Welcome to the concierge medical marketing podcast the show dedicated to helping concierge medical practices grow and thrive

hosted by Stephen Schwartz a digital marketing expert with over 25 years of experience and a passion for improving

American health care by helping concierge medical physicians succeed

Here’s Stephen Schwartz.

Oh and welcome to the concierge medical marketing podcast

I’m your host Steve Schwartz and this podcast is all about concierge

Medicine the practices the physicians the staff the patients

Everything that we can offer to you to help your concierge medical practice grow and thrive

To help your physicians and your staff have more fulfilled enjoyable lives and for your patients to have better

Outcomes I’m thrilled today to interview.

Dr. Jason Littleton.

He’s been a concierge physician now for many years

He’s frequently featured on Fox News as a commentator and a guest and

Jason I’m just thrilled to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me on Steve

Really appreciate it.

Wonderful. Wonderful.

What just want to jump right into this here

Jason, please tell us a little bit about your background how you you know as a child or when you made the decision to become a physician What you did, you know as far as schooling and what led you eventually to having a very successful

concierge medical practice based in Orlando, Florida

That’s a great question growing

My father is a physician.

He’s a urologist.

So, you know, I had that image in front of me

I had that person in front of me and I knew at a very young age.

I knew actually

Exactly when I was in the fourth grade that I wanted to be a physician and so from that time

I just kind of focused on my science classes.

I wanted to be the best.

I could be the best in my class and

I just went through elementary medical middle school high school

Focus on becoming a doctor and I had that in my sights long time ago so much so that when I first

Stepped on the campus of the University of Michigan as an undergrad.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do

There wasn’t any you know Time wasted and trying to figure out what I thought my purpose was or what I thought I needed to do I just started, you know pursuing it.

And so I knew at a very young age.

That’s what I want to do and

I look it’s been amazing

Love it.

What a great story.

Where did you do medical school and residency and all the training?

Well, I actually went to the other school known as Michigan State for medical school

Whereas I did my undergrad at University of Michigan.

I went to Michigan State for medical school the College of Human Medicine, right and

It was a great experience.

I had a great experience at both schools

Michigan prepared me for Michigan State and Michigan State prepared me for what I was doing next as far as going into residency and

You know really just you know launching out as an attending physician

it was honestly a great experience and when I came out of

Residency and I did my residency in Michigan as well in Grand Rapids

I went into insurance medicine.

So that was not concierge medicine.

I went and I just I actually

You know was practicing locally outside of the campus of Michigan State in a place called Mason, Michigan

As a primary care physician where I was seen between 18 25 patients a day a patient every 15 minutes new patient every 30 minutes And that’s what I did for the next

Well, actually for the next year and then I came to Florida and then the story gets pretty interesting even more

Good. I can’t wait to dig into it.

Tell me what happened next when you got to, Florida

First of all, what made you come to Florida from Michigan? And then what happened that shifted you toward concierge?

Well, I’m a proud Christian.

Jesus is my risen Lord and Savior.

Amen. My

pastor moved our church from

Lansing To Orlando, Florida and asked me to come and so I left my insurance medical job in Mason

Relocated with my church to Orlando, Florida and started all over again

And when I started all over again, I was still practicing insurance medicine, but it was because my church moved That’s what relocated me to Orlando and it was really a new beginning

It was pretty and it’s pretty much a very exciting start and I was off the ground running But now I was still practicing primary care in Florida in Orlando, Florida, and it was still insurance based So I I hadn’t started concierge medicine yet at that

point

What a fascinating story.

I mean, I’ve heard of people moving

You know from this location to that location because they want to be with their church

But I’ve never heard of the pastor saying hey church

I want to move the entire church to Florida, you know a third of the way across the country and come with us

I mean, what a what an amazing story and a walk of faith

That’s so well

And it was awesome and everyone came it was it was pretty remarkable.

It was really a

remarkable move and that was in

2011 and I had just finished residency

You know the summer of 2010 so I had been in my first

Attending position in Lansing, Michigan for about three months when this happened and I was like, well, hey, I’m

Staying with my pastor.

I’m staying with my church.

I’m coming to Florida

amazing and what transpired next for you to

Transition from insurance based medicine into your own concierge practice

Well exciting story

The co-pastor of my church who’s also my business coach.

Dr. Stacia Pierce

She I was at one of her seminars and I was learning about business.

