Attracting More Right-Fit Patients

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome back to podiatry marketing. With me is my cohost, big Jim McDannald. How are you doing today, Jim?

Tyson, I'm doing well here in beautiful Montreal, snowy Quebec. You know, I hear the jingle bells jingling Oh, that time of year.

I love this time of year. It is I I really I I'm a really a big Christmas fan. I just I I get into the whole spirit of it. I love putting up you know, putting the tree up, and and we have a train that goes around the tree that actually makes noise and has smoke the puff smoke. And I think even we have no kids in this, I will still set the train up because I just I just love that Christmas that Christmas spirit.

And I've had some people recently that I bumped into who love that I call you big Jim Mac.

Well, I'm happy to hear that. That's definitely not a nickname I've ever had. Obviously, you've never seen me in real life. So I guess we'll the listeners will have to guess at some point maybe my my my height, my weights, you know, my if they've seen the videos, right, they probably know that I'm, you know, a large man who works out on the daily. But yeah.

No. I appreciate the nickname. It's it's very fitting, I think.

Well, you sound tall. I've actually there was a I I was I went to this podcast conference once, and this guy that I've known for a number of years on podcasting bumped into him in real life. He's like six foot ten.

Wow.

And I'm like, my god. I said, you look so much shorter on a podcast because he's sitting down. And then I've had other people that I've met who I've had him on the podcast or seen him on video, and they and they've got their thick set, some of their big mustaches and all that. Yeah. And you bumped in there and they look like they're five foot two.

Yep. And that's a lot harder to say, oh, yeah. You seem much taller on video.

Yeah. It's not the same kind of joke for sure.

We're just average. So Jim, what are we talking about today other than our height?

Yeah, besides the height, weight, and Christmas season, we're talking about being deliberate about attracting the right fit patients. Like how do you go about doing that? Yeah, we're going to get into that today.

And what do you mean by being deliberate?

I think, you know, when we're starting off in practice, you know, we're kind of happy for anyone to show up at our door. We wanna, you know, we don't necessarily have a clear vision of what we want our practice to be yet, And we're just looking for ways to pay our staff, pay our rent, or pay for our building. Yeah. Pay back our student loans. Not that we're I wouldn't use the word desperate, but we're kind of open to whoever's willing to come and see us because we've been training for so long and now is the time to kind of, like, kind of recouping all that time, effort, delayed gratification with kind of building the practice and kind of getting some revenue in the door.

So I think that's that's kind of where people start. And what happens, like I said, is, you know, there's not always a clear vision of the direction you wanna take your practice. So you can kind of become, by default, you kind of become a a jack of all trades within the professional or within the specialty and not necessarily walking down kind of your ideal practice path.

Yeah. And I don't think there's anything wrong when you're first opening up your business seeing everybody because sometimes you may think, oh, this is the type of patient I really like. This is what I love about podiatry. But once you start being open to all parts of podiatry, because even at university, you may not been as exposed to certain areas as much as what you would have liked, you might find all of a sudden warts is your thing.

No, I think that's a good point. And you know, for example, I got into podiatry initially because I was a runner. I'd had lower leg injuries, some foot problems, you know, kind of got into some orthotics, which really helped me. But then I know it was during during school or during residency. You know, you're based out of hospital.

You're taking call. You're seeing patients in the hospital. You're doing surgeries a lot. And I wouldn't say I was initially seduced by surgery, but I felt like, well, now I'm like the surgeon. And while I can still do surgery on runners, like, I maybe moved away a little bit further away from kind of initially what interested me in the practice to get into practice.

And kinda as I got back into practice, I I enjoyed doing surgery and doing things like that, but I I wanted to kind of move towards that sports medicine or that running medicine and kind of where I set myself up in practice that made it a little bit difficult of a transition. But I think it's just knowing yourself and then, you know, like, kind of like you said, you don't have to know right off the bat. But probably the turning point for a lot of podiatrists is that their schedule is full, and maybe they're seeing either patients that are coming with diagnosis either that they aren't that excited about or really aren't getting the level of reimbursement that makes it worthwhile to have those types of patients or those types of diagnosis within the practice.

