WP123 | Why You Need to Hire for Marketing with Neal Samudre
Are you wearing too many hats in your practice, juggling clinical work, marketing, and business growth—only to feel stuck and exhausted? In this episode, Neal breaks down why doing it all is a trap that holds practice owners back from real growth. He shares how shifting from a “DIY” mindset to strategic delegation can unlock new levels of success. If you’re tired of spinning your wheels with marketing tasks that aren’t your zone of genius, this conversation is for you. Tune in to learn how to reclaim your time, avoid burnout, and scale your practice the right way!
The Trap of Doing It All
Many practice owners want to scale but remain stuck in the do-it-all mode. Why? Because they believe they can’t afford to delegate, or they see hiring a marketing manager as an expense rather than an investment. However, as Neal points out, most practice owners are clinicians first, not marketers. They don’t have training in business growth, digital advertising, or SEO, yet they try to handle these areas themselves—spending valuable brain space on things outside their expertise.
The reality? Holding on to marketing tasks limits growth. If practice owners continue writing blog posts, handling Google Ads, and running outreach efforts alone, they restrict their own potential—and that of their team.
How to Know It’s Time to Delegate
If you’re unsure whether you’re ready to offload marketing, ask yourself:
Are you feeling mentally exhausted from managing both clinical care and business growth?
Do you find yourself constantly thinking about marketing tasks even outside of work?
Is decision fatigue affecting your ability to lead your team?
Would your practice benefit from having a dedicated expert drive growth strategies?
If you answered yes, it’s time to step into your zone of genius and let a marketing expert take the reins.
The Power of Investing in Marketing
Neal and his wife grew their practice quickly because he took on the role of marketing leader, allowing her to focus on clinical work and team leadership. He highlights the difference between two types of delegation:
Delegating tasks – Hiring someone to execute tasks (e.g., writing blog posts, managing social media).
Delegating strategy and decisions – Bringing in a marketing leader who analyzes data, creates growth plans, and drives marketing efforts without the owner’s input.
Many practice owners make the mistake of only delegating tasks while still managing the strategy themselves, which still drains their mental energy. The true key to freedom is delegating both levels—so you don’t have to worry about what blogs to write or what ads to run.
Scaling with the Right Support
A well-executed marketing strategy ensures a steady stream of inquiries, grows caseloads, and allows owners to focus on leadership rather than day-to-day execution. Neal now works as a fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) for group practices, helping them develop long-term marketing strategies while his team handles execution.
By bringing on the right marketing leader, practice owners:
✅ Free up mental space to focus on clinical excellence and leadership.
✅ Avoid decision fatigue and burnout.
✅ Grow their business faster without working harder.
So, if you’re a practice owner stuck in the do-it-all phase, consider this: What would your practice look like if you fully stepped into your visionary role? What’s holding you back from making that investment?
It’s time to reclaim your brain space and scale with strategy.
Neal Samudre’s Resources
Neal’s Website: http://www.practiceatscale.co
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/neal.samudre/
Grab your FREE marketing and website report
Links and Resources
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Whitney Owens: Hi, I'm Whitney Owens. I'm a group practice owner and faith based practice consultant, and I'm here to tell you that you can have it all. Want to grow your practice? Want to grow your faith? Want to enjoy your life outside of work? You've come to the right place. Each week on the Wise Practice Podcast, I will give you the action steps to have a successful faith based practice.
While also having a good time now, let's get started
Jingle: where she grows your practice, she don't play. She does business with a twist of faith. It's Whitney Owens and the wise practice podcast. Whitney Owens and wise practice
Whitney Owens: podcast.
Hello friends. Thanks for hanging out with me on the wise practice podcast. You're in for a treat today with Neal Samudre. He has been on the show before, so I encourage you to head back and listen to that interview. And today he's got something else amazing to share with us. And I love bringing repeat guests back when they have cool stuff to say.
So. Neal had reached out to me because he had started doing some marketing higher level strategy for private practices and I was like, wow, we need something like that on the show. And so I'm excited to share with you kind of why you need marketing. I mean, I think we all know why, but like, why do you need someone who's going to be strategizing and really implementing and what does that look like?
And a lot of us. We really struggle to give that up if we're doing it ourselves, or we're not really sure about our headspace and how to, like, think through all the things. So, Neal and I are going to talk about that here on the show. And before we get into that, I thought I would share with you how I know Neal.