They don’t teach you about business in medical school

You learn how to be a doctor.

You don’t learn how to run a practice or anything like that

I was at one of her seminars and she put me in the hot seat and she said you know what I

See for you.

I think you need to become a concierge doctor.

She had researched it all out

I didn’t even know what it was.

All I knew about was getting a job practicing insurance medicine and she

Connected me with the vice president of the AAPP at the time it’s American Academy of Private Physicians and I went down and I visited him and I had a great talk with him and

It was really from that hot seat situation where?

My coach said you need to become a concierge physician where I started down that track and that was in 2011

Now four years later 2015 I opened up Littleton concierge medicine, so I didn’t do it right away.

I was still a new physician

I was still getting my bearings in terms of just seeing patients and practicing medicine.

And so I didn’t

Insurance medicine for the next four years, but in 2015 I said, you know what? I’m gonna do what my pastor told me to do

I’m gonna do what my business coach told me to do I’m gonna actually launch out in the deep become a concierge physician and I did so in 2015.

We opened Littleton concierge medicine

And what happened then was it slow growth was it fast growth? How did you get your patients? Well, you know

So basically I just you know

It started little by little I remember having my first patient

That was an hour away.

I would drive to them.

It was I was doing home visits.

I started I started I

decided to start my practice that way and

The interesting thing about that is I had one patient for like three months now

What started to change the game was that?

my coach was like, you know, you need to write a book write a book and

You know write a book about something that you’re really interested in and I thought about it I said, you know what?

I realized that one of the problems that I’m continually hearing people and patients say is that I don’t have enough energy and

So I started researching that and I started writing about how patients can have more

Energy to do their life to do the goals that they have and so I wrote a book and from there

I started advertising the book and then people would buy the book and all of a sudden people started connecting with me following me on social media because the book and the things that I was posting and

next thing I know I started getting invitations to do speaking engagements and things like that just from my book and

While that wasn’t necessarily

Translating it to patients for my concert to practice yet

It started building a following and then the next thing happened was that I got on the dr

Oz show in December.

I believe it’s December 12 2013

Okay, and this is just in the process now

This is this is actually before I opened the practice because when she told me to start concierge medicine in 2011

The next thing and I didn’t do that right away

But the next thing I did was I did the book thing that she told me to do I started getting speaking engagement I was on the dr

Nandi show the dr

Oz show and I just kept on going on shows and all of a sudden when I did open the practice in 2015 people started to learn a little bit about me

I still had products and materials to distribute to people and though I started with one patient for three months and in

2015 Started people started learning more about my product what I have to offer and then people started coming and then soon

It was 10 patients and 20 patients 50 patients and at that point

I really started getting more confidence and telling people that hey, you know, I’m a concierge physician

This is what I do.

I take care of people.

I do home visits and it started growing from there.

What a great great story

For the concierge doctors who are watching or listening to this podcast huge nuggets right there

Write a book Get the book out there, get press on television and other podcasts and other ways to get your name and face out there and social media, sharing information that’s valuable to people to help them live better, happier, more healthy lives and

watch it grow.

What an amazing story.

The content of your book that it can reach people and help them learn and grow is so powerful for not just that educational component, but also for the credibility factor.

So many people say, hey, I’m planning on writing a book or, oh, I’ve started a book or I’m thinking about writing a book.

You actually did it.

You actually created a book.

You got it published and out and available for anyone to click a few buttons on the Internet and get it delivered to them.

I’ve written a book as well.

It’s called The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing for Concierge Medical

Practices.

That book is available totally for free from our website as a downloadable document at conciergemd.marketing.

Again, free for anybody who wants it.

Just visit the website, put in your email, click the button, it’ll be sent to you.

So boy, great story, Jason.

Thank you for sharing that.

Let’s talk a little bit about concierge medicine itself.

Concierge medicine, direct primary care.

There’s different phrases out in the industry that seem to mean different things to different people.

Would you like to define what concierge medicine means to you as well as how to compare it with direct primary care?

Well, let me, let me go ahead and lay that down.

That’s a great question because first of all, not just what it means to me, but what it actually means.

So DPC is direct primary care.

Now that is where that’s membership medicine.

That’s where you’re giving direct care for annual fee.

Okay.

That’s DPC and that’s truly what I do.

Now I call my practice Littleton concierge medicine because people understand the word concierge.

They don’t understand DPC.

