtney Garner: It’s interesting because it went from telemedicine, where I was taking patients from different states (I'm licensed in a couple of states), to now having this HQ HubSpot in the small town of Owasso, Oklahoma. It’s kind of narrowed us back into being more local, especially with the IV stuff, but now it’s just about building that product really well.
[00:31:25] Courtney Garner: As a business owner, it's this process over and over again, right? Do I have a really good product? Do I have good customer service? Can I deliver? Are my processes in place? Do I have the right people in place? And once all that is done, now I can add fuel and money to it. Right. So, the IV side will be a little different. Yes, word of mouth, but I think I'm still in the position of trying to figure out some of those more advanced treatments I really want to provide that I think could be unique in the market and really help people in a deeper way with autoimmune and cancer therapies and some different things that I really want to try to do. And then, I think it'll be interesting as to how things evolve over the next six months to a year, because, okay, we're getting it to a place where we've got the people, we've got the systems, we're working on finalizing like all the products that we really want, and then seeing what you can do with just really like adding money to the marketing effort and ads and different things to make sure that people in the community are aware and then wherever we grow next, right?
[00:32:23] Courtney Garner: So, I think it's going to evolve differently. I think the functional medicine side will continue to be that, like that word of mouth and all of those things. And now we're seeing this transition of like, okay, it's not just about treating 250 patients a year. Can we treat a thousand or 2,000 with this IV side? So the marketing need for that is different.
[00:32:42] Sean Garner: Yeah. So talk a little bit about maybe, and I don't know if you would have specific insights on this, but some of the tactics that you've seen work, because we went from telemedicine with WellSpot Functional Medicine, the medical clinic. And now we've opened up the second business, WellSpot IV, which is the physical location that the medical practice is now inside of. That is the IV therapy lounge, the infrared sauna, and all of that good stuff. But what are some of the marketing tactics that you've seen work for it, going from telemedicine nationally, to now having a very specific market that we're focusing on?
Marketing Tactics for Telemedicine and Local Business
[00:33:23] Courtney Garner: I think again, it's where that word of mouth has been so effective and come in. I would also say your Google reviews and building SEO have become way more important. And I think, fortunately for me, I'm sleeping with a marketing guy, so...
[00:33:41] Sean Garner: Get some perks there.
[00:33:42] Courtney Garner: I've got some perks, but I think, I don't know that... it's not my job, right? I'm sitting here, seeing patients all day long. So I guess I would flip it and just ask you, as far as, you know, what I've seen as the business owner, if I had just hired you as my marketer and your company to do it, I think the SEO has been huge. You've built out a funnel system on the IV side.
[00:34:05] Courtney Garner: I believe through the software that you're starting, you've started, where it's automating Google reviews and making sure that we're reengaging to get that Google review and we're crushing Google reviews. We've beaten out competitors on Google. Like if people are typing in IV therapy near me, we're beating out competitors that have way bigger websites because your SEO has been incredible. I think it's this Google review thing, but you could speak into that as far as what you tried.
[00:34:35] Sean Garner: Two things. One, again, this is where I just love our power combo together for stuff like this. It's a team, it's a partnership. And because I'm not in, I maybe go into the clinic like once a week just to check on stuff or maybe help with setting up one of the EMR software or something like that. Just say, "Hey, the tech guy, bring me my chargers that I left at home." But you're there seeing the patients and seeing people's interactions directly. So you get more direct customer feedback.
[00:35:02] Sean Garner: But I think some of the things that... I don't want to make myself sound like I was super smart and wise. I think it just happened by accident. And now looking back, I'm making other clients and stuff do it because I'm like, that was actually really smart, even though it wasn't intentional. One of the things that we did is we knew that WellSpot IV was going to be a physical location, and we knew what market we were going to serve. We actually built the website and started doing SEO, local SEO, webpage content, and blog articles before the business was live.
[00:35:24] Sean Garner: So what I try to explain to businesses is your website and your marketing funnel are the exact same as your brick-and-mortar location. It's just the digital location. Your website and sales funnel are your digital storefront. If you know you're going to a market, it's a lot cheaper to build out digital real estate than it is a physical location. It costs six figures to build out the physical location, but digitally, you can build that for 5-10K. You can build out your digital storefront. We were actually ranking at the top before we even opened the facility because we had done all the prep work while the physical build-out was happening.
Automating Google Reviews and Local SEO Success
[00:36:22] Sean Garner: Then, one of the things that I think has been unique lately is, with the software that we're launching, we automated all the Google reviews. We went from having 25 or 30 reviews after being open for about a year.
[00:36:37] Courtney Garner: We're over 120 or something now, right?
[00:36:38] Sean Garner: That's right.
[00:36:39] Sean Garner: And we didn't touch it.
