Back in the 1980’s a band called Big Audio Dynamite released a song called Medicine Show, you can listen to it here.
I always remember the lyrics to Medicine Show because it made me figure out what a medicine show actually was when the covered waggon comes to town with the hair tonic or the tonic that cures arthritis or gout or any other symptoms or problems that the town might be suffering from.
There's usually a plant in the crowd, and the guy sells it.
The guy in the crowd drinks it and he gets better and everybody buys it.
It's like Only Fools and Horses.
But medicine show is an important concept because the guy comes to town and he sells to a tribe (not to the whole town, they won't buy it; there will be plenty of sceptics) and when he’s sold enough, he moves on to another town and when he comes back again, the first guys are ready to buy again because they've run out of tonic.
The medicine show guy hopes that they've talked to other people and he might sell more and so he continues to do his rounds.
Building a tribe like medicine show is the best way to engage in promoting repeat business for your business overall.
Looking after the people who you set out to look after and looking after them well is the way that you build a business over time, which will scale and succeed.
The other alternative is to be a corporate, and it is to hit everything with a massive blunderbuss, trying to scrape up as much business as you possibly can (not really delighting anyone but just supplying as much as you can to as many as you can).
Dental practices and dental businesses are generally not big enough to be that and although there are corporates who try with 50% of the profession, all they're trying to do is roughly hold together a conglomerate of tiny small businesses in one place.
Success and joy for us exists in understanding that our job is to delight and keep and move on and delight and keep and move on.
If we continue to delight and we try to keep, the people that we keep will promote us enough to allow us to continue to move on.
Blog Post Number - 3390
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