So, when we were planning the summit for 2024, Neal applied to speak. I didn't know who he was. He knew someone who knew someone. Isn't that how all the best relationships are created? And so I had his application come through and was so impressed when I looked him up online and his faith and his joy was contagious.
And I was like, I've got to meet this guy. So we did a zoom call because, you know, you should filter out the people that are going to speak at your event. And he was so great. And so Neal was 1 of our keynotes at the 2024 event, his wife, Carly and him have a practice together in Nashville. And I loved meeting them and now Carly is a part of the membership community.
And so the summit is all about these relationships and you just never know who you're going to meet. Who's going to not only feel your feet, my words, I'm tripping today. Who's going to fuel your soul, but also just teach you and help you. And I find all that in my relationship with Neal. He's been such an encouragement and fun person to know, but also.
Provides a lot of feedback and a lot of good advice. So if it hadn't been for the Summit, Neal, we wouldn't have met. So, so glad that you were there and that you gave your time to speak with us. And I also want to plug here, the 2025 Summit, we will be, we are selling tickets. You can go to wisepractisconsulting.
com. And hit summit and learn more about our summit. It's going to be in October, the 9th through the 11th in Greenville, South Carolina. It is gorgeous. We're staying at the Grand Bohemian. There is a bridge that connects it and goes over the falls to the other side of Greenville. Greenville is a growing town.
It's got a lot of fun stuff to do. I'm looking forward to being there, but most importantly, looking forward to being there with you guys. So we are selling tickets now. Early bird will end on April 1st. So I want to be pushing this, reminding you about it because you can get a hundred dollars off if you go ahead and purchase your ticket before April 1st.
If you have questions, you want to learn more, head to the website or just reach out to me, Whitney at WISepractice. com. Happy to answer your questions. And it is the one time a year we all get in person and it's so beautiful. And in the past, we've had CE. So we're in the process of getting a submission into NBCC to get those as well.
So looking forward to seeing you there, excited to jump into this episode. We're going to talk about the importance of having someone do your marketing and your private practice. All
right. I have my buddy here with me in the podcast room. We've got Neal Nealudray, and he is the former marketing executive turned owner of Group Practice. He's also the founder of Entrecare, where he helps growth minded practice owners feeling weary in their practice scale to the next level with business coaching and done for you marketing and operation services.
With his transformational content, speaking and books, he aims to empower helpers and changemakers, build a more joyful world. He lives with his family outside of Nashville. Thanks for coming on the show.
Neal Samudre: Whitney, I am glad to be back.
Whitney Owens: I know. This is like my favorite part of podcasting is interviewing amazing people and learning more and having fun.
Neal Samudre: And we have so much fun together whenever we're on the podcast together and in person.
Whitney Owens: That's right. That's right. Wonderful. Well, today we're going to talk about what to kind of jump into it because You've been on the show before, so people know you. So I encourage people to go back and check out previous episodes.
But let's walk, just jump into the meat here of marketing your practice. And, you know, practice owners, obviously when they start their marketing and doing all the things, you know, when do we think about hiring a marketing person? What's that all about? Let's just kind of get in it.
Neal Samudre: Yeah. So first off, practice owners, when they're first starting their practice, They are that do it all practice owner, right, where they're taking all the calls, they're doing all the referral marketing.
They're answering all the emails, they're doing it all. But then eventually you get a few clinicians under your belt, you're making a profit, you're doing good work in the community. You have to shift your role and take more of what I call the visionary practice owner, where you are in charge of Steering the vision of the practice helping the practice become all that it can be and by essence, what that means is you have to let go of things that are not your strong suit.
So if marketing is not your strong suit, if ops is not your strong suit. These are things that you have to delegate in order to reach the next level. And there's a lot of times, Whitney, when I'm talking with the practice owners and they want to scale, they have a great practice. They're serving the community.
They're doing well. They want to scale, but they are still stuck in that do it all mode where they're doing all the marketing. And I believe that. You have to offload that, especially like for most practice owners, you, they don't have a degree in marketing and business, right? They're focused on clinical care.
That's where their specialty is. And they're really good at leading their team. But the thing that they're not so great at Is marketing and growth and measuring the right data so that they can set budgets and strategies for growing the caseloads of their clinicians. They didn't really learn how to do that in school.
