Dr. Deepak Dugar
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Being a yes man in life, it seems like it's the right thing to do when you're a young entrepreneur. You just say yes to everything, every meeting, every moment, every dinner, everything. You just go to anything and you end up wasting so much time and energy.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Well, I think one of the biggest things with luxury experience is you've got to have a funnel that... weeds out the waste of time leads. And I think a lot of us think about funnels as like, oh, let me not lose a single lead, right? When you're starting out, you create these funnels and you have these, you know, and you want every single lead. You don't want to lose a single one.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
You're getting mad at your employees that they missed the email on that one and they didn't get the right phone number on that one, right?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
versus worrying about the high level you know youthful leads you want quality leads you don't want to just want every lead and i think that's what a lot of young entrepreneurs get wrong too is they want to create these massive email lists these massive things and i get it at some point there's a scale to those things when you sell your list or do things like that but
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
In a medical space, especially for luxury concierge branding, where I'm trying to create myself as the Hermes of what we do in our business, you know, not even a Chanel Louis Vuitton, like straight up to the Hermes Birkin bag of what we do. This is the Rolls Royce. This is the Birkin. That's the branding we took from day one. So the concept is we want quality leads.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And so anyone, you know, we have a filter. So in order to book an appointment with me, first of all, just to talk, it's $500 to spend 10 minutes with me basically. basically to get to do the consultation. And that $500, I don't, I don't, I'm not trying to make a business off of $500. That's not how this works.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
It's a, it's a quality lead generator where if you're not willing to spend that, then you're probably not going to be comfortable spending 20 to 40,000 on a surgery. So it's okay to let those go. Cause a lot of patients will call them like, Oh, this will either do a free consult or what happens if I don't do surgery? Can I get the money back? And listen, I understand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Listen, if you don't go to Hermes, you don't go to Rolls Royce, if you don't have the budget for it. And that's totally fine. There are lots of options. There's lots of surgeons out there. So there's nothing disrespectful about it. We tell the patients with grace, oh my God, God bless. There's so many good options out there for you. Do not worry.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yes. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Thank you, Ryan.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
However, to book a consultation with Dr. Dugard is $500 and that is non-refundable. And we make it very clear. And we're just very matter of fact. The other thing I've learned is You got to have employees who are comfortable talking about money. Money is such an awkward thing for the average person because they're not trained in sales.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
But when you're in sales, you have to be very comfortable talking about money. Money is just a commodity. It's just something you use to get what you want out of life. So it's not some... weird, scary thing. It's like no one wants to talk about sex with their kids. That's not one of those. It's just money. It's just pieces of paper that you collected and now you spend it on something you want.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
So it should be a good thing. It should be an exciting moment to spend your money on something like me because I'm an exciting moment for most people in their lives. And so that's number one and two is funneling them through quality lead generation.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And then I think having the concierge ability to talk to them in a really respectful way and make sure they feel heard, make sure they feel listened to. And have people not overworked with the minutiae of your business. Every business, how much minutiae is there? Like, look at your current podcast. There's a giant TV behind you. Someone has to make sure it works.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
There's an audio guy making sure the audio works. There's a video guy making sure the video works. There's seven, eight people doing minutiae right now for Ryan to be able to do what he does, which is deliver a message to the person listening right now. And so I think the key is we have to look at our employees that way, too, is I don't want the video guy worrying about the audio guy's work.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
I don't want the audio guy worrying about the video guy's work. Everyone's gotta take care of their thing so that the luxury person who is selling can just talk, just focus on that client eye to eye, in a way that makes them feel at home. And then we took a lot of inspiration from hotels and from some of our luxury brands that we identify with. And we have hotel-infused scents in our lobby.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And we have minimalistic restoration hardware, minimalized decor everywhere. So it kind of has this inviting feel and you have this cleanliness to it. So you get that medical sense with this calming sense as well. It kind of fuses together. And we kind of create this like holistic energy of concierge medicine where it's one level above whatever other office they went to.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And my whole thought is that if we put that level of attention into this, imagine how much attention I'm putting into the surgery.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