Yeah, because I think there's a couple of, like you said, there's a path that you're going to go through, and I think you must think about what steps you're going to take. Because I know when you set your clinic up, at some point, you will start to get to capacity where it starts to fill up. And I know a lot of podiatrists straight away go, oh, I need to employ another podiatrist. And I'm like, no. Stop.

Do you need to employ another podiatrist, or do you need to just change the path and direction of your clinic a little bit? And start saying, well, I'll I enjoy these these things, these nine out of 10 things, so I'm just gonna make sure I'm doing that. And another one out of 10, we're not gonna do that anymore. And that may free up some capacity. And I think that's a step you should take before you start diving in Australia.

I'm gonna get another podiatrist.

No. I think that's a deliberate, you know, stepping back and and looking at the situation. Like you said, once you're kind of nearing capacity or getting close to capacity, you kind of really need to break it down to basically two things. Like, what do you want more of? And then what do you want less of?

Yeah. And like saying that out loud seems like, oh

That's obvious.

Life was that's, Yeah. Like, I wish life was that simple, Jim. I'll just like, yeah, of course. Like, I'll just get more of what I want and cut out less It's easy.

Said than done.

No, for sure. I mean, yeah, you actually one requires a lot more time and effort and one just It does. Getting the fat on just requires probably more calorie intake. But besides that that topic

But it still applies though. If you think about that, what you just said then, it still applies. One, to get abs takes work. To get fat doesn't take a lot of work. You still gotta work on it, but it it doesn't it's not hard to do.

And I think working at what you like doing more of and concentrating on that is like trying to create the abs. It's gonna take work to do that, whereas just seeing everybody, well, it's easy. You can just sit back and see anybody that comes into your clinic.

No, for sure. And I think it is you kinda have to like take an approach where it's kinda like what is that next action that's gonna lead you to one of the, you know, to the kind of ideal result, you know, not tomorrow, not the next week, but, you know, months or or years down the road to your kind of where you wanna be at that point in time. So kinda like understanding, you know, what are those, you know, actions that you can take, whether it's just, you know, initially, when you want something, you can put it it's important to know what you want internally, but then it's how do you kind of communicate that to external stakeholders, to patients, to other health care providers, to you know, if you wanna treat like me, like, I like to runners. So how do you let runners know that you're available and skilled to help them with their problems? So part of it is like taking that internal what you want more of and then kind of putting it into the external world.

And that's kind of that's sort of that first step of getting probably more of what you want.

One of a really good quote I saw was from this guy Patrick McFadden, who's my marketing dude. And he was on my old podcast. And he said, all marketing does is give you give you more of what you've already got. So if you wanna change the type of patient you see, then you need to change your marketing. So you need to change the message you're putting in there.

So like you said, if you want more runners, you can't keep saying, hey, I'm a general podiatrist. The the something about running has got to be you've got to change your marketing to start targeting the type of people you want more of.

No. I think it's yeah. That change is important. But I think it's also I think people get a little bit afraid. Like, you don't need to go from like zero to a hundred, you know, tomorrow.

Right? You don't have to make the change so rapid that it feels unsettling not only for yourself, but for, you know, those in your community or those you've been practicing with. Like we talked about previously, just because you eliminate maybe an, let's say, a diabetic foot wound or ingrown toenail section from your website doesn't mean that people won't necessarily call you up and say, hey, do you do these things? And maybe you still really you still can do them and are willing to do them, but it's not the thing you're marketing or putting out there for public consumption. So I think that's an important component.

So you don't have to, like, you know, do it so you know, niche yourself so quickly or so dramatically that that you're cutting these people off. But at the same time, do have to be deliberate if you wanna if that's the path you want to move in. You know, if you're happy just kind of being sifting through general podiatry patients and trying to find another way to filter out what you wanna see and not see, that can be done. But you're gonna save yourself and your staff a lot of time and effort on the front end by developing marketing, not only messages, but visual visualization, your branding, your logo, things that are in lockstep with that future goal or that path you wanna walk down.

So when you're saying that some people have a fear that they're gonna miss out on something or they've got it almost like rip the band aid off. Okay. We're gonna make this this dramatic pivot. It's not making a dramatic pivot. It's just slightly changing the angle.

