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October 13, 2025 13 mins

pisode recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Growth & Operations conference, Scott Becker talks with Kathy Gaughran, Senior Marketing Strategist at Healthcare Success Strategies, about how AI is transforming digital marketing, recruitment, and patient engagement in healthcare. Kathy also shares insights on balancing centralized branding with local impact and the importance of staying ahead of technology to drive sustainable growth.

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(00:00):
This is Scott Becker with a very special
edition of the Becker business podcast, the Becker
private equity podcast.
We're broadcasting today from the McGuire Woods Healthcare
Growth and Operations Conference.
I am thrilled to be joined right now
by Kathy Goran. Kathy is one of the
leaders of health care success. They've just done
a tremendous job of building a strategic agency,

(00:22):
that that helps to amplify and and help
tell the story of businesses in health care
and what they do. They largely work with
private equity sponsored companies, and they've just done
a tremendous job. Kathy, can you take a
moment and introduce yourself? Yeah. Hi, Scott. It's
great to see you. My name is Kathy
Goran. I've been a senior strategist with HealthCare
Success for about fifteen years.

(00:44):
I was with Stewart, our CEO, at a
previous healthcare ad agency prior to joining Healthcare
Success
for about twenty years. So he and I
have been in the industry for a couple
of decades.
Fantastic. And I've watched you grow and watched
Stewart grow and what you've done grow, and
you've just done a tremendous job. Can can
you talk a little bit about the areas
that you're most focused in? Where where do

(01:05):
you most
closely work with clients and and and and
of of the firm? Yeah. Well, we saw
a big influx actually following following COVID of
the behavioral health space. We saw a lot
of autism, eating disorders,
residential treatment centers,
mental health
facilities.
And we're finding that

(01:27):
the demand
far the demand for clinicians and the demand
for care far out out
passes passes our supply.
So one of the big problems for these
centers is just recruitment, You know? So we
we come at them from a variety of
different strategies.
Right. And that and that is so true
that that you've got the situation where if
you're if you're a growing business in behavioral
health, there's there's obviously

(01:48):
we're overloaded
with need in our country. If you go
to emergency departments,
a third of the people in emergency departments
are people with behavioral health issues and challenges.
Yeah, obviously, there's been an explosion of diagnosis.
There's also been an explosion you just need,
particularly as the world moves so quickly and
there's been so much change, the way in
which we structure our lives has changed so

(02:09):
much, and it's led to just an explosion
of behavioral
challenges.
But talk a little bit about when when
you work with clients, it's just not on
growth. It's also on strategy. It's also on
recruitment. Right. It's also on trying to figure
out how they pull the different levers that
could help them be successful. Right. And marketing
is an important lever.
It's not just a cost center. It's a
lever. And so when we look and evaluate

(02:31):
any new business, whether it's behavioral health or,
inovascular
or,
urgent care, which is another two areas that
we work extensively in.
We look at the three channels, recruitment for
clinicians to cover the demand.
We also look at,
building of b to b relationships for referrals.
And then we also have b to c

(02:52):
for the patient population. So when we work
with these brands that cover a lot of
territories, one of the challenges with private equity
and the platforms is they end up in
competitive markets.
So so so talk for a second. In
terms of, Cathy, where you spend most of
your time we've talked about recruitment,
b to b, b to c. What what
do you end up spending most of your
time? And and and you mentioned for a

(03:13):
moment,
many of the
private equity sponsored companies
become sort of a patchwork of many different
companies. Right. And how important is it for
them to develop sort of a a single
brand, a clarity of brand? It's critical. So,
we we often look at house of brands
or branded house. And as
search is changing, we're finding that a centralized

(03:33):
brand is is more effective in most cases.
You want to look at marketing with a
centralized strategy, but executed locally.
One of the primary issues about, multilocation marketing
is making sure that you're appearing to that
demographic
as a local option for them. So it
doesn't feel like it's just an offshoot of
a larger brand, but actually a a health

(03:55):
care entity that's servicing that particular market. So
it needs to feel local to the consumers
that are there, and that's part of the
strategy. And talk about that for a moment
because there's this this fine line between
standardization
that you're like a Starbucks and every place
you go. You know, when you go to
Starbucks, it's always the same experience, something like
that, versus particularly in in mental health and
in health care,

(04:15):
having clarity that you're a great brand,
but that you've actually got local providers taking
care of local people and trying to get
that right balance. Right. How do you think
about some of those things?
Well, it's it's critical for that identity. So
some of the things we look at are
landing pages, location pages, you know, things that
are specifically local to them, your Google business
profiles,