So that's one of the first things you got to hand off if you want to scale to the next level.
Whitney Owens: Definitely. So how do you help people get unstuck in that?
Neal Samudre: How do I help them get unstuck in making them realize that they need a marketing manager? Yeah. Well, first off, I, there, I encounter a lot of practice owners.
They, they want to scale to the next level. And I dig into their marketing and their website. I ask them, Hey, what are you doing? And typically, I helped them realize that a lot of their growth, that the reason why they are where they are right now is because they've been doing it all. They've been doing all the community outreach.
They've been writing all the blog posts. They've been trying to learn Google Ads. They've been doing it all for way too long. And so I usually ask them a lot of questions and I'm like, hey. Here, I'm going to break down your website. I'm going to look at your SEO. Um, I'm going to audit your marketing strategies and where you're getting the most amount of inquiries and leads.
And what led to these activities, it's often because of the practice owner. And so I would ask them like, what would it be like if you didn't have to spend as much brain space? Towards marketing your practice, towards doing all of this stuff. What if it wasn't solely on you? And that's when they start to realize, oh, maybe I need to reclaim some brain space.
Maybe I need to focus on my zone of genius. Like, what would happen with my practice if I just focused on clinical care? Or, just focused on putting out the best clinicians, you know?
Whitney Owens: Uh huh. I love that you talked about brain space first. Because when you first started talking, I was thinking, Oh, they're doing a lot, you know, maybe they should do a time audit, write things down, see how much time they're actually spending, because, you know, most of us don't realize how much time we're spending on something until we do a time audit.
So I would suggest people do that. But, but this idea of the brain space is so important that we miss. You know, we're constantly thinking about it. I mean, I know that I'm constantly thinking about different things I need to do and this, that and the other. And so, yeah, if I could pull that out, you can really free up some space to be creative and the visionary instead of stuck in that marketing piece.
Neal Samudre: Absolutely. I mean, one thing I don't feel like we talk enough about as a practice owners is just the emotional exhaustion that comes from growing a business, especially this business where you're dealing with clients who've been through really hard things, and then you're also trying to take this practice to the next level.
That's emotionally exhausting. That consumes a lot of brain space, and I feel like we can just provide so much self care To ourselves as practice owners and we can start to chip away at this weariness that we feel if we can just offload some of this decision fatigue that we have offload this decision making that we have to make around growing or practice like let someone else take a look at the business and implement the strategies to take the business to the next level.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. All right. So then let's say someone's listening and I'm thinking, how do I know when it's time to farm this out?
Neal Samudre: Now, a lot of people, they think about this in terms of money and they're like, when will I have the money to be able to invest in this? And this is why they stay stuck in that do it all space for far too long.
They convince themselves of this narrative that they don't have the money or the resources,
Most practice owners have the money, it's just that they view hiring a marketing manager or bringing someone on as an expense rather than an investment. Because as you invest in a marketing manager or someone who takes over the decision making of your marketing, what ends up happening is you get results.
You grow caseloads, you are also then able to invest your time to where you are most skilled and passionate, which also grows the business. It's one of those things that's an investment, not an expense, and I feel like that's the first mindset that we have to tackle when it comes to bringing on a marketing manager.
Like, no one wants to have a business that just stays stagnant and complacent. Like our job as business owners is to grow the business. And so if you are bringing on a leader who can help you grow the business, that's an investment, not an expense. So it is not a question of when do I know if I'll have like enough money to be able to do this?
It's, what are you willing to make the investment?
Whitney Owens: Yeah, that's great. That's so good. And I love how you're kind of identifying, you're identifying what therapists actually say, but then you're identifying what actually is important.
Neal Samudre: Yeah. And I'll say this too, when my wife and I were first starting our practice, I think one of the things that made us grow really fast was because I.
Was that marketing leader? My wife didn't have to worry about marketing and growth. I, you know, when we started the practice, I was just leaving my CMO position, which means chief marketing officer. I was a chief marketing officer of a company, I just left it, and we decided to start the practice. But I took over marketing and growth.
I made those strategies and decisions, and that allowed my wife to stay in her zone of genius, which was team leadership, clinical care, and we were able to come together and grow the practice really fast, because we knew our lanes, we stayed in our lanes. And so we didn't have a lot of money, and we were starting from scratch, but because we knew what we needed to have in place in order to reach that next level, and we put those pieces in place sooner rather than later, that's why we were able to grow as fast as we did.
