In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell speaks with Bret Gregory, founder of DrTalks, about how podcasting is transforming the way doctors build authority, attract patients, and share medical knowledge.
They explore how DrTalks is creating a creator economy for physicians, making it easy to become a podcast guest or host while removing technical and logistical barriers. Bret breaks down a “crawl, walk, run” strategy where doctors start as guests before launching their own shows.
The conversation highlights practical tools like “signature talks,” which use AI to generate compelling podcast pitches, and explains how consistency – not production scale, is what drives long-term success.
A major focus is the power of local podcasting, where doctors interview referral partners and community members to build trust, visibility, and direct patient flow.
Ultimately, this episode reframes podcasting as a foundational tool for modern medicine – one that builds authority, strengthens community ties, and helps doctors thrive in a founder-led media world.
About the Guest:
Bret Gregory is the founder of DrTalks, a platform designed to connect doctors and patients through trusted medical content and podcasting. He is focused on building a global network that helps physicians share their expertise while also creating sustainable income streams through media and content creation. Through DrTalks, Bret has helped thousands of doctors launch podcasts, appear as guests, and build meaningful digital presence with minimal technical barriers.
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bretgdrtalks/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretg/
Website: https://drtalks.com/
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About the Host:
James Maskell is a healthcare entrepreneur and founder of The Evolution of Medicine. For over 20 years, he has worked to scale functional medicine through community-driven models, group visits, and practitioner infrastructure. His work focuses on moving medicine upstream – toward prevention, lifestyle intervention, and systems-based care.
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/FunctionalForum
Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:
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Transcript:
We’re on a mission to help a billion people suffering from chronic illness and disease get the information they need directly from the source, which is you, the doctor who’s listening to this. And then the flip side to that same coin is we’re democratizing the creator economy for doctors. I feel like doctors have been squeezed from so many different angles so unfairly, and it’s time for doctors to get paid with your knowledge.
I’ve created a platform that helps amplify your voice, gets you seen and heard and compensated for your information. I, I’m all about helping doctors because I believe you’re the ones that are really gonna help us all heal. Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, James Maskell, and today we are here with Brett Gregory.
He is the founder of Dr. Talks. Brett, welcome to the podcast. James, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure and an honor working with you, and I’m happy to be here and excited to have our conversation. Yeah. Before we kick off, I just wanted to let everyone know, you know, that Brett and his team, you know, run my podcast and, you know, I’ve had different teams over the years to, you know, to organize it.
But Brett, it’s been great to work with you and your team, and it makes it super easy to, you know, to do all the logistical backend stuff. So I’m really grateful, uh, for all the support that you provided. Thanks so much. Really fun to have you on the network and to plug you in. We’ve got, you know, 3,000 doctors on our network now, and I love, uh, that you’re such a champion of doctors, so that’s, uh, near and dear to my heart.
Well, look, I wanna… You know, one of the themes of The Evolution of Medicine has always been optimal practice models, and there’s a couple things that have come up in the last little while that I wanna ask you about with regard to getting the word out. But before we get into the specifics around podcasting, like what is the vision for, for Dr.
Talks? What’s the mission, and how do you help doctors, uh, in that mission? Sure. So, uh, the mission for Dr. Talks is two-sided. It’s one for the patient, one for the doctor. So we’re on a mission to help a billion people suffering from chronic illness and disease get the information they need directly from the source, which is you, the doctor who’s listening to this.
And then the flip side to that same coin is we’re democratizing the creator economy for doctors. I feel like doctors have been squeezed from so many different angles so unfairly, and it’s time for doctors to get paid with your knowledge. So I’ve created a platform that helps amplify your voice, gets you seen and heard and compensated for your information.
So that’s… I, I’m all about helping doctors because I believe you’re the ones that are really gonna help us all heal. Amazing. Well, look, I wanna, I wanna chat a little bit about, you know, podcasting, and that’s the sort of the main way in which they, the doctors get the, the word out. I’m sure that as soon as I say, “Hey, look, the idea here is that I want you to think about starting a podcast,” they’ve probably heard it before.
They’ve probably groaned. It probably is like- … in some ways very aspirational because- Sure … it’s fun to have a podcast- Mm-hmm … and it’s fun to, to do that. But they may have tried it and done a couple of episodes, or they may have found the whole process overwhelming. Why, why do you think that this is a critical piece of sort of the infrastructure for someone who wants to have an impact in that way?