entrepreneurs are so instinctively they try to be altruistic you know a little bit and you know but it's a business at the end of the day this isn't a charity it is it is and i think transparency transparency is so important and i think for young entrepreneurs the mistake is you want to be the big dog day one and you have to work your way up you got to be the big dog in your world right so you can't just be the top dog you can always be a big dog but you got to do it in your way like i didn't start charging this much money when i started out
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Because I do believe there's such a thing as called market demand. So even though I was looking at the biggest guys in the world as my competitors, I wasn't pricing like they were 10 years ago. I was pricing in my world, much lower, probably 60, 70% less than they're charging. But I still use them as my competitive drive to want to be better than them one day.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
didn't say it has to be today so I didn't beat myself out mentally and go home sad every day that I'm not as good as the Michael Jordan at the time right I knew listen I'm Kobe it's gonna let me work my magic over the years I'll get my skill set up and I'm gonna win my championships in a few years but today let me focus on being the best I can and I stayed my price point
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And I stayed my filters based on where I was. So, you know, there was a time where I was charging $5,000 to $7,000 for Rhinoplasty. And then it goes up to $10,000 to $12,000. Then it went up to $15,000 to $18,000. Then it went up to $20,000 to $25,000. And then $20,000 to $30,000. Right? So these price increases, I didn't just arbitrarily make them.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
What happens is the market dictates your pricing based on how good you're getting, the results you're getting, and what the world says you're worth. compared to the metrics of everyone else that's offering the same service, right? So a Birkin bag doesn't just get to decide it's $30,000, $20,000 versus a Chanel, which is 15,000. It's the market demand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
The market has said Chanel's worth 10 to 15 and Birkin's worth 20 to 40. And so... You have to listen as a young entrepreneur to what your market demand is for you. You can't just make up these fake things either. You got to give value and you got to make happy clients and focus on the clients, make them really happy, especially the first hundred, five hundred thousand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Really lean in to give them the best experience possible. And then you'll find out if your service is even good or not. A lot of entrepreneurs just want to make money, and they're not focusing on the value add. You've got to be good at your craft first, good at your business, good at your service, and then you can figure out about how to increase your pricing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
But, you know, I meet so many young entrepreneurs who want to just, you know, oh, well, I'm just going to charge this much, and I'll take on these clients, and they have this whole business plan as if they've done it for 20 years. But it's their first day. Knowing where you are, what stage you're in, you've got to listen to what stage you're in as well.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think I think one of the keys was starting a practice and especially in such an elite place like Beverly Hills, which is one of the most competitive markets for what I do. So no matter what business you run. No matter what business you're starting up or continuing to dominate in, you know, the key is figuring out your angles and niches.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Well, my space is very visual. So you have to think about what space you're in for business, you know, depending on what type of market you're in. Mine was very visual. And so what I found from day one is that I could spend a huge ad budget on Facebook ads or Google ads from day one with mediocre content. Or I could figure out how to make really good content in my space.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And what makes good content for me is different for every business. So for me, this kind of podcast clip, patients usually don't care about this in my world. And it depends on your business. In your business, this works really well. In my world, what they care about is they want to see a beautiful girl's before and after picture. Are you saying I'm not pretty enough, Doc?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
The problem is you're too good looking. There's nothing to improve.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
For me, it was how to create these beautiful... So my entire mission for the first three to four years of my practice was to get the most beautiful patients who I could transform them in such an amazing way that they looked even more beautiful after, but even the before was beautiful. So if you have the before beautiful and then the after is even more beautiful, it's almost like, huh,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
That's insane. Because if you take someone who's not beautiful and make them beautiful, it's kind of like, all right, well, that's what Placid is supposed to do. But if you take someone who's already beautiful and you make them even more beautiful, you say, oh God, this is art. This is incredible. It's like drinking a fine bottle of wine.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
It's like drinking a first grilled Chateau, you know, a Mouton Rothschild from 1982 versus you drinking a regular, you know, $20 bottle of wine from Napa. And you're like, Oh, wow. This is art. Like you realize like, wow, this is expansion of my entire vision of what I could be with my life. Right.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
When you drink that wine, when you have that caviar, when you taste that gold rated steak and you say, oh, my God, I didn't know steak could taste like this. Right. These are the moments where you unlock your brain to what the most beautiful parts of life are. It's almost like the movie The Matrix where the guy's eating the food in The Matrix.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
He's like, I know the steak is fake and I know it's fake. but I still like it, you know? And that's what life is about. We gotta enjoy. It can't just be about problems. One of my favorite quotes is like, life cannot be about problems every day. And it can be. Like, we gotta enjoy life. And that's what I found is that when people come to me, they're not here for problems. They're here to have fun.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
