Celebrate Milestones and Implement Tradtions

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

Welcome to podiatry marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald, joined as always by the birthday boy, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, happy birthday.

Thank you, big Jim. Yes. It is my birthday is this week on the July 6. So if anybody's been thinking about getting me a gift this year, you know it's this week. Yeah.

Please forward it on.

So we're talking, like, 2939. Where we at? Where we at in the birthdays?

'57. '50 '7 going strong. I know I've had had all my medicals over the last couple of months and tests and x rays and and blood tests, and they said I'm gonna live for another fifty seven years. So don't know what episode we'll be up to you by then, but it'll it'll be exciting. And and I don't think we're running out of subjects.

We'll probably be near episode 3,000 at that point in time, but we'll we'll see where it goes from there.

Well, look at this way. If anyone was thinking of getting me a gift, hold off until October when we have our marketing workshop on the October 21 in Chicago. And, yes, I I enjoy whiskey, rum, and everything, and all the above. Bit of bourbon. So feel free to bring bottles.

Yeah. We'll definitely have along with the the the get up and the the meet up together, you know, grab grabbing some drinks and maybe a dinner might be included as part of the the the weekend. I'm really, really looking forward to it.

So Yeah. It should be fun. So let's get on to today's topic.

Yeah. So what are we gonna chat about today?

Today, we're talk about celebrating milestones and implementing traditions into your podiatry business. And even though this could be classed as more like business advice, but I think part of the celebrating and implementing is business advice, but it's what you do with it afterwards actually becomes part of your part of your marketing.

Yeah. I can see definitely see where different events or different ways to celebrate your staff, your practice, your patients. There's different ways that you you know, whether it be photos, videos. There there's all kinds of actually content that can be created along with, obviously, recognizing the the the people you wanna celebrate.

Yeah. So say we'll we'll we'll break it in two parts. We'll go celebrating milestones first because I was actually thinking of doing it as two separate episodes. We thought, now we'll put two together. That way, it'd make the whole thing more exciting.

But so for the first part, so celebrating milestones, you've got, like, external celebrations. Could be, like, how many years have you been in practice? So how many years you've actually had the business? And to me, that is a milestone that, yeah, you should always celebrate. The first year you've had your business, the fifth year, the tenth year.

You can do it every year if you want. And to me and what I mean by an external celebration of that milestone is letting people know about that celebration. Let them know it's your first year in business, five years, ten years. The longer you've been in business and the more you celebrate it, the more your your patients get involved and and so does the community with what you're actually doing.

Yeah. It's a huge reputation builder. Right? Obviously, you know, celebrating that first year is great. But as as the years go by, you're kind of a a trusted member of the community.

And by kind of externally showing that number or that year anniversary, maybe it's you have a open house or something to invite the community into the clinic and kind of show what you're up to. There there's a lot of opportunities there, like I said, to to kinda build trust and really show that you are this kind of member of the community that is really helping everybody there, you know, live happier and healthier lives.

Yeah. And staying quiet about certain milestones is is nothing to be proud of. You know, some people go, oh, no. I don't I don't like to boast. Well, no.

If you have a business, boasting is part of marketing. That's what you should be doing. If you if you've done something extraordinary or they've a milestone in your business, you need to let people know. Because they might be looking at, oh, should I go to know say they know nothing about you. All they know is you're a podiatrist and so is the person across the street.

They look at your qualifications, looks about the same. They go to your website, looks about the same. But one says established ten years, and the other one doesn't say how long they've been there for. But they see a photo, and they go, it looks twelve. Which podiatrist will I go to?

The one who's been in business for ten years or the one that looks like they've just opened. So sometimes celebrating that milestone and letting people know how long you've been in business, for some people, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, Jim, but we'd have people that would bring up, we'd say, oh, you're gonna be seeing Paul. They go, oh, not that it really bothers me, but how long has Paul been practicing for? That's why it's important. So another external is they've been, like, team members that have been with you.

If they've been with you a year, five years, especially five years, if they've been with your business for five years, that is a milestone worth celebrating.

Yeah. It definitely is a a morale booster for your staff and just really kind of, you know, gives people something to shoot for, but also kinda recognizes that person for the time, effort, and the contributions they made to your practice.