(04:36):
and then obviously
AI has completely changed the game. So it's
critical that you're optimized for your business profiles,
that you're doing everything you can to get
into,
search because we're seeing zero click search now.
People are are passing they're they're not getting
past the AI overview. So we're finding that
60% it's been about a 60% drop in

(04:56):
website traffic across the country, 30 to 60
depending on the vertical. Wow. But,
and and one of the issues, we just
created this really nice tutorial
that talks about how AI is impacting search.
And one of the things that health care
is going to always fall under is your
money or your life, which is just sort
of a Google category and they they look

(05:17):
at at health care differently because of what
they're educating us on. It is our money
or our life in health care, so it's
critical that the information is accurate and that
it's all following Google's, guidelines.
That's fascinating. It's so fascinating you mentioned this.
One of the stories reported on earlier today
was Rolling Stone magazine, which also in some
other magazines,
just, you know, announced that they're suing Google

(05:39):
for exactly what you talked about is that
people aren't actually getting
Google
through their summaries Right. That does the overview,
and then people don't actually get to the
Rolling Stone pages Right. To to Rolling Stone.
And they say it's it's they're cannibalizing their
traffic. It's depressing traffic that people aren't getting
to their actual. And if you're a media
company, you need that traffic. Right. And if

(06:01):
you're any kind of business, you need people
to get through to your business Right. And
not just get AI'd out where where where
where where you're not part of whatever end
up being the AI solution. That's a fascinating
change in marketing and how you work through
it. Completely. For all these people that have
done pay per click marketing or or trying
to be in front of eyeballs and so
on. Now you get sort of through this
funnel where it stops. It's almost like with

(06:23):
email delivery. At one point, all emails went
through. Now you get a category by Apple
in the four different categories. And if you're
in the wrong category, nobody ever sees your
email. It's really a fascinating change in marketing
and how you do it. That is fascinating.
It is. Talk a little bit about Cathy.
You guys have had tremendous success. I love
the energy of yourself and Stuart. It's just
really and it's so important in what you
do. Yeah. Talk for a second about what
are you most excited about as we head

(06:44):
into the end of 02/2025,
the start of 02/1926?
Where are you most focused? I mean, I
know you're solving big problems. Right. And and
where are you most focused and excited? Well,
we're we're definitely we've got a big initiative
within our organization on AI and the different
application because AI is impacting
everything from the front end on the phones,
with AI bots that can answer phones. We're
having a meeting on that this week with

(07:05):
a client in Houston,
all the way through to how they practice
medicine. So it's gonna completely change not just
the health care experience, but also what we're
able to do,
what they're able to do on the back
end. I I was at, your conference a
couple of months ago and heard a surgeon
talking about,
embryologists
and AI and that that, they're able to

(07:26):
produce more embryos. So if you just look
at all the swing that it goes up
to in health care and actual application of
health care services,
from just That's amazing. Answering the phone. Yeah.
So it's gonna impact
a lot of areas. And that's why when
you say AI, it's it's not AI as
a category. It's
AI as a landscape. Right. No. A 100%.
There's so many different pieces. It's so many
different places. And what's happening is it's, like,

(07:47):
so many different things.
It seems to pick up steam.
We we all get more used to them.
It's like when the iPhone, the smartphones came
out, took a while for all of us
to see how we're gonna use it for
so many different things, and we start to
use apps, start to use these things. With
AI, so many of our first experiences
were first through just our regular search, and
then it was through the
or the or whatever it is that people

(08:08):
work on. You start seeing,
oh my god. This is getting me answered
so much quicker. So I'm gonna use it.
Then people start to understand how that's gonna
translate to their to their business.
Cathy, you've had this remarkable leadership career.
Take a moment on what advice you would
give to other emerging leaders.
I think it is just staying ahead of
the curve, making sure that you are because

(08:30):
another thing on AI, just lapping back to
that, is it also impacts analytics and how
we evaluate data.
So it's critical that you're staying ahead of
the curve as far as new technologies,
new platforms. We've we've, assembled a whole tech
stack,
and it took our team quite a while
to vet the companies and look at the
different partners that we can that we can

(08:52):
work with and provide services,
jointly, you know, because there's just so many
different solutions and AI has touched so many
different categories.
And it's important to also figure out how
to monetize
AI in your business so you're not getting
caught up in the sexiness of the technology
and not understanding the direct application. You know,
and and I think what you said there,
so many pieces that are so important is