And it's like when they say plane only needs to change course one degree that, yeah, a couple thousand miles later, it's in a completely different spot. So your business is pretty much the same. You only need to make a small change initially, and in the long term, that will start making a big change to your business.

No, for sure. And I think one example of that might be like, maybe your website is there's certain aspects that look like a general podiatry web page, but you have very targeted pages on that website that maybe you do Google Ads to your Facebook Ads for. So you're doing a little bit something different on a different channel, pointing back to the website that you own that does have authentic photos, that shows you's the expert in this thing, but maybe you're just not pushing as hard. Maybe it's not totally eliminating those things from the website, but just not making them as visible or maybe they're lower down on that list of things that you do. So there's different levels, like like I said, of making that pivot or that transition.

You know, if you do live in a big, you know, area like Chicago or Los Angeles or Boston or a big city, you know, you can get away with being much more niche than maybe you can in a smaller university town or a smaller smaller town. But there are different ways to highlight those things that you wanna do, like I said, by externalizing and communicating that skill set and those type of patients you wanna see.

Do you think it's fear? Like we said before, it's fear that stops people making this change. They're they're so scared of, I've got my business going. I've got commitments. I've got bills.

I'm too scared to sort of just or to let something go. So I'll give you an example. I was talking to someone just recently, and I said, what's your ratio between biomechanical patients to routine care? And they said, eighty twenty. I said, oh, that's right.

80% bio, 20% general route yeah. Routine. They went, oh, no. The other way around. 20% biomechanical, eighty % routine.

I went, okay. I said, so it's Monday. If I rang your clinic today and I no. No. It's Tuesday.

Said, I ring your clinic today had a big weekend. I did some stuff. Woke up Monday morning. Oh, my heel was just killing me. Was no better this morning, so I said, you should see your podiatrist.

I rang you up today. When can I get an appointment? And he said looked at his joints. He said, about ten days. I went, not good enough for me.

I said, so you've just done all this marketing, Google Ads, done all this stuff to tell me that you're the person I should see, and I can't get an appointment with you for ten days. I said, all you're doing is advertising for your for the for the new guy that's set up down the road. He's got all these free appointments. I said, so you've got to you you have to start massaging your diary to be able to get me in. And and I said to him then, how many do you know when yeah.

Do you online bookings? How many of your online bookings are biomechanical compared to routine? He said, oh, I don't know. Said, well, that's something else you gotta look at because it could be the same thing. You've you've just gotta massage the clinic so that you can fit in more of the the things you're trying to build up.

No. That's a really good point. I think I don't think it's necessarily I'm not saying that like all podiatrists are afraid. I don't think that's the case. I think it becomes, when you're not deliberate about it and you're just kind of taking what comes your way, I think that that's what a lot of people are dealing with is they haven't really stopped to think about what they really want, and how they're gonna kinda make that happen.

It's like a it's kind of like the olds the old way of marketing. Right? Like, you put your head down, you work hard, those things are gonna find their way to you. So I think that it kind of ties into, like, the unwillingness to market in a way. Like, it's it's it's almost like a similar type of thought.

It's like, I'm gonna do these things and just see what kinda comes my way. And like we talked about with the marketing, with the website, I think also they just like, most podiatrists know they need a website, but they don't know the difference. Most podiatrists don't know there's been kind of a website that's kind of like a placeholder. There's some kind of generic information that lives there that has their phone number, kind of a a form that people will call and try to make an appointment versus, like, a website that's, like, actively marketing what they wanna do, that builds trust, that shows them as, by far, a leading expert in the local area for the type of care that they wanna do. And once they see that, that's kinda like that, you know, stock images versus you with a photo treating the patient you wanna treat.

Until you see that, like, that difference in a website or see that difference, the value or the kind of like there's really it's hard to have that moment because people are so busy in practice. Like like, I most of our listeners today, I'm like, you know, they're seeing 30 patients a day, then doing paperwork after work or on the weekends. I don't think it's a matter of these decisions are made out of fear. It's just they're busy, and they don't really they can't really fathom how some of these small changes or these deliberate actions to kind of building that ideal practice path, like, it it it's it's like it just doesn't happen that way.

