For many years, you likely had to be the central force of marketing to grow your practice. How much better would it be if you didn’t have to do it all by yourself? What if something much greater could take its place that could be much more effective? In this segment, I’d like to challenge you with some ideas that could dramatically make your business development much easier. What if you could go from the traditional marketing approach to creating a movement as your engine?

The next four ideas I’m going to share with you are not theoretical. They’re real life examples of my team’s experience and the results of pursuing them were more than we could have imagined.

Business development is not solely about our efforts any more. We started a movement that is opening doors for us to do business with more people than ever before.

Now before I lock into them, can you close your eyes for a few moments? I’ll tell you when to open them. Now, without opening your eyes, try to grab your phone and send a message to your family letting them know that you wish they were here with you. I know what you’re thinking. You might be saying, “I’ll just do voice to text.” But that’s not allowed. Keeping your eyes closed, imagine for a moment what it would be like if you lost your vision and you couldn’t see. You go outside and for the rest of your time here you cannot see any of it. How would that change your experience? Would you even be here or be a TOT member?

OK. Now it’s time to open your eyes. Just think how radically different your life would be if you didn’t have vision. And now that you consider what it’s like to be blind, let’s discuss how I went from the old marketing approach to starting a movement.

The first thing we had to do was come up with a big hairy audacious goal, which is something you’ve probably heard of before. It’s a B-HAG. But we made it measurable in terms of the community good that we would do. We found ours by linking it to a global problem. Let me give you an example. Do you know what’s special about this number? How about these countries? Each of them has a population of less than 253 million. What would happen if, overnight, any one of these entire populations went blind? What if I told you that according to the World Health Organization that more than 80 percent of blindness is avoidable. What if I also told you that at some places, it can cost as little as $25 to fix one eye with cataract surgery. If you’re like me, it would drive you nuts to hear this many people would be able to see if eye care could be funded and distributed.

Now you might be thinking right now, “Why in the world is he up here talking about this?” Well, it’s because there’s so much curable blindness and it drove us to choose our BHAG of restoring sight to one million eyes. And due to limitations on time, I’m not going to be able to share with you the entire story of how this all came from the story of Amazing Grace. But I’m happy to share that with you afterwards. So please come see me, I’d love to tell you the full story.

We found that by doing this, that everyone in our organization is united with a common purpose and mission and that our employees find meaning and purpose in everything that they’re doing.

The next idea that you can pursue is to get your clients excited about the big goal that you’re undertaking, by linking the business they do with you to the cause in the community. For example, we launched a program where every client we serve, every household, will give the gift of sight to someone who has lost theirs. We got this idea from Tom’s, Walgreens and Bombas. Doing the one-for-one concept. To execute this, we decided to reserve 1 percent of our annual revenue for eye surgeries.

What this did was it made it easier for clients to choose us over others because, simply by being a client, they’re making a difference. And the chance of them sharing this information with others is much greater because of the impact we’re making.

The third idea you can take is to partner with or create a nonprofit to develop a stronger tie to your cause. We launched a nonprofit called a Give Sight Global. The objective was to have it function as a fundraising agent for cataract surgery. We wanted to do something similar as Charity Water, the leading fundraiser for clean drinking water. And what we found was that this enabled us to sell speaking engagements in a way that directs solicitation our business wouldn’t. And having your own nonprofit would provide a way for you to have more influence on how you would promote the organization.

The fourth idea you can pursue is setting up something like an internal wellness program for your employees. That way, they can be encouraged to be ambassadors for your own cause on their own personal time. In our experience, we found this is one of the ways that we got the highest level of buy-in from our people. We chose to reward our employees one dollar for every 10 minutes they spend investing in their mind, body and soul. Yes. That’s right. We’re paying people to invest in themselves.

And you can connect this to your cause if you have an atmosphere where all the workouts can be shared on social media. That way, their friends and family can ask why they are doing this. What we found is that by doing this, 100 percent of our employees are participating. We have people who haven’t worked out for 10 years get extremely active, even doing things like half marathons. It’s been a huge success.

In addition to these four ideas, let me submit to you two additional bonus ideas that you would pursue to potentially start a movement for your business. The first one is to start a public wellness program that connects to your movement. We built a program where anyone who promotes our calls on Facebook would trigger us to raise one dollar for every 120 calories burned. And once a participant accumulates enough calories, we incentivize them to set up employer teams and then employers can get involved in the matching program. And what this did is it created advocates for our cause in a way that we hadn’t had before. And it has enabled us to reach people that we probably wouldn’t have ever reached in the past.

The final bonus item is really the mother of all. You can build an app to make your public wellness program much more feasible so that way anyone anywhere with access to technology can participate and rack up dollars for your cause. For example, we have an app that just about any form of exercise can be counted. Every calorie that a person burns, there’s a media keeping track of them along with the number of eyes that they’ve cured through our fundraising efforts. And here’s how it works.

As you work out, you’ll see the blue ring on the outside is measuring the 120 calories burned. In the center is the black ring, it measures $25 being raised for 3,000 calories being accumulated. And what we found is that, by doing this, it’s made everything that we’re working on tangible. It’s been a great conversation starter with centers of influence, prospects and for clients to pass on to others.

We were fortunate to find something like this that links very well to our industry. Think about it. Every client that we serve lacks financial vision to some degree and we can help them gain sight financially. At the same time, we can help restore sight for those who have lost theirs. What would happen to your business if you could adopt something like this and make it the focal point of everything that you do?

Let me close by sharing with you a short clip of a trip that we did last year to Africa where we were able to go with a team and cure blindness for 540 eyes. As you watch, imagine what you could do and the type of impact you could make if you were to do something like this.

[video plays]

Don’t forget. Go to your app store, look for this app. Give Sight Global. Every time you work out, you can generate calories from whatever fitness app you want to use and then those calories will be used to raise dollars. Together, we can cure blindness and make sure no one lives in darkness.

Thank you.

Justin Nabity, CFP is a six-year MDRT member from Omaha, Nebraska, with one Court of the Table and five Top of the Table qualifications. He is the founder and CEO of Physicians Thrive, an advisory group committed to helping physicians make financial choices with confidence.