Well, podcasts are by far the fastest-growing segment of any media, and I mean by an enormous margin. Right now, there’s 850 million monthly active listeners for Spotify and Apple, and YouTube for podcasts is significantly larger than that. So all of your patients, clients, and customers listen to podcasts.
Pretty much all of them do right now today. If you’re not being a guest or a host, you’re really missing out on a huge channel that in a lot of ways can be extremely low cost or even free. And, you know, I’m a big fan of crawl, walk, run. So if somebody feels like starting their own podcast is really overwhelming, no worries, start as a guest.
And I’ve spent a lot of time creating a really easy system where doctors can be a guest for free on podcasts. We’ve created a way where they can, uh, create their own channel on “Doctor Talks” for free. It takes two minutes. It’s just like creating a YouTube channel. But you get connected in a network of 3,000 other doctors that all have channels, and many of them have their own podcasts, and you can easily become a guest on those podcasts.
One thing when I tell doctors that is like, “Okay, start out as, as a guest,” I very commonly hear this response, “Why would anyone want to hear me? And isn’t this information that I have to share, hasn’t it been said already over and over?” And I wanna just take one quick step back and let people know why I’m on this mission in the first place.
Uh, from 1996 to 2006, I had my own employee benefits business, and we did corporate wellness programs, and I had a talk radio show where w- I would interview CEOs of companies, and I ended up building a really significant business just from the radio show, which certainly helps me with these podcasts today.
And sadly, in 2006, my 32-year-old brother was diagnosed with stage four non-small cell carcinoma, and he was given nine months to live. He passed away peacefully in my father’s arms almost nine months later. My dad’s a doctor, and my mom is a nurse, and she was a palliative care specialist. And so I got to see firsthand with my brother having literally the best care that anyone could possibly have.
Father’s a doctor, mother’s a palliative care specialist. He was living with them for the last nine months of his life. He literally had the best care in the world, and it made me realize what a privilege it is to be related to a doctor, to have a doctor in the family. And while I can’t give everybody their own family member who’s a doctor, the next best thing is I can give people that information from a doctor on demand at scale anytime they need it.
So that’s why I created Doctor Talks, and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for doctors to get booked on podcasts. And from my perspective, I would respond to the doctor who says, “Why would anybody want to listen to me?” I would say, “Why wouldn’t they?” You know when you go to a cocktail party and you tell people a doctor, they start asking you healthcare questions and medical questions.
That happens a lot. Yeah. So that should prove all you need to know about how people want to hear from you. They want that information from you. So I have found that it’s incredibly easy for doctors to get booked on podcasts for free, and we have a whole system and a process for that. Actually, I’d love to share if I could.
Probably many of you are, are using your favorite AI product, whether it’s Claude or ChatGPT. What I always recommend for doctors is to create what I like to call your signature talk, and so this is the prompt. Go to your, your favorite AI platform and type in, “Help me come up with a catchy podcast interview title on,” and then you fill in the blank.
Whatever your area of expertise is, if it’s Alzheimer’s, brain health, hormones, peptides, whatever it is, fill in the blank. So, “Help me come up with a catchy podcast interview title on,” and fill in the blank, and it’ll come up with some amazing catchy podcast interview titles. Find the one that resonates with you, and then we’ve made it really easy for you to send that as your pitch with one click to hundreds of doctors that host podcasts on Doctor Talks.
And let me tell you, most doctors that host their own podcasts are trying to do approximately one interview a week. They need 52 interviews a year. They’re always looking for new people to interview. And on Doctor Talks, it’s usually doctors interviewing other doctors, so it’s great because you can get interviewed by your peers.
You’re gonna have a great conversation that, trust me, millions and tens of millions of people want to listen to. Yeah. Super cool. Well, look, I’ve been, I’ve been thinking a little bit about, had a conversation a few weeks ago- with a pharmacist from Ohio, um, who had b- has been one of the first people to use Fullscript Journeys.
And Fullscript is a, you know, a, a, a mission partner for us on the, on the Evolution of Medicine. And on Journeys she said, you know, she’d start to build these journeys, which is essentially like having the equivalent of a function health, you know, on the front of your practice where you can sell labs to patients directly and then, you know, that without starting a, a new patient en- engagement with them.