Yeah. Well, I know when we were making, like, deliberate changes and instead of just letting everyone come in whenever they felt like it, we started saying, on these particular days when we plan ahead, only this type of patient can come in and and this type routine can't patients can't. No matter what, they cannot fit in on these days. And everyone was a bit a bit nervous when we're they first do it, and I've done this with clients as well. And as soon as they make the change, they go, my god.

It filled up with the type of patients we wanted. And then slowly and surely, they just increase those times. So it's not as though they booked it, yeah, blocked it three days the following week. It was exactly just what they're gonna do. Started with half a day, then half a day went to three quarters of a day, went to a day, went to a day and a half.

And they just like you said, it's it's all about making deliberate actions, not just letting things just letting things happen.

No. I think that's a perfect segue into kind of the next segment, is like knowing what you want less of. I mean, you obviously, when you went through that process, you knew what you wanted less of, right? Because you were to those days or those hours in order to set aside time for the things that you wanted to do. But until you know what you don't want to do, right, and everyone knows what those are in their own practice.

But just take time to know what those are, and there's different kind of tactics or different ways to go about doing it. Like you said, setting those blocking time blocking like you you did as one opportunity. Maybe it's, you know, some people will just go cold turkey. Right? I don't wanna do any routine care

Yeah.

Anymore. I don't care.

And I've got people that I've helped do that and they just said, yep. And they and they just ripped the band aid off, said not doing anymore, drew a line in the scene and said that's it. And it worked out for them. They said, my god. All of a sudden, we just got full of all the type of work we wanted to do and no more routine care, and they were happy.

No. Exactly. And there's different ways to approach that cold turkey. So it's not just like you wake up tomorrow and you just implement this. Right?

It could be maybe for the next six months or a year, you're gonna kinda create like a a financial stockpile or like a reserve just just so you can weather any kind of storm that might happen. Right? You know, we we've been through a pandemic in the past. We've been through different aspects of things where, if you want to make change or if change happens to us unexpectedly, maybe having a financial reserve so you can weather that storm where you're going to test it out for three months or six months to see if you can get away without doing the routine care. So there are different ways to kind of do this cold turkey.

I'm not saying that people should be irresponsible or rash implementing something like this, but one approach you brought up as well that I think it needs like we talked about, keep saying the word deliberate, right? But if you're going to bring on, if you don't want to do the routine care, but there's still a pipeline of that and you can make some money along the way, and you feel like you're providing, I think some people also get into things like they want to provide specific types of services to patients in their local area, right? Maybe they're in a smaller place that doesn't have great care, or they're concerned about what's gonna happen to those seniors if I just cut people off. So, you know, one option would be to bring on an associate to take over some of that stuff. But like I said, it's not just something you wanna fall into or like, oh, we have all these patients now.

We should just bring on an associate. It should be much more planned out, much more deliberate, making sure you're finding the right person. There's a lot of steps that would go into hiring an associate. This is not that that podcast where we're gonna talk about that. I'm sure might be a great topic for another show in the future and how to maybe market one of your associates.

But I think that is that is an option that is is a worthwhile thing to explore, but it should be something that's, you know, rushed into.

Well, I think right from the start, it's one of those questions where people tell me they're they're really busy and they wanna make this change. I'll say, do you do home visits? And they go, yes. I go, do you like them? No.

Don't do them. It's really, really simple. Call up somebody, another podiatrist close by and say, can you do these home visits for me? I don't wanna do them anymore. And get them doing it.

Then look at the next type of patient that you don't enjoy or you just don't get any satisfaction there. It's not that you don't like the patients. If there've been patients that have been really long term for years and you have a really good relationship with them, you might wanna just keep them, especially if if when you see them, it makes you happy. But if they're just the face that drives you nuts when they come in, if you can move those patients to your competition down the road and you can keep them busy seeing the type of work that you don't wanna see, that means the patients that you do wanna see more of can't get into them, which means you've got more chance of actually seeing them as well.

Now I think that's a great point. You know? Not only, you know, kind of leverage the the associate aspect of things, but, you know, you know, passing them along to the the other practices in town. It definitely is a is a good option. One other way to kind of filter some of this care or some of these patients you don't necessarily want to have in your practice is, you know, looking at your insurance plans or the, you know, HMOs or the local, I don't know, different Medicare or Medicaid type programs, things you just don't want to see anymore.