[00:36:40] Courtney Garner: We didn't ask people for those either. It's just, the system was automated. In the beginning, it was like, "Make sure you ask everybody to do it while they're there," and, you know, that mentality, and these little cards, which are great. But now, even if our staff or the patient misses this as they're leaving, they're still followed up with digitally, which is so cool.
[00:37:05] Courtney Garner: And I think we just did that like two or three months ago, right?
[00:37:09] Sean Garner: Maybe four, I'm not sure, but I mean, it blew up, right? It helped tremendously and it's helped us rank way better, I think. Last month, we had our biggest month ever on the IV side. So it's definitely snowballing and working.
[00:37:23] Sean Garner: Yeah. We went from 27 reviews after being open almost eight or nine months, and then in the past three months, we've gone to 120. So we've gained a hundred reviews in like two and a half, three months. We haven't done anything extra because if you ask your staff to do it, they're going to forget. They're going to get busy. They're not going to make it a priority. So we have it all automated. We built that whole system out and it's been helping a lot for the local business.
[00:37:41] Sean Garner: Babe, this was awesome. I definitely know that. I guess our teaser would be as we will. Courtney and I are going to be starting a podcast shortly.
[00:37:57] Sean Garner: We've been talking about it for like over a year. We've been talking about it.
[00:37:59] Courtney Garner: Yeah. It's time. We're past due.
[00:38:01] Sean Garner: Yeah. Starting a podcast called the Married Business Podcast. So we'll share that everywhere whenever we start it, but we want to help other married business owners understand what it takes to have a strong marriage, stay focused on God, not lose your kids, and build a successful business at the same time. Because I think that's what it takes to really have it all. In society now, people think having it all is like, "Oh, they make a bunch of money." I'm like, well, yeah, but they're on their second marriage or all those other things.
[00:38:27] Courtney Garner: Right. And people underestimate the cost of just doing business too, right? It's like, you know, revenue can be this, but it doesn't mean it's what you're making, what you're taking home, right? It is a lot of work. And in the middle of all of this, it's like keeping the main thing, the main thing, right? The kids are so important to us. Being a part of the church and building the kingdom is so important to us.
[00:38:46] Courtney Garner: Cause one day we're going to die, and the Lord's coming back. So, I think it's essential that we have our priorities in order. And when they're out of order, I think that's one thing I'm grateful for—you’re pretty great. Sometimes I don't want to hear it, but you're pretty great at bringing me back to center and being like, "Court, the patients can wait. They're going to come and go. Your kids need you. We need you this week." Right? And just try to shift us back in place because, with my mentality of just wanting to help people so much, it's easy to get distracted and put everything that really is important second. So it's huge. That was another story.
[00:39:26] Sean Garner: Okay. Yep. I'm excited for that. So for everybody else though, right now, how is the best, like, what's, what's the websites to go check it out? Maybe if they, they just want it like, "Hey, that sounds pretty cool from the medicine side." Like how can they get in touch with the clinic that maybe they're local to El Paso, Tulsa area, and they want the IV, tell us that one.
[00:39:44] Sean Garner: And then where are you most active on social for people to connect?
[00:39:47] Courtney Garner: WellspotFunctionalMedicine.com would be the functional medicine practice where we do the thyroid, hormones, weight management, all the nitty-gritty optimizing health and wellness. WellspotIV.com is the IV side, and we have sauna and all of those things. Our current location for that is here in Owasso, Oklahoma.
[00:40:07] Courtney Garner: And then, I am the most active on Instagram. My handle is @CourtneyGarner, G-A-R-N-E-R. There's no D in there, folks. So don't get distracted.
[00:40:21] Sean Garner: All right, babe. Well, thanks so much. I love you. And thanks for sharing a little bit about what you've built and hopefully it helps some other people.
[00:40:27] Courtney Garner: Okay. Love you. Thank you. Bye.
[00:40:31] Sean Garner: So I hope you guys see and understand now, one, why I'm so happy all the time. Cause look at my wife, she's amazing. But you also can see now what it takes to build your business and that it does take work, effort, sacrifice, but also how wise she is with building out the systems, putting the marketing systems and everything in place and creating these really good offers and just ultimately serving and caring for people.
[00:40:56] Sean Garner: It's going to be a lot of work, but you also still have to be passionate about the people that you are called to serve. And on the very end there, we talked a little bit about those Google reviews and how we were able to automate that process to help our local business rank so high very quickly on the Google map pack.
[00:41:13] Sean Garner: Well, guess what? We got a free gift for you guys. You guys get to go to SeanGarner.co and I'm going to actually give you the review script template that we use. It's going to show you the scripts that we use, how we space them out and everything, the full automation, everything. You guys go to SeanGarner.co and download the Google review script template. You guys can start implementing that in your own business so you can start getting more reviews. So link will be down here, down at the bottom of the video. So make sure you guys check that out and grab it so you can get your business going.