They wanna look better, feel better. Like, this is a luxury good. So you have to understand your business really well. And the core of my business is people want luxury and they wanna feel and look even better. They're not coming to me for some sad problem. And so knowing that I wanted to juxtapose my marketing to present that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And so I used the best before and afters I could use to show them what my results were. I didn't spend any money. I had a zero marketing budget for the first five years of my practice. I got organic PR.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
I think for me in Beverly Hills, coming with a niche was really important because there's so many famous, articulate, well-marketed plastic surgeons. So how do you even create a little wave, like a small one, not even a big one? And I think the way I figured that out was by going really hard into one singular procedure.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
I had a couple of patients who randomly came to me and they're like, hey, you know, I work for E-News or hey, I work for Variety and I would love to do my surgery with you with or without any participation. And if I do do my surgery, would you allow me to write about it? And I was like, of course. And then even though you got to deliver and you got to make them want to write good things about you.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
So for me, it was just organic PR. Also being in Beverly Hills, being social. You know, I take a large part of my time to do the best socializing in L.A. Like I would tell you, you know, you talk to anyone in L.A., the best socializing aspects of L.A. I'm a member of all of them, whether it's Bird Streets Club. Soho Malibu, Nobu Malibu. I'm coming to hang out with you, Doc.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
I'll show you the best 24 hours in L.A. you can see. And so, you know, from a social standpoint, I also made it a point, make your friends your clients and make your clients your friends, depending on who they are. On any given week, I'm taking someone from Dubai, Saudi, India, Kuwait, I'm taking them to dinners. I'm taking my patients from London and Paris out for lunches and brunches.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And you create a lifestyle that mixes with work so it doesn't feel like work all the time. And also, you genuinely want to spend time with these people. So part of my marketing was social. And I think people don't realize how important that is. You know, sometimes you'll see a business entrepreneur who gets to the next level before you and you're like, how the hell did he do that?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
I'm spending so much on ads. I'm spending so much on this. How did he get there? And it's because he was at the right dinner or he was at the right lunch and he was at the right table.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs forget to, you spend a lot of time going to these useless dinners and these useless, you know, meetups and you sit in the corner and you find someone to drink with or you start talking to some chick or something.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Instead, what you should be focusing on is how to create your own socialization stratosphere that you can utilize and leverage the people at your table to get you to the right table.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yeah, because if you're sitting with the Saudi sheikh and then he introduces you to the Qatari sheikh, like these connections is what life is about. And I think that's where, you know, being told – You know, just like anything, like who's the best plumber in town? It's all subjective.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And so if Tommy's the best plumber to you and you tell Jim he's the best plumber, then Tommy's the best plumber to Jim too. And so it's who tells, who talks about you is more important than what's being said almost. And that's where I feel like my marketing was really organic and tried to put more social influence into my marketing than I did dollar spend.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
You know, Tesla, when they started, people forget that Tesla started out as a roadster company. That was it. They sold one car. They were Tesla Roadster. That was it. That was the entire company. That was their strategy. And then they perfected the concept of it. They never even released it, but they perfected the concept of it to get the waves in the car world.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Well, I think I think one of my favorite things is I use a lot of comparisons to basketball because I think it's so fitting in my life. But like. The day you win the championship, you're the championship player. The next morning, you start all over. You start all over.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And so I think accolades are fun to look back on to remind yourself that that was a good day or that was a good year, but it has nothing to do with the future. So whatever I've done up until yesterday was my rewards for yesterday. I gotta go earn my reward tonight. I have not earned my reward for today yet. So every day you got to earn the reward, the privilege.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
What an honor to be good at something, to be great at something and to be able to do it well and to help people along the way. And you got to do it every day. So whatever treats I want today and tomorrow, I got to earn those today and tomorrow. And so I always look at life as like. You know, you never get too privileged, never get too comfortable. Always want the journey. Always enjoy the stress.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
You know, Kobe Bryant famously said, you know, the victory was not the trophy. It was the 4 a.m. sleepless nights. It was the extra two workouts a day that he never knew if it would matter or not, but he put them in anyways. Like that's truly what winning is to me. And so I like being good. And every surgery, you know, just like no matter what business it is, whether you're serving a bowl –
