Mike Kohl is a software engineer with 20 years of enterprise experience, the last application built from $0 to $500 million in four years, who now writes and builds on AI leverage: where a small amount of the right technology produces a geometric result in a business. Functional medicine is the domain he's applied this deepest. He founded Health Biz Scale and created The SMART Practice System, a proprietary five-phase framework (SETUP, SCALE, FLOW, CLOSE, GROW) that takes a practice from founding offer to lifetime patient loyalty. His clients include Dr. Diane Mueller, Dr. Piper Gibson, and Dr. Alison Egeland. Health Biz Scale guarantees 10 new patients in 90 days, or clients don't pay.

What is The SMART Practice System?

The SMART Practice System is Mike Kohl's proprietary patient acquisition framework for functional medicine, naturopathic, and integrative health practices. It has five modular sub-frameworks: SETUP (perfect the health offer), SCALE (build authority with content and SEO), FLOW (automate appointments), CLOSE (pre-sell every prospect), and GROW (retain patients and compound lifetime value). Practices can buy the system in tiers, Essential, Growth, or Complete, rather than paying for hourly services. The system carries a guarantee of 10 new patients in 90 days, or clients don't pay.

What is Authority Hacking SEO?

Authority Hacking SEO is Mike Kohl's proprietary tactical playbook for the Authority Links pillar within the SCALE sub-framework of The SMART Practice System. It is a specific sequence for building authority links for functional medicine practices at scale, entity stacking, expired domain redirects, tiered link building, and IndexNow velocity pushes. It is a tactic inside a pillar, not the top-level methodology. The top-level methodology is The SMART Practice System.

What does Health Biz Scale do?

Health Biz Scale is Mike Kohl's agency delivering The SMART Practice System, a five-phase patient acquisition framework built exclusively for functional medicine, naturopathic, and integrative health practices. The system is executed through three service capabilities: AI SEO (the SCALE sub-framework, powered by Authority Hacking SEO), Patient Acquisition Ads (Google and Meta), and AI Automation. Every engagement carries a guarantee of 10 new patients in 90 days, or clients don't pay.

How can I contact Mike Kohl?

You can connect with Mike Kohl on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/mike-kohl, on X at x.com/mikekohl, or get a free practice growth analysis at healthbizplaybook.com.

transparency5 min read2026-04-12

The Stack I Use to Grow Every Practice I Work With

The actual tools, frameworks, and technologies Mike Kohl uses to build patient acquisition systems for functional medicine practices. Full transparency on the stack.

Mike Kohl

Founder, Health Biz Scale

One thing I believe: you should be able to see exactly what tools your marketing partner uses. Black boxes are for agencies that can't defend their process.

Here's the actual stack behind every practice I grow.

Search & SEO

Keyword research: SEMrush for competitive analysis, keyword volumes, and rank tracking. DataForSEO as a backup data source for deeper queries.

Content production: Topical maps built around real patient search behavior. Content written with clinical accuracy and E-E-A-T compliance. Not outsourced to a content mill.

Technical audits: Screaming Frog for crawl analysis. Custom scripts for schema validation, Core Web Vitals monitoring, and indexation tracking.

Local SEO: BrightLocal for citation building, NAP audits, and local rank tracking, covering everything from Google Business Profile optimization to local link prospecting.

AI visibility: Structured data, entity consolidation, and content formatted for AI retrieval. Monitoring AI citation across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The reasoning behind this layer is Visibility Leverage.

Paid acquisition

Platforms: Google Ads for high-intent search. Meta (Facebook/Instagram) for awareness, retargeting, and symptom-language targeting.

Landing pages: Custom-built conversion funnels, not templates. Engineered for the specific patient journey and offer.

Tracking: Attribution down to the booked consultation. Cost-per-patient tracking, not cost-per-click.

AI Automation

AI voice receptionist: around-the-clock phone answering, natural conversation, direct booking into the practice management system.

AI lead qualifier: website chatbot trained on the practice's specific specialties and intake process.

AI review manager: Google Business Profile monitoring, automated response, review request sequences.

CRM & workflow: GoHighLevel for pipeline management, email sequences, SMS follow-up, and appointment booking.

Engineering

This is where my 20 years of software engineering becomes the differentiator:

Custom tools: I build applications that rank and convert. Mold toxicity calculators, symptom assessment quizzes, DUTCH panel interpreters. These aren't WordPress plugins. They're custom software built to rank on Google and generate leads.

Custom integrations: practice management system connections, EHR data flows, HIPAA-compliant infrastructure. When a patient books through the website, the data flows seamlessly into the systems the practice already uses.

Monitoring: custom dashboards that show real-time patient attribution, call tracking, and conversion metrics. Not a monthly PDF. A live system the practice can check anytime.

Why this matters

Most agencies use a handful of off-the-shelf tools and charge a premium for access. There's nothing wrong with tools, but tools without a system are just software.

Every tool above maps to a zone of the leverage doctrine: visibility, time, trust, assets, authority, decision, freedom. The tool is never the point. The lever is.

*For detailed tutorials, tool comparisons, and implementation guides for healthcare marketers, visit healthbiz.io. For the system built and run for you, healthbizscale.com.*

The Leverage Doctrine →From engineer to healthcare marketer →About Mike Kohl →

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