And, uh, you know, and so she had, you know, she’s now selling 20 of those a month outside of just the normal pharmacy business. Wow. And she said that she had started a podcast. Nice. And that she has her own journey as the only sponsor on that podcast. And it really got me thinking about, you know, ’cause I, I thought, like you said, there are, you know, when I started the Evolution of Medicine podcast, I think there was zero podcasts for doctors in functional medicine ’cause it’s such a small niche.
But, you know, there’s lots of other people who are doing that now. But I had this idea and I wanted to run it by you because you know the podcast business, you know, and, and in this world, you know, better than almost anyone. I had an idea where I was like, if I had a local clinic and I really wanted to thrive and I wanted to grow, grow my practice, and I was really focused on my local area rather than, like, telemedicine, what about starting a podcast that is all about health but in my county or in my town?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because it just feels like, you know, if I’m, if I, if I’m in the business of health and I’m in some town, I’ve never been asked to be on a podcast. So if I’m a local- Mm-hmm … chiropractor or a local gym owner or a local, you know, therapist or whatever, I’ve probably been dreaming of being asked to be on a podcast, but, like, no one’s ever asked me.
And if I show up and I say, “Hey, do you wanna be on my podcast?” And then, “Hey, would you send this to all your patients so that they can hear you say?” They probably would. Yeah. Yeah. And then that’s gonna put you in a position as a person of authority who has the podcast, who has the podcast called, you know, Healthy El Dorado or whatever- Mm-hmm
you know, is, is a, is a great way of establishing that. And I think I just wanted to, to share that because I just feel like, you know, that, that, that in my mind is a, is actually a pretty, pretty- exciting proposition for people who wanna focus on building a local practice. Just wanted to take a moment to thank our mission partners for helping bring this podcast to you.
As you know, we are in the business of building a network of clinics that can reverse cognitive decline, and our partners in that are organizations. You can find out more if you go to goevomed.com and look at the mission partners. But first and foremost, TruNeura. If you go to truneura.com, you can get a demo.
Um, this is the underlying software that will connect this network of clinics, and we have an incredible mastermind session, a lot of cool stuff coming out of that company. Um, you can see here, uh, Fullscript. Thanks to Fullscript. With Fullscript, where we’re gonna help you take advantage of the tools that they have, um, to compete with things like ChatGPT and Function Health.
It’s gonna be awesome. Go to goevomed.com/fullscript. Uh, bigboost.marketing, if you need patients for your clinic, uh, or if you have any marketing needs, goevomed.com/bigboost is our premier s- uh, supporter in that world. And then please, uh, also check out Freedom Practice Coaching, built and scaled a very successful brain health practice and has been instrumental in helping practitioners with the non-clinical aspects of running a practice doing this.
These are our mission partners. These are people that I know well. These are people that are the top of their sphere, and really excited to bring you, uh, the rest of the podcast. Enjoy. Not only do I love that, I recommend it constantly because that is actually the fastest way to monetize your podcast. A lot of times when doctors start their own podcast, they’re thinking, “Okay, I wanna be like Andrew Huberman,” or something.
And I tell people, “Well, there’s, there’s a way to try and grow listeners and followers, but that’s almost never the fastest way to make money off of your podcast.” If you’re trying to actually monetize your podcast, if you wanna use your podcast to get real patients in the door, what you just described is the fastest way to do it, local podcasting.
And it’s really specifically you wanna interview real referral sources. Now, depending on what you do, that could be everything from other local physicians. It could be a local chiropractor. It could be a local nutritionist. It could be your local gym, the local yoga studio. It could also be local patients that love you and, you know, would be happy to be on and talk about their real patient success story.
The– love the local podcast as the fastest way to monetize interviewing real referral sources. So one of the things we did with “Doctor Talks” with our 3,000 practitioners that are already on the platform We now have an AI matching tool that matches guests to hosts, and one of the things that you can do is source locally.
Sometimes people wanna do interviews only in their state because of their licensing requirements. Sometimes people wanna do interviews only in their zip code to find, uh, people who can walk in the door. I’m a huge fan of that. It’s something that is extremely practical, and you can make a terrific podcast out of interviewing local referral sources.
So it’s one of my favorite ways to… And, and it is the fastest way to monetize your podcast. Awesome. Yeah, I could really see that working. I, I put together an event last year called Healthy El Dorado, and through that I met, like, the local farmers- Yep … all the practitioners by putting on the event. But I could see that a podcast would stand the test of time and, you know, would be there as a…
It’s really about, you know, building a media rep brand around your business, right? Yeah. Yeah, and here’s kind of the pro move for that. So one of the things that I always recommend to doctors is, especially when you, when you first start out your podcast, all podcasts start with zero subscribers, you have zero five-star reviews.
