About KickAss Marketing

Dr. David Laurino, DPM
Founder and Owner, KickAss Marketing

A company owned and run by a board certified foot and ankle surgeon.

Dr. David Laurino, DPM has spent more than two decades treating patients, operating, and running a multi-location podiatry group in Metro Phoenix. He owns this company, and nothing here reaches your practice before it has worked in his.

If you have ever wondered where the money goes, you and I have had the same year.

I didn’t set out to build a company like this. I set out to fill my schedule.

Over the years I hired help. Big healthcare firms, local marketing companies. , and one group with a beautiful pitch deck and a growth strategist who’d been out of college about six months. I signed the agreements, I paid the retainers, and I showed up to the monthly calls.

Every month I got a report full of impressions and clicks. Then I’d walk out to the front desk, look at the actual schedule, and the new patient count hadn’t moved.

Here is what nobody ever asked me:

What happens to a call that comes in at 12:15 on a Friday? How many of last year’s patients have you not spoken to since? What does a patient find when they look you up at 9 p.m. before deciding whether to call? And what does your website actually do when they get there?

Nobody asked, because nobody knew. They were running a system built for a different specialty and changing the vocabulary.

The truth is my practice was already generating more opportunity than it captured. The problem was never attention. It was everything that happened after somebody reached out, and nobody I hired would touch that part.

So I stopped waiting and built what I wanted to hire. If you are a doctor reading this, I suspect you already know exactly which of those four questions you cannot answer. That is the whole reason we exist.

Dr. David Laurino, DPM
Founder and Owner, KickAss Marketing

He didn’t come to this from marketing.
He came to it from the exam room.

Dr. David Laurino is a practicing podiatric physician and surgeon, board certified by the American Board of Foot and Ankle Surgery, and a founding partner of a multi-location podiatry group in Metro Phoenix where he and three other providers see patients every week.

He completed his surgical residency through the Southern Arizona VA Healthcare System and holds active surgical staff privileges at Dignity Health Arizona Specialty Hospital and the Center for Advanced Surgery. He serves on the board of the Institute for Podiatric Excellence & Development and on the medical advisory panel at AIMx, which means part of his year goes to helping shape where this specialty is headed.

That background is the part that matters here. He has hired the staff, covered the front desk, verified the insurance, worked the schedule, made the payroll, and paid personally for every decision that didn’t work out.

He is not a figurehead, and he is not a retired doctor lending his name to a brand. He owns this company, he sets the direction for every practice we take on, and he decides whether something is worth doing or worth stopping.

One more thing worth saying plainly. He has spent more than two decades building a reputation in this specialty, and he sees these colleagues at conferences and meetings. That reputation matters more to him than any single account.

Board certified: American Board of Foot and Ankle Surgery (ABFAS)

Doctor of Podiatric Medicine: California College of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery

Surgical residency: Southern Arizona VA Healthcare System

B.S., Exercise & Sport Sciences: University of Arizona

Board member: Institute for Podiatric Excellence & Development

Medical Advisory Panel: AIMx

Active surgical staff: Dignity Health Arizona Specialty Hospital, Center for Advanced Surgery

Founding partner: multi-location podiatry group, Metro Phoenix

More than two decades in practice

What we believe

Nobody should hand a practice something they haven’t used in their own.

Everything we offer was running inside a working podiatry practice before it was offered to anyone else. If it created more work than it saved, it never left the building.

Technology should absorb the repetitive work, not the relationship.

Your patients are not shopping for shoes. They are choosing someone to care for their health. Automation belongs on the tasks that wear your team down, and nowhere near the moments that need a person.

The schedule is the scoreboard.

Impressions are not patients. If a number does not connect to somebody sitting in your chair, it does not belong in your report, and we would rather show you a smaller number that is real.

The most useful thing we can tell you is sometimes no.

Occasionally we look at a practice and the honest answer is that the problem is not the one we solve. Saying that out loud costs us the engagement and earns us the referral. We will take that trade every time.

How we operate

These are commitments, not values on a wall. Hold us to them.

We start with what is already broken. Most practices are losing patients they have already earned. That is the cheapest thing to fix and the first place we look.

You own everything. Accounts, website, tracking, patient data, creative. If we part ways, all of it goes with you.

We do the heavy lifting. Seven days from start to live, and we build it so your team’s day gets easier rather than busier. Your staff has patients to see.

Everything patient-facing passes a doctor’s read. Every message, script, and page published under your name is reviewed by a practicing podiatrist. Nothing goes out that puts your license anywhere near the line.

If we wouldn’t run it in our own practice, we won’t run it in yours. That is the whole company in one sentence.

Where we are different

Most Firms
KICKASS MARKETING
Who owns the company
A marketer
A board certified foot and ankle surgeon
Who sets your direction
An account strategist with no clinical background
The owner, who runs his own multi-location group
Who used it first
Your practice
His practice
What gets reported
Impressions and clicks
Calls answered, appointments booked, revenue by appointment type
Who reviews patient-facing copy
A copywriter
A practicing podiatrist
Where they start
Bringing you more attention
Keeping the patients you already have
Who owns your accounts and data
The firm
You do
Time to launch
Six to twelve weeks
Seven days
Access to the owner
Through your account rep
On every call

Have more questions?
Here are some frequently asked questions:

You are a surgeon. What makes you qualified to run this?
I am not the one building the systems. I hire and direct specialists who do that for a living, and I hold them to a standard most firms never have to meet. What I bring is the part they cannot hire for. I know what a new patient is worth, which appointment types actually carry a practice, and what happens operationally when the phone rings in the middle of a procedure.
He is on your first call and he signs off on your direction. He also still sees patients, so when your associate asks how this handles a Friday afternoon call about a diabetic wound, he answers from experience rather than checking with someone. If you ever cannot reach him, say so, because that would be a problem worth knowing about.
Yes, and we put it in writing. We run on HIPAA-enabled infrastructure under a signed Business Associate Agreement, and we sign a BAA with your practice as well. Every object that can hold patient information is encrypted, including contacts, notes, SMS, email, forms, calendars, and call recordings. Access requires multi-factor authentication and every touch is logged. The platform also carries SOC 2 Type II certification.
Usually, yes. We already integrate with Athena and work alongside most major systems, and where a direct integration is not available we build a workflow around it. We will tell you which one applies to your practice before you commit to anything, not after.
Podiatry is where we are deepest, because it is where all of this was built and tested. We work with specialty and multi-provider practices outside podiatry too. But if you are a DPM, you are talking with someone who has run your exact business, including the parts nobody warns you about.

Talk to the owner. He is a surgeon.

Twenty minutes, no pitch deck. We will look at your schedule and where your practice is quietly losing patients, and I will tell you honestly whether this is something we can help with. If it isn’t, I will say so, and you will still walk away with a clear read on your own operation from somebody who runs one.
No sales team, no pressure. You will be talking with Dr. Laurino.