Based on a PracticeCare® podcast conversation, Danny Schuman on Helping Your Practice Stand Out From Your Competition, with Danny Schuman, founder of Twist Your Thinking, a brand storytelling and executive coaching firm.
Why doesn’t “I’m good at what I do” work as a way to stand out?
Because it’s table stakes. Every practice is supposed to be good at what it does, and every competitor’s website says some version of the same thing. A claim that’s true of every provider in the category can’t be the reason someone picks you over the practice down the street.
It’s also unverifiable. A stranger reading a website for the first time has no way to substantiate “I’m good at what I do,” and no way to use it to tell one provider apart from another.
If not expertise, what should a practice talk about instead?
The why behind the what. What you do is the service; why you do it that way is what makes people remember and choose you. Danny worked with a law firm founder who differentiated herself not by describing the M&A work everybody in her field does, but by describing how she does it — getting deals done without being combative, and prioritizing relationships over pure transactions.
Should a doctor really put personal details like hobbies on their website?
Yes, if there’s a real connection to how they practice. People aren’t hiring a license, they’re hiring the person behind it, and a personal detail gives a prospective patient something concrete to form an opinion around.
The clearest version of this shows up with chiropractors. Many build their bios around the accident that led them to the field, which gives patients an emotional entry point that a list of credentials never will.
Doesn’t emotional storytelling work against clinically driven fields like oncology?
Not really. Studies consistently show people remember stories better than facts and figures. People make decisions emotionally and justify them with facts afterward, even in fields where the facts matter enormously.
That doesn’t mean the credentials disappear. It means the story is what gets someone to stop scrolling and pay attention in the first place.
How does a practice owner find their own story if they can’t see it themselves?
Ask your best patients or clients why the relationship has worked so well, then keep asking why. The first answer is usually generic, for example, “I trust you” is a common one. That’s the layer to push past, not the layer to stop at.
There’s a formal version of this called the five whys: keep asking until the answer surprises even the person giving it. What comes out at that point is usually better material than anything invented alone, because it’s specific and genuine to how the practice actually operates.
How many things should a practice try to say about itself?
One, maybe two. Long lists are the product of lazy thinking, not clear thinking. Someone unfamiliar with a practice can only hold onto so much, and the more a practice tries to say, the less of it actually lands.
Pick the single thing worth being remembered for, and say it consistently enough that it becomes attached to your name. It won’t be the only true thing about the practice — it just has to be the thing that comes to mind first.
What’s the risk of skipping this and never quite getting the story right?
Someone else gets there first and gets remembered, while a practice that sounds like every competitor gets forgotten by default. A practice owner works hard to build a trustworthy reputation, then often talks about it clumsily and generically the moment a stranger actually encounters it.
A hard-earned reputation and how it gets communicated have to be consistent. Most people are too close to their own business to see that gap on their own — which is exactly why it takes someone else asking the questions.
A final note
Every practice owner I talk to believes they’re different. The problem is almost never that it isn’t true — it’s that they’ve never said it out loud in a way a stranger can actually hear. Danny’s approach works because it doesn’t ask anyone to invent something. It asks them to notice what’s already there and say it plainly, consistently, and first. That’s available to any practice, in any specialty, regardless of how crowded the market looks.
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