What I always recommend is have the guest, ask the guest to give you a review after your podcast is done, and the way that I like to do that is to use the phrase, “Please don’t keep me a secret.” So after your podcast is complete, send an email to your guest, say, “Hey, thank you so much. That was so great. I really appreciate it.
Please don’t keep us a secret. Would you mind leaving me a quick little review on Apple?” Now, if they’re local, you would just simply ask them to also take that same review that they wrote, and they can maybe modify it a little bit, but post it on your Google Bus- reviews on your local Google business are, help you tremendously with SEO, search engine optimization.
So you can have this dual effect where you get this real referral source who is happy to give you actual referrals, and you get the review for your podcast and the review for your Google. So that’s kind of the, the pro move when people are ready to, to do that. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a, a, a compelling starting point for practitioners.
So just, I guess, the objection might be that sounds like an overwhelming amount of time. Sure. Can you share how, like, your, you know, your system allows people to minimize the amount of time and maximize the output? Yeah. So I think it’s the most important thing… So again, if you’re gonna be a guest, your time commitment is not that much.
You know, uh, I, I generally recommend people shoot for approximately 25-minute interviews. That’s just a rule of thumb. That doesn’t mean if you, you have to go just that length. But if you’re gonna be a guest, it should take about 30 minutes, an hour if you’re gonna have a long podcast. And however many times per week you can be a guest on someone else’s show, that’s the extent of your time commitment.
If you’re gonna be a host, all you have to do is make it work for you. So I have some hosts that only on Thursdays when they don’t see patients, once every Thursday afternoon, they do one interview, and they do that, uh, very consistently, and it works great for them, one hour a week. I have other doctors that have much more chaotic and busier schedules, where they’ll do a block recording once a month.
They’ll do four-plus shows once a month. I have others that are even more extreme, where they’ll do two weeks a year, they’ll just knock out 25 interviews. I have other hosts who once or twice a year they’ll knock out all their interviews at a live event. That’s something that you’re about to do. Yeah.
And we do that all the time. So when we go to live events now, we always have our camera crews with us. We’re always recording podcasts. You know, I’ve– I’m gonna do an event in, um, September where we’re actually gonna record three podcasts simultaneously, and I think we’re gonna do 86 interviews. So you just have to make it work for you.
Whatever is going to work for your schedule is what will allow you to sustain it. And so the thing about podcasts, the doctors that we have that have had a tremendous amount of s- success, uh, we have, uh, Dr. David Jockers, who’s got the largest functional nutrition podcast out there, Dr. Joel Kahn, who’s got the largest vegan cardiology podcast out there.
The thing that they have in common is longevity and consistency. They’ve been doing it for six and seven years respectively, and the only way that you’re able to do that is if you’re able to make it work for your schedule. And I’ll share one last side effect that most people don’t expect when they’re starting a podcast, whether it’s just a guest or a host, is it’s way more fun than they expected it to be, and that’s something that I, I always experience.
The last thing that I’ll say is having your own podcast, I call it super networking. It’s a license where if you’re at a conference, and maybe there’s some very famous person speaking on stage, somebody that you’ve always wanted to get to know, uh, and idolized or, or wanted to just get a chance to shake their hand, having a podcast is kinda like a license to walk up to that person, introduce yourself, say hello, and actually ask them if they wanna be on your podcast.
And I think I have about a 99.9% success rate of our doctors who have done exactly that, getting people booked on podcasts, and it’s been really, uh, really amazing. Right. You’ve just described, you know, my life story because that’s literally how the Functional Forum happened, and then, you know, with the Evolution of Medicine podcast, I had a, you know, I had a good run in that.
We were the only one going. You know, if you wanted to get the word out to other doctors about functional medicine or about your m- methodology or something you were doing in practice, it was a great place to do it, and I, I- Yeah … totally agree. That’s been my experience as well. You know, what, what’s the best way to, uh, start the process if you’re interested in, in finding out more?
Absolutely. So go to drtalks.com/connect. We’ll put the links in the chat, and there you can create your own channel for free. Once you… Uh, there’s an onboarding process that’ll walk you through. It takes about two minutes y- and if you have a YouTube channel, one thing I found is, like, 95% of the doctors who come on have a YouTube channel.