Okay.

They understand concierge because people have been in a hotel and they know what a hotel concierge does.

They usually book movie tickets or show tickets.

They understand that concept.

Not just that there was a show that came out in USA long time ago.

It’s on Netflix now and that show really introduced people to concierge medicines called

Royal pains.

Yeah.

And that was where an ER physician from New York went to the Hamptons and started a business.

He actually did home visits just like I do now.

Again, that was truly DPC, but it was advertised as concierge medicine.

Concierge medicine truly is where people do accept annual memberships, but they can also charge insurance as well.

So it’s kind of a duality there.

I don’t do any charging of insurance.

Everything’s just membership medicine.

People pay an annual fee and I practice from that platform.

So my practice is truly DPC and I enjoy that and I love that.

So that’s how they’re defined.

And again, for marketing purposes, I use the word concierge in my practice name just for branding Littleton concierge medicine because people understand, okay, wait a minute.

This is not an insurance doctor for the most part.

This is someone who practices, you know, membership medicine.

He’s a personal private physician and again, not to cause any confusion.

It’s just that the public for the most part, associate concierge, the term concierge medicine with membership medicine, whereas there’s a little type of, you know, nuance there as we just talked about.

I remember the Royal pains TV show.

I watched it years and years ago and just loved it and I love the characters and the interplay with the patients and how they had, you know, high dollar, high net worth patients as well as the local folks who literally couldn’t afford the service but

needed his help anyways and he was always so generous with his time and his expertise.

Just great TV show for folks if they haven’t seen it.

Yeah, no, it’s an awesome show and my practice resembles that in a lot of ways because I started my practice now again, we’re in our ninth year going on 10 years in 2025. I really started it from the model of home visits, old-fashioned medicine, okay?

And it’s just, it’s just taken off and I don’t know that a lot of people do it the way that I do it, but that’s always been my brand and there is, I’ve built a niche in that and in 2025 in January, we’re opening up our new Concierge Wellness Clinic and

we’ll see people there but I won’t get away from the home visits.

We’ll still have time to do that for urgent care and in a way, it’s a great opportunity to separate sick patients from well visits where you can see people who are sick in their homes and you can see the patients who are not sick but they’re for maintenance

and wellness checks in the office.

You had told me before we were on our interview here about some of the other services that you’re going to offer at your physical location when it opens in January.

Can you tell us what those are, please?

Well, pretty excited because we’re going to have hyperbaric chambers, certain gadgets in there as well to do body demographics, IVs as well and we’re really going to have a duality clinic where we have one side that’s just focused on wellness and one

side that’s focused more so on just the practice of allopathic medicine.

Even though allopathic medicine, I’m always focused on wellness and prevention.

What I mean there is that on one side, you’re going to have more of a clinic doing primary care, concierge fashion, of course, and then the other side, you’re working with people using innovation and strategies to really enhance their state of wellness

where they’re at right now.

That’s how they’re going to differ and it’s all going to be in one building.

It’s going to be an exciting place because it’s already a destination because I’ve built the clientele through word of mouth marketing, doing home visits.

The people are already there.

Now, they just have a spot to come to and see me as well.

Very interesting.

Obviously, the requirements of you and your staff for your original model of home visits is likely going to be somewhat different than the staff at a physical building.

Can you briefly explain what your staff looks like right now under the home visits model?

Then also, what you anticipate your staffing needs are going to be at the physical location starting in January?

When you do a home visit, basically, a lot of times, you can go as the doctor yourself and see patients, but often, I’ll have one of my nurse practitioners or nurse with me.

For the most part, we’re doing primary care in people’s homes and we’re writing prescriptions through a prescription and we’re ordering labs and either we’re having a phlebotomist come to them because I have a great company that I work with or we’re having

them actually go to the pharmacy to get vaccines or to go to one of the local lab facilities to get their labs done.

Sometimes, we’ll have an army of one, meaning myself, or an army of two or three, depending on who’s with me on that day.

You don’t have to have a lot to do a little and I think that’s a misconception where people feel like, well, I can’t practice medicine in that way because I have to have a brick and mortar building.

I’ve got to have all this equipment around me.

It’s not true.

I can’t run a practice to a million-dollar practice just doing home visits and I think it was something that was overlooked by the mainstream because people thought that you couldn’t run a practice that way and I’ve proven that you can over this nine-year

period of time.