Whitney Owens: Yeah. Now, who does the marketing for the practice now?
Neal Samudre: Me.
Whitney Owens: Do you still love doing it?
Neal Samudre: Yes, totally. Totally. Like, I, I love doing marketing and making the marketing decisions and the strategy for the practice and our marketing is one of our strong points with our practice. Like, just to tell a story, we just hired a therapist like last month and it worked.
They're already like full, you know, and because we have the marketing in place that just gets a constant stream of inquiries and then we have the system on the back end that's able to put the place those inquiries onto caseloads, but we're also able to look at the data and see, okay, here's. How many leads are coming from our SEO?
Here's how many are coming from her Google ads. Here's how much budget we need to set during this period in order to make sure our caseloads are filled up. You know, I love that. That strategy work, and that's also what I'm doing for clients now. So right now I'm partnering with group practice owners and I'm entering in as their fractional CMO, which chief marketing officer, and I'm helping them form the strategies and then to reach their goals with the practice.
But then I'm also doing some done for you services and just taking that off their plate, stuff like SEO and all of that. And it's a great partnership. Like I get to stay in my zone of genius, but I'm also allowing them to focus on what they love. Doing and I've just noticed like with my clients, they don't have the weariness that a lot of other practice owners have because they don't have to worry about a lot of that stuff.
They trust that it's getting done and we're able, they're able to rely on me as a partner, you know?
Whitney Owens: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Okay. So now I'm going to get into a logistical question. How do you have the ability to do all this? Or do you have people that are doing some of the services with you? Or how does that work?
Like, are you writing blogs for people?
Neal Samudre: I have people doing the services with me. I'm not the do it all person, but, um, I form the strategies. So this is something I talk about with practice owners and business owners a lot, but there's two levels of delegation. There's delegating Labor and tasks, which is what most people think delegation is.
And then there's delegating decisions and strategy, which is where leadership comes in. And so I know that my strong suit is decision making strategy. I can take a person's website and marketing and dissect it and tell them exactly what plan they should have in order to grow their caseloads, right? But when it comes to the labor piece, I know how to direct the team to then be able to execute the necessary labor.
To do the SEO and ads and whatever.
Whitney Owens: Mm hmm. Great. Alright, so here's what I'm sitting here thinking about. For, for me, as you know, we were talking about this before we got on, my marketing director quit in December, so we're recording this beginning of February. Of course, it's like right when I'm opening a second location, right?
Thankfully, we've done a lot of good work over the years and have really built up great SEO. You know, so, so when you've really put that work in, it really does make a huge difference. So I took over the marketing, which is, you took over
Neal Samudre: the marketing.
Whitney Owens: Oh, wow. I'm laughing. Yes. Because I know it's ridiculous.
I'm like sitting here listening to you and I'm like, what the, am I doing here? Like, this is ridiculous. I have an 18 therapist practice. And run a consulting business and I market my practice. Now, I do want to give a caveat to, it's actually been really good for me because it's kind of like that concept of we don't remember what it's like until we run, get back in it.
So now that I've gotten back in and I'm like, Oh, this is how I want things, or this is what we were doing that wasn't going well, or, you know, it helps me to remember the position and what it really should be. You know, but even, even as I like hear you saying this, I'm just sitting here thinking to me, the idea of hiring someone, it's more about the exhaustion and difficulty of training and strategizing.
Maybe not even the, not, not the little training, but it's like the strategizing. It's like telling them what blogs to write, telling them what posts to do, telling them how to write an email. And so I'd love to get your feedback on that. Cause I'm guessing you've got something great to say about it, but it exhausts me to think about.
Training, hiring, and strategizing with somebody. I just need someone else to figure it out.
Neal Samudre: So, this is exactly what I was talking about with the Level 1 and Level 2 delegation. Oftentimes, when we hire marketing managers or people to step into these roles, we think that we are just delegating labor. But then we're still holding that level 2 spot where we're directing them with what blogs should be written, what posts should go up.
Like, that still occupies our brain space, and the only way to free yourself up as a practice owner is to delegate both level 1 and level 2. And that means having an owner step into that role, meaning they're able to dissect the data. They are making the decisions on what blogs need to be produced.