Yeah. And think it has a twofold benefit. One is new staff members that have joined can see and go, wow. They celebrate they they're celebrating he's been with them five years. So when I'm here a year, will they celebrate?

When I'm here two years? And it's something for them to look forward to. I think from the other side of things, it lets the community realize, well, that person's been at your business five years. People don't stay in businesses very long if they're not enjoying it. That business must be doing something right.

Yeah. It speaks volumes.

Yeah. And we all know in the health industry, and I think the public is aware of it as well. A lot of health practitioners, whether it's podiatry, optometry, chiropractors, matter where it is, a lot of employees turn over every two to three years when their contracts end.

Yeah. Having someone stay longer than that that first contract is actually a huge win, not only for that person, but also for the practice not having to, you know, constantly be retraining staff or coaching them up about the way you do things in your practice. So the more kind of, you know, employee satisfaction and the more that they know that they feel feel like that they're a part of the practice and are important part of the practice, then, yeah, anything you can do to kind of bolster that morale and keep improve employee satisfaction is huge for the practice.

Yeah. And the big benefit of that, I was my my GP that I was seeing, seeing him for, like, ten over ten years. He was great. Also, he retired. But I thought, oh, I'll still go to the practice.

So I went back to the practice, and I saw this female GP who was great, who used to be a podiatrist. So gave us a lot to talk about, but I only saw her the once because the next time I rang up, she was gone. So then I saw this other doctor. Saw him the once, and next time I rang up, he was gone. And I saw this young girl who scared me.

Some of the advice she was giving me, I was sitting there just going, oh, no. So I ended up searching around. I need to find another practice that had someone who had been there for a number of years, and that's where I went. To me, that is something that the community looks for is longevity in your business. And so if you don't celebrate those milestones and let people know that the business has been there for a while, the staff has been there for a while, it's a missed opportunity.

Definitely.

Other milestones, you can yeah. If you open up a new location, you can celebrate that or additional locations, but there's also internal milestones that I think you should celebrate. And even this is probably more business related than than marketing, but it's almost like it's not marketing to your team. It's like internal marketing, and that is your overall turnover of your business. I think when you hit when you hit that hundred thousand dollars for the first time, your hundred thousand dollar turnover, that should be something to celebrate.

And a a client of mine recently did that for the first time, and there were balloons and ribbons and everything. Yeah. Things popping everywhere. They were extremely excited about about hitting it because initially, they thought it was so far in the distance, but to do it, they thought it was great. But it could be patient numbers.

It might be orthotic numbers. And even though some people go, oh, we shouldn't focus on orthotic numbers. Well, yes, you should. You should focus on orthotic numbers if that's a big part of your business. And but other things you can celebrate is a decrease in cancellations, a decrease in the number of no shows.

That is that is a number that is actually worth celebrating internally, and that gets everybody fired up.

Yeah. I mean, when comes to no shows and cancellations, right, this is you know, let maybe implement the news some way to notify patients or to to make sure that they're making appointments, But it really comes down to communication, right? And if your staff is communicating well and helping reduce the number of no shows and cancellations, there's always gonna be some. But if you can really kind of bolster those numbers, it's definitely worth you know, celebrating with your staff.

Some podiatrists will advertise when they're placing an ad for employment to join the team. Oh, we don't measure KPIs. We're patient focused. And I'm like, what a load of crap. Because I'm thinking, you're not measuring KPIs, then you're also not measuring the happiness level of your practice.

How many people are not how many patients are are no showing? How many cancellations do you get? How many people turn up late? How many how many of your staff take sick days? To me, they are all KPIs that should be measured.

I should shoot a video on that. That's just got me fired up.

Well, if you're not, you know, you're not measuring those things. Right? How do you expect to improve? You're not receiving that type of feedback. And also, how are you know that you're moving the right direction towards that ideal practice that you have in your mind if you don't have some relevant KPIs to kind of shoot for?

So, yeah, you can be patient centric, but you should also be trying to, you know, logically build the type of practice you wanna have, and you need to have some markers along that that course to make sure you're heading in the right direction.

