Health Biz Scale

Mike Kohl · Founder

I spent fifteen years as the patient who could not find you.

I also spent twenty years building software, including a platform that went from $0 to $500 million. Those two facts point at the same problem. The best practitioner in a city is almost never the one the patient finds, and that gap is the difference between a full week and a practice that can carry another provider.

Mike Kohl, founder of Health Biz Scale
20 yrs
building software
$0 to $500M
platform I helped scale
15 yrs
functional medicine patient
4
practices per quarter
Practice dossier · HBS-001▸ Taking practices
Who this is for
Cash-pay, hybrid and concierge practices already doing $40K+/mo
Niche
Functional, naturopathic, integrative, chiropractic, hormone, regenerative, concierge
Operating model
Engineer-built systems, AI-run production, my judgment on every deliverable
Build time
Campaigns live in weeks. Search compounds over six to nine months.
Pricing
Floor $3,000/mo · most engagements $6,000 to $7,000
Capacity
Four new practices per quarter
Risk
+10 new patients a month, or you do not pay

The enemy is not insurance. It is obscurity.

Every practitioner I talk to has a version of the same story. They left the system, built something better, and got good at it. Ninety minute intakes. Real root-cause work. Patients who finally got answers after a decade of being told their labs were normal.

And then the practice down the road, running a fraction of the clinical depth, fills its schedule from a Google ad.

Freedom was never the finish line. You have to be found.

That gap between how good you are and how easy you are to find is the entire thing I work on. It is not a marketing problem in the way most agencies mean it. It is an infrastructure problem, and infrastructure is what I did for two decades before I ever touched healthcare.

Close it and the ceiling moves. Not a slightly busier calendar, but the kind of demand that funds a second provider, a bigger room, and a waitlist you get to be selective with.

How I got here

I was on the other side of the intake form first.

Fifteen years as a functional medicine patient. I know what a DUTCH panel costs and what it feels like to wait for the results. I know the difference between a practitioner who reads the whole chart and one who skims it.

I also know how hard those practitioners are to find, because I spent years looking. The search results were full of clinics I would never book with. The people doing the real work were on page four with a website from 2014.

My day job that whole time was engineering. Twenty years of it, the last stretch on a platform that went from nothing to $500 million in revenue. My work was making complicated systems fast, findable, and reliable at scale.

Eventually the obvious occurred to me. I pointed the engineering at a functional medicine practice instead of a product. Search infrastructure, content built on real query data, conversion paths that did not leak.

New patient calls went up roughly 10x in six months. She stopped all her other marketing, hired two more doctors, and started a waitlist.

That practice was Dr. Diane Mueller. Her quote is further down this page, in her words rather than mine. I have been doing a version of that work ever since.

What makes this different

Most agencies bolted AI onto a 2015 process. I built the process around it.

I am an engineer, so I build tools instead of hiring people to do things by hand. The systems I run your acquisition on are the same ones I run my own business on. You can go look at them right now, for free, without talking to me.

This is the whole pitch, really. Everything I would do for you is published on this site in enough detail that you could do it yourself. Most practitioners read it and decide they would rather treat patients.

How I work · 07

The rules I actually run by.

Not values on a wall. These decide what I build, what I refuse, and when I tell you to stop paying me.

Systems, not tactics.

A tactic is a thing that worked once. A system is a thing that runs whether or not anyone remembers to do it. I build the second kind, because you are a clinician and you should not be a marketing department.

Found beats better.

Being the best practitioner in the city loses to being the first one a patient sees. Clinical excellence is your job and you have it handled. Visibility is mine.

You own everything.

Accounts, data, content, automations, all built inside your stack in your name. If you fire me, the machine keeps running and it runs for you. I would rather earn the renewal than hold your assets hostage.

Measured, or it did not happen.

Every engagement opens with a baseline and closes with a number. Rankings, calls, booked consults, cost per acquired patient. If a channel is not moving the number, I kill it rather than defend it.

Fix the leak before buying traffic.