They're the ones who are developing the strategy so that you don't have to worry about it. It doesn't take up as much of your brain space.
Whitney Owens: Yeah, but I don't know how to trust someone to do that.
Neal Samudre: That could be a hiring thing.
Whitney Owens: Yeah, it reminds me of how practice owners will say. Oh, I can't hire someone to take the calls.
You know, I got to be in control of that. I got to make sure I schedule the people, you know. And it's like actually you're gonna do a lot better when you're not doing that, you know. And I think the marketing is, is the Neale way.
Neal Samudre: Yeah, absolutely. Like you could hire someone who could take over the level two, which is the decision making and strategy, and you can coordinate with them, but ultimately there's this trust that exists between you and that person to where The, the final say might be yours, but they're the ones doing a lot of the legwork, but then you outsource level one, that labor, where they might be in charge of more of the strategy and the high level execution, but they also have like a team of contractors and people that they go to that they can utilize for the SEO, the social media, et cetera, et cetera.
Whitney Owens: Yeah, definitely. Is there anything we have not touched on in this interview that you want to make sure to mention about marketing
Neal Samudre: strategy? Yeah, you know, I'll say this. There's far too many practice owners who Want to do it all. And there's far too many practice owners who even devalue the work of marketing.
What I mean by that is there might be some practice owners who were like, well, I can just like whip up a blog post on chat GPT. And throw it up on my website. Or I can just whip up a post on ChatGPT and throw it up on my website. They, really what that is, is this desire to still do it all. And that's the part of you that you need to shed.
If you truly want to scale to the next level because it's still occupying some part of you and if you want to be that visionary practice owner, you need to focus on the vision, not the day to day execution, not the little decision makings that are giving you decision fatigue like this is how we take our practices is.
in our business seriously. We don't devalue the work that needs to be done. We find qualified people who can put together quality work to grow the practice and just make things easy for us.
Whitney Owens: I know all those little decisions and tasks take all the fun out of it.
Neal Samudre: It
Whitney Owens: adds up. I lose my joy. All right. Well, you have got a freebie for us today.
Can you talk a little bit about that? And the link is in the show notes.
Neal Samudre: Yes. So a lot of practice owners, they might not know what needs to improve. With their marketing or their website and SEO and so I have a free gift if you go to entrecare. com Slash report there's a form there. Just fill out that form and I will record a Breakdown of your website and your SEO You'll even get a free SEO report that gives you a grade on your websites SEO and I'll talk about marketing strategies in that video.
This is completely done by me. You'll get to see my face. In the video, which is a plus, I, I would like to think, and you'll hear me talk about ways to improve your marketing. Not many practice owners have eyes like this on their marketing and their website. And so you can get this all done for free.
Whitney Owens: Well, there's nothing stopping that.
Neal Samudre: Yeah.
Whitney Owens: Well, why not? So great. All right. So make sure that you hit the show notes. So say it again, say the website again in case somebody's listening and they want to write it down.
Neal Samudre: Entrecare. com slash report.
Whitney Owens: Perfect. Well, Neal, it's always my pleasure. So much fun. And I love what you're offering. And so if somebody's listening and they're like thinking, yeah, I need some help doing my marketing.
What's the next step for them getting involved with Entrecare? Is it the report or something else?
Neal Samudre: Definitely do the report, but you can also learn more about our services at entrecare. com slash partner. And in there, you'll see everything that we do. Basically I enter in as a fractional CMO for the practice, help build the marketing strategy and provide done for you services to just take marketing off your plate so that you can focus on the other things needed to scale your practice.
Whitney Owens: Nice. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. Looking forward to airing this episode and looking forward to, um, getting my free report soon.
Neal Samudre: Awesome. Thanks, Whitney. So
Jingle: click on follow and leave a review and keep on loving this work we do with Whitney Owens and the Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owens and the Wise Practice
Whitney Owens: Podcast.
Special thanks. To Marty Altman for the music in this podcast. The Wise Practice Podcast is part of the Sitecraft Podcast Network, a collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives. To learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network, head on over to sitecraftnetwork.
com. The Wise Practice Podcast represents the opinions of Whitney Owens and her guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and the content should not be taken as legal advice. If you have legal questions, please consult an attorney.