That is so true. Now let's move over to traditions. I think there's certain traditions that you should have in your practice that just it just becomes fun. And I learned a lot about traditions when I would you sort of if you read a lot about the All Blacks, the New Zealand Rugby Union team, most successful sporting team in history, and a big part of what made them successful was traditions and doing the haka. And the emphasis on that sort of disappeared during the seventies, early eighties.

And at the same time that disappeared, their team morale dropped and also their performance. When they implemented that back in and made it a a strong tradition, they had a tradition about past players coming back and handing jerseys to other players, and they they really built on the traditions of the past. Their performance went up, and they have become an absolute powerhouse. You should be doing the same thing in your podiatry clinic. Now if you wanna do the Hakka before you see patients, by all means, do that.

And if you're a New Zealand Podiatrist listening to this, you may do that at the beginning of each day. I'm not quite sure, but I love watching it. So if you do it, I'd love to see a video. But celebrating birthdays of, like, the business, but also team members is something that you should celebrate. That should be a tradition in your business.

But we also had a tradition of anytime a patient had a birthday and they were arriving on that day, we had a cupcake ready, and we had one candle sitting in there. And patients knew when they turned up on their birthday, and some patients would deliberately try and turn up on their birthday, They knew they were gonna get a bloody really nice cupcake, and we would sing happy birthday to them in the reception area. Nice. Now not that everyone would come out of the rooms and do it, but whoever was there and and especially if the we knew the patients for a while, they said they looked forward to actually yeah. Who looks forward to going to see a health professional on their birthday?

Very few people. Very few people. And and I and I won't be singing happy birthday to you today today, Tyson. I'm sorry. I just I just don't have the right singing voice right now.

We haven't set that tradition up yet on the I should've done it for you last week. But there's other traditions you can you can introduce that some have got marketing potential, like I said, for the patients. Some are marketing more internal, and it's just bringing your team together. We on the last day of the year, we would always I'll be going to work. I'd take in my barbecue, and I would do a ham and egg breakfast for the whole team.

Even after I sold my business, I still did it for the next two years because I just enjoyed doing it that much, and that became a Christmas tradition. But those photos also went into our social media and went into our December newsletter. True. So we use that as a marketing, and the patients used to comment, oh, that's really great that you come into work and you crank up the barbecue, and before work, you all have this this breakfast. And then the team would be talking about with patients that morning.

How's your day been? Oh, great. We had our traditional ham and egg breakfast. That is something that I think everybody should do, and it could make your barbecue tax deductible. Just saying.

That's yeah. It's it's that's a good little tax tip there. Yes. People should be writing that one down.

We we'd also do, yeah, new team member dinners. Whenever a new team member joined a business, it was mandatory. It was tradition that we would be putting a dinner on for them. And at that dinner, we would take photos once again, be on the social media, be on our Facebook pages, and it would be and usually, because it's more of a social thing, you got more chance of the people in your team actually with tagging them and then posting on their personal pages. And the reason they're there, it's a work dinner with a new team member.

And therefore, if you've got 10 people in your team, that's 10 Facebook pages that are all of a sudden being exposed to your podiatry business.

Yeah. That's hugely important in this day and age, especially when the kind of organic algorithms of Facebook or these other social platforms, they really they'll only respond you know, likes and to, like, genuine engagement. If you just put it out on the page and there's really no resharing or any likes to it, then it's just gonna kinda die in the vine. But I think it's a it's a interesting way to kind of, you know, make something a little mini viral maybe in those people's circles.

Well, it's one of those things too that you you know. Like, I've been at events, like marketing events, strangely enough. And you'll be there, and they might say, oh, we want everyone to take a photo of such and such so you'll do that. They go, now we want everyone to post that on their social media pages and and do the tag such and such. Because, you know, if all of sudden there's ten, twenty, 30 people are all posting a particular subject and they're putting on their social media pages, and a lot these people are friends with each other, so they're tagging each other, all of a sudden, it gets a lot more exposure.

So you can do it with your own team, but at the same time, you're celebrating a tradition of implementing a new team member. Another one that we had a tradition was when there were certain sporting events, we would make sure that we set up a tent, that we went along there. We took deck chairs or umbrellas, and we made that just part of what we did as a team, but we're also doing it to support the community or that event. But once again, you would take a lot of photos, and and you'd also see a lot of patients at those events. So the Cairns Ironman used to be a classic one.