You may have some content from that YouTube channel. We’ve made it where you can automatically import that content, which gives you, like, a really robust, good-looking channel right out of the gates from, from moment one. Our AI automation system will match you as a guest with host or if you’re a host with guests, and it’s a great way, I wanna encourage you to then reach out to other doctors who are on the platform.
You can reach out to interview them on your channel, or you can reach out to be a guest. So remember, what I told you earlier is to create your signature talk, send them an email, and say, “Dr. So-and-So, I love your show. Here is my signature talk. I would love to be a guest on your podcast.” And many times you might get a response faster than you think.
Now don’t just send one and stop. I want you to send multiple, but look for a lot of the doctors that you’re matched with on AI and send out, uh, send that to several of them. You know, go ahead and send it to 20 or 30 or 40. There’s plenty of doctors that are looking for you right now on Dr. Talks, and we’d love to have you.
So fill that out, and we’ll see you on the inside. Yeah, I love that. Well, just what you were referring to earlier, you know, this podcast is coming out around the Institute for Functional Medicine’s annual conference. I am gonna be there. I’m gonna be recording podcasts. Uh, I got a live podcast set up there, so I’m gonna be, you know, knocking out a lot of those.
So if you are around, love to see you. Come on by, and, uh, we’ll, we’ll capture there with you. You know, Brett, I know, you know, I’d love to, to get your, your take on this because I, I think you’ve sort of really worked out one very interesting corner of this world, which is the, the distribution of this information, and I, I guess I’d just love to get your take on what you think is coming next.
Because ultimately, a big differentiator 10 years ago, five years ago, maybe even still today to a certain degree, and I’m still actually baffled that more and more clinicians and more and more doctors, you know, aren’t aware of what’s happening in the functional medicine space or sort of like the broader longevity and health creation space.
But like what, what do you think is coming next? And, and how can practitioners prepare for being relevant, being found, being successful in, in this next era? Um, what we’re really seeing over and over is founder-led marketing via content creation. And it’s really important now where your patients right now, they’re listening to podcasts, they’re discovering you on social media, and they really wanna hear the founder.
They wanna hear you, the doctor. They don’t wanna hear from your marketing team or someone else. They really want to hear directly from you. And what I love about podcasts is it’s the easiest way to create that content, but also being interviewed or being a host is the way to create the long-form content.
The short-form content is great to get found, and that’s what you would see on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube Shorts. That’s the great way to get discovered. But if you want to build trust enough so that you can convert a browser into an actual paying patient, they really love that long-form content, and that’s what the interviews do so well and so easily.
And if you’re not out there creating the content, I think a lot of people are going to have a harder time getting discovered. So again, we’ve tried to make it as easy as we possibly can. The easiest way to create that content is for you to get interviewed, and I’ve tried to make that as easy as possible by being a guest on podcasts with our network and system at Dr.
Talks. Love that. Well, Brett, I really wanna just share my appreciation for all the, you know, support. It’s really good to work with you. Doing those summits has been, you know, really wonderful to, to lay out a framework to understand this new understanding of Alzheimer’s, to connect with practitioners who are doing on the front lines.
And, you know, I do think that, uh, if, if you are serious about building longevity into your practice, and I mean like being around for a while, not going out of business, not having to be an employee, to go out and do that, building this media channel is, is really powerful. And I think that what we talked about today with regards to the local opportunity, you know, is huge, and I’d love to see more and more doctors stepping out to, you know, to lead those conversations.
Because really, the, the doctors that we know are a good- source of being a quarterback for that information Mm-hmm because they can help sort of separate the wheat from the chaff, find the best vendors, you know, put it into the, the context that, you know, people should understand, and I think that that’s a, that’s a translation element that can be really powerful.
Yeah. I, I, I couldn’t agree more, and I, I love helping doctors get discovered and growing, you know, getting new patients and helping more people and getting paid fairly in the process. Awesome. Well, look, you know, I’d love to hear from you. Set up your own, uh, system on, uh, on DrTalks, your own page, and, uh, ping me.
I’m one of the, the users, and one- uh, particularly if you have something that you think is interesting for health professionals and doctors, um, that would be great. This is The Evolution of Medicine podcast. I’m your host, James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks so much. So that was the podcast.
What an epic session. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Evolution of Medicine podcast. We’ll be back again next week, and thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
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