(09:14):
that
you have to pick which solutions you're gonna
work with. But you can't work with all
of them. You you end up just all
over the place. Yeah. And so let me
go back to a very human question.
I've watched you and Stuart maintain tremendous energy
for what you do for a very long
time. Mhmm. I had the great pleasure of
being on Stuart and your podcast of, not
that long ago, maybe six months ago. And

(09:34):
it's really a great, great experience getting a
chance to visit. Great. Thank you. I've been
so impressed with Stewart and you over the
course of the last fifteen years. Yeah. How
do you maintain the daily motivation, the energy?
How do you keep it instinct to keep
on doing what you do? I love what
I do, honestly.
I was talking with another new client in
Utah about that that we're fortunate.

(09:56):
It's so interesting and so rewarding. I I
tend to love to work in the mental
health space, but I like I like what
I do across the board. The the challenge
of of really identifying the problems and providing
solutions to unstick issues and get greater visibility
because private equity runs into the challenge of
trying to to push short term growth initiatives

(10:17):
while balancing and building long term brand sustainability
and scalability.
So it's like you've got all these different
challenges happening at the same time, and I
find that invigorating
and challenging. Yeah. It's it's been continuously challenging.
Every
situation is unique and different. It really is
because you really have to tie in. You've
got some ideas. Here's how we do things.
Here's what we do. Right. But every situation

(10:38):
is a little bit different. Right. Make sure
you relate to those people and help those
people and what business they're doing and and
where they're going. They've all got pressure on
them as well. Right. Now I'm gonna ask
you one last question. I promise you the
last question was the one last question, but
I got one more. So giving advice to
a young person coming out of school, you
get these two different types of advice today.
You get one broad school thought that says,

(10:59):
pursue your passion,
and you'll figure out
money.
Others that come from sort of more of
the old school, particularly myself, would be, well,
you better have a job, and then you
can figure out your passion. Mhmm. Where is
the mindset in that? How do you sort
of advise somebody younger about finding an intersection,
something they'd love to do? Because you're forging,
love what you do,
and and you also make a living. Yeah.

(11:19):
But but somebody coming out of school, pursue
your passion
or or make a living, and I guess
it depends what your passion is. I think
pursue your passion. I think, things have changed,
and I was starting to mention my daughter.
She just graduated with her degree in psychology.
And watching her,
apply for jobs, it was like she was
walking down the yellow brick road. You know,
there were all these opportunities, and she ended

(11:41):
up taking a job as an equine therapist,
which we didn't even realize existed. Right?
So there are a lot of opportunities for
kids now. So
they need to find what they love and
then figure out a way to make that
their path. Yes. And I That that's fantastic
too because she's also in a great field.
There's so much need today. Right. And you
have all these different options. Mhmm. Where if

(12:02):
you're in other fields, it feels like there's
not so many different options, and then trying
to find your your your your path and
then make a living is more challenging. I
think that's fascinating fascinating, but but what a
fantastic thing. And where is she doing equine
therapy?
In Salinas, California. Oh, beautiful. Isn't that awesome?
Beautiful and fascinating place. Yeah. She's just living
the dream. So it's great. In equine therapy,
you know, when when I hear it first,

(12:23):
I think therapy for horses, but it's really
using horses and therapy with people Mhmm. As
a way to work with people utilizing horses.
What a fascinating feeling. Oh, it's it's incredible.
So she and she was telling me some
of her diagnosis and application of the horses,
and it's it just makes so much sense.
You know, people who have issues with control
or fear of the unknown, and she knows

(12:44):
the right horses to put with the right
people. And I've seen,
patients over my lifetime that have only been
able to see success and and benefit from
equine therapy, and there's not that many centers.
So fortunately, the center she works at is
all, Medi Cal.
Amazing. She services the underprivileged in the state
of California, which equine therapy tends to be

(13:06):
expensive. So it's best that she's able to
offer it to people who can afford it.
And I want you to do me one
favor. Can I ask you to do me
one favor? Sure. So so my one favor
is I want your daughter to save me
a very slow horse
for when I come out to Solanus, California
for equine therapy. That is what I want
is a really slow Yep. She's got just
the horse. Yeah. Good. She does. That's what

(13:28):
we need. Cathy, what a great pleasure to
visit with you today. Yeah. I'm a little
slow. Yeah. At what you folks have done
at Health Care Success. Thank you so much
for joining us. I appreciate it. Thanks, Scott.
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