Maybe it's just taking up too much of your time. It's it's kind of, like I said, it's just filling in gaps in your schedule that you'd rather see other types of patients. Yep. You know, understanding which providers are not paying you kind of what you're worth, right? I think everyone that's listening to this podcast today knows certain insurance providers or carriers who just, they're a pain to deal with.

They, you know, they they kind of send your claims back to you. They they don't pay on your claims. They create almost more work, for you and your staff to get paid than to actually receive the payment. You know who those folks are. And being deliberate and kind of gradually chipping away at who you have kind of on your insurance roster or on your payer roster is one way to approach this as well.

Yeah. And in Australia, that's for like EPC bulk billing type patients. In The UK, it'd be probably a different group of people again, but it's it is. It's like it's in Australia, it's more of these, like, government patients that are referred to you, and some of them just expect to be bulk billed. And everything has gone up.

To run a practice these days has gone up so much, yet the payments you get from some of these insurers are just not enough. And if you wanna keep seeing them, that's fine. But if you wanna make that change, that could be another another good place to start.

I think you're kind of time blocking things that made me think of this as well. I know that occasionally I would get a a workman's compensation patient into my practice. And to be honest, it would probably would have been helpful for me to have one half day per month just dedicated to that type of patient.

Yeah.

Because when it came to workman's compensation patients, and I definitely understand that people get injured on the job, this is no shade on them, but it almost throw off my entire morning and my entire afternoon with the amount of paperwork I would have to fill out, my staff would have to fill out to really thoroughly understand the mechanism of injury and the type of documentation needed to make sure that all the checks, know, the boxes were checked and the t's were crossed and i's were dotted because it would just be an enormous amount of time. But if I'd had that set away, in a different time of day or I just didn't, you know, I chose not to do it. I enjoyed some of these patients, so it's not like I wanted to get rid of them, but it's like how you organize your practice and being deliberate about it can really not only reduce your stress, but make sure you're providing great care to these patients.

Have you got any other pointers on this one?

No. I think that was a you know, we said that the word deliberate about 3,000 times. I hope that's hammered

into I think that's a great word, deliberate. It's being really deliberate in your actions, I think, is really important. I think it's a great word.

No. I think it's good too. Think it's

just

a of, like that's a great way to end we're getting close to the end of the year now, but and I think it is just one of those things where it sounds simple. Know what you wanna do more of, know what you wanna do less of, and then kind of plot a course to make that happen. And I think not only will you your your patients benefit from this kind of narrow focus or being deliberate about things, but I think you'll also gain more professional satisfaction by knowing that you're actively pursuing what you want to do with your professional life can be extremely satisfying.

Yeah. I totally agree. So, Jim, I think we'll wrap it up there. I just wanna wish everyone a oh, wish you a Merry Christmas first, Jim.

I appreciate that. Happy holidays, guys.

Yeah. I know. Happy holidays. So in Australia, we have Christmas day, and then we have Boxing Day follows it. And they're they're two two public holidays.

Of course, Christmas day is a public holiday, and then Boxing Day is a public holiday. What about where you are? Do they have a Christmas Day, obviously. Do have another day after that?

Yeah. So I've been in Canada for eleven years and since we're part of the the British Empire, we also have Boxing Day here in Canada.

Alright. Okay.

I still so it's here in Canada, it's in The US. I didn't grow up with it. But yeah, the little boxing day to to celebrate the holidays with as well.

So everyone listening to this, have a fantastic Christmas. Hope you yeah. Hope you've been good this year. If not, what are you what is it? Coal?

Is it coal you're supposed to get in your stocking if you're bed?

Yep. Lumps of coal in the stocking.

Lumps of coal. So anyone who gets coal this year, yeah, bad luck. Okay, Jim. So I will talk to you after Christmas, and it'll be the last show for the year. So it's gonna be we're gonna do it like a a year review.

Was that right?

Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna reminisce about the about 2022 and plot a course for 2023.

Yeah. And pull out all their best jokes.

Man, I It'll

be a short show then, won't it?

Proof from between now and then.

Okay. You have this been great talking with you. Have have a really, really good Christmas, and I'll see you on the other side.

Sounds great, Tyson. Thank you. Bye. Merry Christmas. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald.

Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.