What does $600 a month have to bring in?
Start with what a new patient costs you today. Then see the breakeven for the system against an agency at the same volume. Breakeven, not a forecast.
Your numbers
Defaults are benchmarks and say so. Replace them with yours; the output updates as you type.
What you spend to get a new patient today
Every new patient today is a referral you do not control.
Zero spend is not free. It means someone else decides your volume, and the day they retire or get a better offer, it drops.
- Breakeven for the Solo retainer
- 0.9 new patients a month
- Breakeven for an agency at the market band
- 8 new patients a month
- Contribution per new patient
- $660
- Payback on the $1,000 studio session
- 0.2 months
- Incremental revenue a year at your target
- $115,200
- Retainer as a share of that gain
- 11%
$3,250 a month plus $2,000 ad spend, the middle of the range.
An agency needs to bring in 8 new patients a month to pay for itself. The system needs 0.9. Breakeven, not a forecast.
How to read this.
The first number is the inefficiency: what each new patient costs you today, or, if you spend nothing, the fact that every new patient arrives through a decision you do not control. That number is the one to fix, and it is the one most practices have never written down.
Breakeven is the number of extra new patients a month a spend has to produce before it has paid for itself. It is honest in both directions: it does not promise you will get them, and it shows how few the system needs against how many an agency needs at the same margin.
Payback is how many months of hitting your target it takes to cover the one-time studio session. Every figure rounds to the precision of what you typed. Nothing here is a forecast of your practice.
Why the retainer is the small number.
Three ways practices buy attention, and what each one has to return before it earns its keep.
| Patient acquisition agencies | Social or content teams | The content system | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $1,500 to $5,000 per month, plus $1,000 to $3,000 in ad spend | $1,000 to $8,000 per month, priced by headcount | $600 a month, plus a one-time $1,000 studio session |
| Where the money goes | Ad platforms and account managers | A person, or part of one | One session, then software |
| When you stop | The leads stop that month | The writing stops that month | The clone, the library, the site and the list stay yours |
| What it has to return | Several times more new patients than the system, every month, forever | Enough to cover a salary line | A handful of new patients a month |
Market figures are category ranges, not quotes from any named company. The calculator uses the middle of each range.
We do not promise a patient count. Nobody honest can.
We do not promise a patient count. Nobody honest can.
The calculator shows what a spend has to produce to break even, so you can decide whether that is plausible for your practice. It does not forecast.
It does not promise overnight results either. The first calendar is live within two weeks of the session; the compounding takes months. Owned media is slower than an ad, and it is still there when the ad stops.
And it does not remove approval. You approve every script, about two minutes each. That is the part we will not take out, because it is the part that keeps the content yours.
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