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
at an evergreen or whether you're building construction buildings and building high rises every building every patient every food every meal that's the fun for me so you know I have three surgeries the next day and three surgeries the day after that those patients don't care how many good surgeries I've done they don't care if Ryan says I'm the best they don't care if a hundred thousand patients say I'm the best
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
They need the best on their nose that day, right? So this tech CEO that I'm doing on Monday, who's one of the most famous CEOs in the world, no one cares. He doesn't care how famous I am or how great I am. He wants his breathing to be the best breathing he's ever had in his life. And so you got to keep winning, keep winning, keep winning, championship after championship.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And you only get to celebrate that one singular success. You don't celebrate the whole life.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And that's how Tesla became where it is today. But You know, same thing. We went in really heavy with one singular procedure. I do what's called a scarless nose rhinoplasty. So traditional rhinoplasty, you make a cut at the base of the nose, lift up the hood of the nose, take it apart, you reconstruct it from scratch. It's like tearing a house down and rebuilding a brand new glass box.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yeah, my pleasure. So my website is ScarlessNose.com, like ScarlessNose.com. And my name is Dr. Deepak Dugar, D-U-G-A-R. I'm on Instagram at DeepakDugarMD. I'm on Twitter X and I'm on Tik Tok.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
under the same name deep digger md love to share if anyone has any questions just shoot me a dm and anywhere my team is amazing we get hundreds of dms some days depending where in the world and what i posted and what people liked but shoot us a dm we'll always respond we try our best to get through them all as best as we can
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yes, sir. I'll see you in LA soon. We'll go to Nobu.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Like most modern homes today, they all look the same. Versus if you have like a beautiful French chateau, you don't tear it down. You just restore, refine, improve. And so coming at it from a more natural lens, scarless technique, all internal incisions, it got a lot of attention really fast, really early on. And I think that's probably one of the biggest success pillars I had.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
You know, one of many, but that was one of the biggest ones was finding a little niche. You know, it's like those restaurants that have really small menus and they just get really good at that one type of burger.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yeah, well, I'll say 99% we cannot name because we have a really, really famous clientele.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yeah, yeah. No, no. But the ones that have gone public, like recently we were just featured on this Bravo TV show called Denise Richards and Her Wild Things.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
charlie sheen and denise richard's daughter sammy sheen she did her nose job with us and we got to document the entire thing and she put it on the shows on two of the episodes we worked with a lot of other celebrities like daniella monet um mia khalifa um you know i i spent a lot of time working with some of my friends on content that are really famous the influence influence space not actually patients but just close friends of mine like
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
uh adam w and hannah stocking and king batch and some of the most famous influencers in the world that you'll see me in a lot of their videos so we you know we have a lot of organic relationships a lot of really high-end celebrity patients and then you know just influencer friends that i i get to have the privilege of being around and working with and you know one thing that you know one of my mentors always told me is that you know the world is full of mediocrity you know and it's like it's really easy to even get rewarded you can get rewarded in this life for being mediocre
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Most mediocre people, even in business, it's a good life, you know, because even mediocrity takes a certain amount of work. It's not like mediocrity is easy. It's a good amount of work to be mediocre, but it's a lot of work to be great. And it's an insane amount of commitment and excellence to be the best in the world at what you do and really want to be one of the best in the universe.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And I think, you know, in business it's tough because you really have to break down niches. You know, what is the best businessman in the world? Is it the richest, right? That it's, okay, Elon Musk, that's it, no one else can talk, everyone shut up. And that can't be how life works. So it's gotta be within your branding of business and how you do business that you become the best in your cycle.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
So for me, when I look at competitive energy, I don't wanna be like the best plastic surgeon in the world. I wanna be the best scarless rhinoplasty surgeon to have ever lived. And that's kind of the way that I approach it within that niche. And so, yeah, that's kind of how I think about what I do and how I put that mindset to it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
So celebrities and all that stuff is just like, you know, it's a privilege and it's an honor because they truly have the ability to go to anyone in the world.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
So when they come to us, you know, whether it's a billionaire, whether it's a Saudi Sheikh, whether it's, you know, one of the most famous celebrity children in the world who comes to us, you know, those moments mean a lot because it shows that the skill and craft has earned beyond just the marketing reputation.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Well, I think I'm one of three siblings. My older sister, older brother, both definitely smarter than me, both definitely more charismatic. One thing I had was I had a little bit more dream power. I think I just dreamed a lot. And I think I put that energy to like, you know, almost a competitive edge with my own mentality of how to be the best.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