So we would set something up there, and you would see patients, we had the barbecue going. You offer them a sausage, and we had a few beers there if they wanted to stop and have a drink with us. But once again, those photos and by the end of the day, you would have, like, a hundred photos would have been posted from various people from your tent, business mentioned, and you can't pay for that sort of exposure.

No. That's huge. You don't have that many opportunities, and you can make it a consistent effort like that, you know, throughout the year. You're you're just you're just gonna stockpile those photos. But like you said, it just when when else are you gonna have that kind of opportunity?

Nearly everything you're doing, whether it's a a milestone or tradition, like internal stuff, you might keep a bit bit more private. You're not gonna say to your patients, well, we just had a record month. Look at their turnover. You might not wanna share that. But everything else that's sort of external should always be in your newsletters because patients wanna know what you're up to, what milestones.

They wanna know that your business is successful because they wanna attach themselves to a successful business. They wanna be part of that journey. But it's also letting your your referrers, professional referrers, nonprofessional referrers, let them in on the on what's happening in your business, and let them know that you're growing, and you're probably gonna be there next year and the year after that and the year after that. You're not just here for a couple of years until you get bored and then basically leaving.

Yeah. It takes a while to build up, you know, trust and momentum in your business. Right? It doesn't just you don't just open your doors and people jump in and say you're the greatest thing ever and you're you have a, you know, fully booked agenda and a calendar. It does take time.

And by, you know, being consistent about these milestones and, you know, kind of being there in the community, you know, supporting your staff, you know, celebrating them, you know, all these different channels, whether it be social media, newsletter, other places like that. It really helps, like you said, other referrers, you know, other professionals, non professionals, the community really gets to know you and trust you. Think that's a huge important aspect of growing growing your practice.

When I did the twelve week reboot, I talk about traditions, behaviors as part of that, and I actually use the All Blacks as my example. We talk about the cultural telescope. But it it could you are either classed as as a tradition or it's more of a behavior, but and but patients notice this, that no team member could arrive at work or leave work without saying hello in the morning and saying goodbye before they left. So even if I was with a patient, they would knock on the door. Hopefully, the dog's not gonna bark.

And they would open the door and say, Tyson, just let you know that I'm leaving. I go, oh, okay. See you later, John. And they they basically go. And patients would comment and say, I've noticed every time I'm in here, that always happens.

Go, it's just a it's a thing that we've implemented that you cannot leave without saying goodbye to everybody in the team. I said, because you never know when somebody needs to say something to somebody before they go, and and it's pretty pretty urgent. To me, it's it's a behavior, but it's also a tradition that we set up. You can't come and go without saying hello. It's like doing the haka at the beginning of the day.

Say hello to everybody. It's like doing another haka at the end of the day saying goodbye to everybody. And from the time of doing that, actually, everyone used to enjoy it. Everyone would have a a bit of a laugh in the morning, and it was and it had put a smile on everyone's face that I don't know. It was just it it sort of gave us a bit more of a bond with the team.

No. Having those kind of shared experience or shared kind of like code or rules that you kind of live by as a team, it it adds structure, but also kind of a level of understanding and community that you just you're pretty more and more to something that you kind of get used to. But having that level of communication and kind of, you know, ritual, I guess, within within your team is something that can really kinda bond the team together and really really can help grow the trust that you have in your own team as well.

Yeah. And like it's like you said, it's more of a ritual. It's just it's a way that you go through things, and sometimes you need to have rituals in place because they they just give people a sense of belonging to something. And because prior to doing that, you would have somewhere where the a patient would call, reception would go, yes. Oh, I'll get John to call you as soon as he finishes with this patient.

Next minute, you hear the door slam because John's let the brought the patient in the front, and then he's left. And next to it, the reception would I promise the patient we'd call back. And it was that happening over a period of time. They went, no. We need to change this.

So, yeah, it's more of a a ritual. So in your business, have traditions, have rituals, celebrate milestones, and make that part of to to bring your team together and also as part of your marketing.

No. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think there's a lot of custom golden nuggets in this conversation today that people can really implement to their own practice to to, yeah, to kinda work on these things.

So that's it for me, Jim. I look forward to talking to you again next week.

Sounds good, Tyson. Okay. See you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McAnnold. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.