Now, when we do our facility opening up in January, we’ll still have a nurse practitioner, coordinators, nurses, and in fact, I have coordinators now that act really like a hotel concierge where when I write an order, they facilitate it as if they were

booking movie tickets and that’s a new concept.

I don’t think a lot of practices do that but it’s something that we do.

It’s something that we’ve built a niche on.

My practice is going to be, you would think that it would differ from doing home visits to having people come in and seeing you in an office but not the concept, not the philosophy, not in terms of how we practice medicine and facilitate people’s care

and streamline it.

That’s not really going to change.

I would say you’re going to have more people, of course, in the office but you’re still going to have the same type of feel and flow in terms of personalized care, knowing that your doctor will come to you, knowing that your doctor is accessible to you,

knowing that you can call upon your doctor and he’s going to take care of your needs whether it’s at home or in the office.

Love it.

While you were talking about that, I had an idea for your next book.

How I Built a Million-Dollar Concierge Medical Practice Solely on Home Visits by Dr.

Littleton.

What do you think?

Yeah, no, that’s a great idea.

I think that what we did is, I actually, I think that’s awesome.

I did something similar to that but not with that title.

I did do a master class that, again, once we put some of our new website platform up,

I’m going to launch that in a whole new way that will make it accessible to people.

But I did a two-hour master class on how people can duplicate what I’ve done. I’ve done and if they’re interested in switching from insurance medicine to a DPC model.

Love it.

Yeah, I just think because some physicians may be watching this and thinking, you know,

I’d really like to have a very simple type of concierge practice.

And I love the idea of literally just going and visiting people in their homes or their offices and not having the expense and essentially the hassle of a physical brick-and-mortar clinic.

And so that right there is literally a very specific niche within a niche that there could be hundreds or thousands of physicians across our country who would absolutely flock to that idea because of how that could reflect on their lifestyle, on their

work-life balance.

And literally, you know, obviously having a building is expensive.

It’s a lot of overhead to pay for the lease and the insurance and the equipment and the dot, dot, dot.

The list is never ending.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I would love to read that book or watch your two-hour masterclass if you send me the link to that.

Okay.

Sounds good.

All right.

Sounds good.

All right.

So with that, I want to, as we wrap up our discussion today, let’s talk about the future of concierge medicine. I read an article not too long ago that said in 2023, concierge medicine is a $6 billion industry in the United States, and it’s forecast to

go to $13.5 billion by 2030.

Huge, huge growth, more than doubling in the next five or six years.

What are your thoughts about where concierge medicine is, where it’s going, and what advice can you give to physicians maybe who are finishing med school or residency now, or perhaps are insurance-based physicians?

What can you share with them?

I think whenever you get into business, and this is a business, and I’m a business owner, you have to be comfortable with risk. You have to be comfortable with going out there and selling your product and meeting people that maybe you didn’t know before.

Now people can come out of medical school, go into residency, and get a job, and most people do do that.

Most doctors do do that.

And I’ve talked with physicians all across the nation where there’s trepidation in terms of making that jump from being an employee to actually becoming an employer and owning your own business. And that’s not easy for a lot of people.

You have to have the right mentality, okay?

And so for people who want to launch out into concierge medicine, you have to have a hospitality mentality in a way.

And you have to be willing to learn about how to do marketing, how to do business, how to sell your product.

And so new physicians, they should want to connect with an established concierge physician like myself or someone else who can help show them the ropes and help mentor them. It’s so important.

Again, I had a coach.

And you have to have someone show you the way so it can be easier.

Otherwise, there’s already a way established for you where you can go and become an employee physician somewhere.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Maybe that’s what your niche is.

Maybe that’s who you are.

But if you want something more, if you want to flex the degree that you have, you want to connect with someone who’s already doing medical business, who’s already doing medical marketing.

And so that’s so important to be able to identify people like that.

So that would be my advice for new physicians that are coming out, because I think that people want accessibility.

And you have to understand in the traditional practice, primary care, insurance-based, physicians, one physician has to see or is responsible for 2,500 patients, where the average concierge doctor is responsible for about 300 to 500. In my practice, we

have about 300 to 500.

People are not charts.

People are actually friends and neighbors.

And so it’s more personalized.

People want that.

People want that.

They’ll pay for that.

People are tired of being seen every 15 minutes, new patient every 30 minutes.