Sending more people to a page that does not convert is an expensive way to learn what was already broken. Conversion first, volume second, every time.

Capacity over revenue.

Four practices a quarter. Taking a fifth means the other four get a worse build, and a worse build is how agencies end up with case studies they do not publish.

I tell you when I am the wrong call.

On the first call, not in month four. If your patient value is too low, your collections too thin, or ads are genuinely the better answer this quarter, you will hear that from me while it still saves you money.

Why this matters

Most practices plateau at the owner’s capacity.

Referrals and reputation get you to a full week. They almost never get you to a second provider, because both scale with your personal attention and you only have so much. Scaling past that point is a different problem, and it is a build.

Rented growth

Patients you stop getting the day you stop paying.

  • Ads that produce exactly as long as the card is charged
  • Referrals that scale with your personal attention, and no further
  • A website nobody finds without paying to send them there
  • Follow-up that happens when someone at the front desk remembers
  • Growth that stalls the week you take a holiday

Owned growth

An asset that gets cheaper per patient every month.

  • Search and AI answers that keep producing after the build is paid for
  • Ads used as a throttle when you want volume faster, not as the foundation
  • Automation that answers, follows up and reactivates without staff time
  • Capacity to add a provider, because demand arrives without you generating it
  • A machine that runs the week you take a holiday

What that arc looked like for one practice

10x
new patient calls in six months
0
other marketing still running
+2
doctors hired to keep up
Waitlist
where an empty schedule used to be

Dr. Diane Mueller, functional medicine. Her words are below.

In their words

Practices that were already good, and are now easy to find.

Within a few months, my new patient calls increased about 10x. I stopped using other marketing, hired new doctors, and now have a waiting list.

Dr. Diane Mueller

Functional Medicine · MyLymeDoc.com

We are so much more visible. A lot of people previously told us we were hard to find. That's completely changed.

Dr. Piper Gibson

Naturopathic Physician

I used to have ups and downs with new patient inquiries. Now it's steady and predictable. The system just works.

Dr. Alison Egeland

Functional Medicine Specialist

Before you book anything

Four gates. You need all four.

I would rather you disqualify yourself in the next 60 seconds than six weeks into a contract. Specialty does not decide this. A chiropractor selling a $6,000 care plan is a better fit than a functional medicine doctor doing $200 visits.

Patient lifetime value$3,000 minimum, $6,000 or more is the sweet spot

How it is collected does not matter. Protocol, membership, or two years of care all count.

ContinuityPatients return, renew, or continue

Lifetime value only exists if there is a second visit. One $200 transaction cannot fund acquisition at any volume.

StageYou already have patients and revenue

The domain says Scale. I take practices from working to bigger, never from zero to one.

PaymentCash, hybrid, or concierge

I need a service you can price and market freely. Hybrid is fine. Most of this market is hybrid.

When I am the wrong call

  • You are launching. I take practices from working to bigger, not from zero to one.
  • You want the compounding part in 30 days. The build ships in weeks, but search takes six to nine months to carry volume on its own. If month one is the deadline, you want ads, and you do not need me to run those for you.
  • My floor is $3,000 a month and most engagements sit at $6,000 to $7,000. If that is more than 10% of your monthly collections, this is the wrong time and I will say so on the call.
  • You bill insurance exclusively with nothing you can price yourself. There is nothing for me to market.

I carry the risk

+10 new patients a month, or you do not pay.

We agree the number and the window in writing before you start, so there is nothing to argue about later. If the system does not produce, you are not paying me to keep trying.

Four practices per quarter. When it is full, it is full, and I will tell you that rather than take the money and stretch.

Start with the free scan →

See where you actually rank before you talk to anybody, including me.

Prefer to read first? Every playbook I use is published here, or find me on LinkedIn and mikekohl.com.

Free Weekly Newsletter

The Health Biz Playbook

Every week: one tactic, one data point, one case study. Built for cash-pay practices. No generic advice. No fluff.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.