I also take everything personally in a good way and bad way. You know, taking things personally in business is stressful, as you know, because then you take every pain point home with you at night and you're sitting there at the dinner table thinking about every pain point.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
But it's also good, too, because it's like, you know, when you watch Michael Jordan in The Last Dance, you know, he's like everything they said, he's like, I took that personally. I took that personally. And you almost create this competitive drive. So when I look at my competitors in town, and I think one thing that everyone should learn, and this is what I did early on, is
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
You have to be so wise about picking your competition. Do not compete with losers. Do not compete with idiots. Do not compete with mediocrity. I picked, I literally looked around, I was like, who's the best in the entire planet at this craft? I picked the three, four people and I said, that's my competition.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And people think that's crazy, but what you do is you rise to their level to be able to compete with them. They always say, you know, don't let you, don't meet your idols, right? Because, you know, your idols become your enemies. That's only if you're really good at what you do. And so I think the key was picking the right strategic partners. And these aren't partners. These are enemies.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And these are not really, facetiously, but they are my competitors that I take personally. So when I see them do something, I say, I want to do it more. When I see them do something good, I say, I got to do it twice as good. And I think picking the right competitive partners to dance and spar with. And this is how, if you look at Federer, Djokovic, and you look at Nadal,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And that energy, they hated each other at one point. You see this camaraderie today. They're all hugging and kissing. That didn't exist during the 15 years they were playing competitively against each other. They used each other as ammunition to get better and better and better.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
So that's my biggest success secret, I think, is I picked the best and most competitive people in the world to be my competition. I didn't go for the people at my level. I went for the people at the top.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Yeah, and I feel like, yeah, I completely agree with you, and I completely sympathize and empathize exactly with what you said because it's the same for me. It's bad hiring, good hiring, bad hiring, and I'm back to good hiring. I think the team around you makes such a difference, and I think the problem is that, again, mediocrity doesn't look mediocre sometimes.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
Mediocrity can put itself in a nice facade, say the right things. But what is success? What's the difference between an NBA player who's the worst in the NBA or the NBA player who's the best in the NBA? They both practice their butts off. They both work out hardcore. They all have six packs. They all eat healthy. They all train. They all work nonstop. So what's the difference?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
It's not the facade of the NBA player and seeing how tall they are. It's that at 4 a.m., the mediocre player is sleeping, and at 4 a.m., Kobe Bryant's already on his way to the gym. So it's the stuff you don't see, and that's the problem, I think, with hiring is that mediocre can look superior really easily trick us.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And then you really gotta get, so one thing I've been doing lately with hiring is I do what is called skills assessments. First interview is always for like the vibe. I want kindness, I want empathy, I want politeness because I do think it's important in a workspace. for everyone to feel comfortable. I don't want people being diminutive to each other.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And then the second thing I do is a skills assessment where actually we put them to work. We put them to work. We let them see for a few minutes, give them some tasks, give them some skill sets live in the moment, and we see how quick or smart they are. Because what I found toxicity comes from is having really smart people around people who aren't as good at their job. And it's not their fault.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
But the problem is that the doers, the killers, they get dragged down sometimes energy-wise. There's energy vampires that happen in the workplace. And I think you got to really separate those people and try to give the winners the best team around them. Otherwise their performance starts to draw away to that right there.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
That's right, that's absolutely right. And then I think the other big thing that I've learned too over the years, I'm sure you know this for sure, Ryan, is you gotta say no. You can't say yes to everything. Being a yes man in life, it seems like it's the right thing to do when you're a young entrepreneur. You just say yes to everything, every meeting, every moment, every dinner, everything.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
You just go to anything and you end up wasting so much time and energy. You've got to be really selective in who you work with, what you do. Saying no to the wrong clients will save you so much time and money. And saying yes to the wrong clients will literally suck the life and energy out of you. So it's really being selective, starting to get that confidence.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
And I think young entrepreneurs, they get nervous of saying no because they're like, well, any revenue is good revenue. And it turns out it's not true. There is such a thing as good revenue and bad revenue.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar
That's so true. So true.