Today we’d like to introduce you to Salil Gandhi.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Prior to starting HCP Buzz, I was working as a Director at a pharma marketing agency developing marketing strategies focused on reaching physicians. I spent a lot of time working with doctors. I learned a great deal about the pain points of running their practices. From those discussions, I thought about how I could apply the digital marketing techniques we were using to reach physicians and apply that to help private practice physicians engage and educate their patients and reach potential patients online through social media and online marketing.
I left my job and took several months to set up the business focusing on Health Care Professionals (HCP) and test out my service offering with several doctor friends. After fine-tuning the service offering, I launched the company. I got my first client on my first day and have been adding clients ever since.
After a while, I started getting referrals from non-doctor businesses that wanted our help. I thought that it would make sense to set up a second company that was more aligned to the needs of other types of businesses so I started SBO Buzz to focus on Small Business Owners (SBO).
It’s been a little over four years and we now work with over 100 locations in 15 states across healthcare, financial services, real estate, charities and beverage/restaurant industries. Most of the businesses we work with are generally smaller with just a few locations and as such they aren’t big enough to work with a full-fledged agency. Our goal is to help those businesses by providing the expertise and resources at a cost-effective price.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think that if a business doesn’t have some struggles, they aren’t pushing themselves. For me the biggest struggles revolved around expanding our client base while managing cash flow and knowing when to find and hire great employees.
When I started the company, I bootstrapped it with $500. When our client base started expanding and our overhead for marketing campaigns started growing, it was initially a challenge to manage the money crunch. Luckily, I have a great accountant who helped me strategically plan for the growth so that I was able to manage the growth effectively.
The second challenge was knowing it was time to no longer be a one man show. It was hard at first to give up ownership and control over every detail of the work. I was able to bring Sean Henderson, a previous colleague and friend on as a partner working out of Seattle to help with our West coast clients. I knew that he was smart, hardworking and would be able to complement my efforts in the Midwest and East coast leaving me some extra time as to not having to be tied to the business from 8am ET to 6pm PT. That said, my wife still says that I have trouble setting a reasonable work-life balance – such is the life of most small business owners I think.
Eventually, as our client base in the Midwest and East Coast grew, I knew I needed help locally, but wasn’t ready to give up full control so I started thinking about hiring an intern. One of my wife’s colleagues had a daughter in college that was looking for a summer internship in marketing, so I figured I’d give her a shot. Abby turned out to be fantastic. At the end of the summer, she had to go back to school to finish her degree. I realized how much more I could do to grow the business if I started building a team of great people.
I started looking for full time employees and hired a couple, but they didn’t work out for a variety of reasons. Then, again, I learned that another of my wife’s colleagues had a daughter that was moving back to the Chicago area and was looking for a job in marketing. I figured, my last foray into hiring one of my wife’s co-workers daughters went well, so I’d give it another shot. Again, I wasn’t disappointed. Kathleen started working and picked everything up quickly and has been an amazing asset. Recently, I thought things were getting busy enough to hire another person and as luck would have it, Abby was available after recently graduating.
As such, I’m really lucky to have a great team here in Chicago. I’m hoping that we’ll continue to grow in the coming months and years. The running joke is how many more of my wife’s coworkers’ kids are in market and when will I be able to hire them.
HCP Buzz & SBO Buzz – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
When I explain what HCP Buzz and SBO Buzz are, I generally describe the companies as a concierge online marketing company. We help private practice doctors and small business owners navigate online marketing. We specialize in all things online. We help our clients with reputation management and online reviews, Google AdWords, social media, Facebook marketing, Yelp marketing, email blasts, basically whatever our clients need online. If we can’t do it, we have companies we partner with that can get pretty much anything done for our clients.
We’re certified for Google AdWords and are a trusted Google photography company and can help our clients with online virtual tours – something we generally provide at no charge to our clients.
I think that I’m most proud of the fact that we haven’t had to actively market either HCP Buzz or SBO Buzz. We’re blessed that our clients refer us to their friends and colleagues. For me, that tells me that we’re doing things right and taking care of our clients. If our clients are willing to put their reputation on the line to say that we’re doing good work for them, then I can be proud of the service we’re providing our clients.
I think that there are a lot of things that separate us from our competitors. I’ll just touch on two.
First – Trust. We want our clients to trust that we’re looking out for their best interests at all times. To that end, we pass through all third party fees at cost. Meaning we’re not up-charging Google AdWords or any other campaign that we recommend. Many other companies charge 25% or 30% on top of the cost of the actual campaign as their fees. As we pass all those fees through at cost, our clients can always trust that when we’re making a recommendation to expand a campaign or start a new campaign, we’re making that recommendation because it’s in the interest of our clients, not in the interest of our generating revenue. I think that the trust that we’ve been able to develop with our clients is what really sets us apart from our competition.
Second – Communication. We pride ourselves on always being available to our clients. Our goal is to always pick up the phone, answer an email, reply to a text immediately. We know that our client’s time is important and if they’re taking the time to reach out to us, we want to make sure that we’re responding and communicating on our client’s timetable, not ours. At a minimum, we reach out to our clients every week with content for social media and try our best to be proactive with marketing recommendations and opportunities whenever we see them.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I think that the proudest moment of my career happens every time we get a new client referred to us. It makes me feel great that my staff and I even as we grow, we’re still providing our clients with such exceptional service that they’re confident in our services to refer us to their friends, family and business associates.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
First, my wife, Kita! She continues to encourage me and support me. If it wasn’t for her support, there’s no way way I would have been able to get the company off the ground. Second, my sister, Sejal. She’s a lawyer and helped me put together the paperwork to start the business along with the contracts and all the other legal work that was needed to get things up and running with clients in regulated industries. Without both of their support, there’s no way I would have been able to get the company off the ground.
Pricing:
- Monthly management fees vary but start at $200/month for single location small businesses and medical practices based on the services needed
- Responsive designed websites start at $1,500
- Google AdWords marketing campaigns start at $150/month
- Facebook Campaigns start at $50/campaign
Contact Info:
- Address: 600 W Jackson Blvd, Suite 100, Chicago, IL 60661
- Website: www.hcpbuzz.com & www.sbobuzz.com
- Phone: 312-725-4574
- Email: salil.gandhi@hcpbuzz.com and salil.gandhi@sbobuzz.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hcpbuzz
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/hcpbuzz
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hcp-buzz-chicago
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