And in that model, it’s impossible to be on time, because no one has a 15-minute problem in a 15-minute slot.

People usually have 30-minute problems, 45-minute problems in a 15-minute slot, and all their questions are not answered.

And that is why it’s going to go pretty much to a $13 billion machine in 2030, because people want to be seen as personal neighbors, friends, and they want to be able to reach their doctor on the weekends, holidays, whenever they need to.

That’s why people are paying for it.

And that’s why it was easy to expand my business from zero to a million in about nine years.

That is so exciting.

I’m so thrilled for you and your practice.

And you’re in a great position on how you’ve created an amazing foundation for your practice right now.

And the way I see it likely coming forward is having the physical location, bringing on a few more of the right team members.

You’re going to head to $2 million literally within probably, what, two years, would you say?

No, I think less than that.

I think we’re going to have exponential growth, where I’ve seen it recently in the last two years, and especially with the wellness side.

I’m looking for exponential growth in the next six months to a year and a half.

I’m pretty excited about that.

I keep track of my numbers.

And that’s another thing.

When you’re a business owner, you have to keep track of your numbers.

You have to see the trends.

You have to compare it to the year before and the year before that.

And you have to know what you have to forecast.

Usually, I think about six months ahead.

In terms of my planning and budgeting, I have to pay employees.

So when you think about it that way, you get pretty excited as a business owner.

You’re not just practicing medicine, but you’re practicing business, and you’re working with people in such a personalized way.

And that makes all the difference.

When you connect with people at their level in a personal fashion, and you change lives, you really make a difference. And you really can revolutionize health care locally, wherever you’re at.

And I think that’s what gets my juices going.

That’s what causes me to be driven and motivated in some respect.

And I think it’s a great day, actually, to be practicing this form of medicine.

Wonderful.

I love your enthusiasm for not just your career and your business, but the industry in general, and understanding that by doing what you’re doing every single day, you’re helping improve health care and the lives of your patients, of real people who have

real issues and who need real assistance to improve.

So thank you for doing that.

Your one comment about they don’t teach marketing and business in medical school.

I’ve never been to medical school.

My background is in digital marketing.

I’ve been in the industry now for over 25 years.

My agency is Concierge Medical Marketing.

The idea of that myself and our team are able to help concierge physicians with their marketing, their websites, their SEO, and pay-per-click ads on Google and Facebook, and digital ads and five-star reviews.

All these different things that concierge doctors need to do in order to be successful in their businesses.

And so we offer tons of free resources on our website, conciergemd.marketing, including the book that I mentioned before, The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing for

Concierge Medical Practices.

Again, free to download, help yourself.

But we’re creating these podcast episodes here with tons of great information, tons of nuggets, things you’ve shared today and our other guests, so that for physicians and office managers who want to go at their marketing themselves, they have tons of

great resources that they can learn and use and try to make it go of it for themselves.

And if things grow great, fantastic.

I’m glad that our resources have been helpful to them.

And if they need extra help, please feel free to contact me and we can have a discussion and see if we’re able to help you with essentially your practice to help it grow. Dr. Jason Littleton, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for taking the time

out of your very busy schedule to be with me on this interview today and to share your heart, to share your story and encouragement for other concierge doctors or those that are considering it.

If someone wants to reach out to you to chat for a few minutes as far as how to build their practice or perhaps a patient in the Orlando area who wants to engage your services as their doctor, how can they contact you?

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.

I’ve really enjoyed being on your podcast.

Thank you very much.

People can contact me at JasonMD.com.

They can contact me at JasonMD.com.

They can go to my handles on Facebook and Instagram if they want to follow my company at Dr.

Jason Littleton or the real Dr.

Jason Littleton.

Also you can call my main line at 407-335-5362.

Awesome.

JasonMD.com is the first and easiest way to get in touch with you and whatever folks need.

Again, thank you, Jason, for your time.

Thank you for your heart.

I’m so glad to know you as a friend, as a client, as a brother in Christ.

I really appreciate you and taking the time to be here today.

Thank you. Thank you again, Steve. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure. This has been The Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast.

I’m your host, Steve Schwartz, and we will see you next time.

Thank you for tuning in to The Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast.

Please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and stay connected with us on social media.

To speak with Stephen Schwartz about growing your concierge medical practice, give him a call at 772-304-2420 or visit our website at conciergemd.marketing.

We will see you next time.