Celebrating 100 Episodes with a Top 10 List

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. And with me is big Jim Mac, and this is our hundredth episode. Jim, how are doing?

I'm doing fantastic. I'm super excited to celebrate 100 fantastic episodes with you today. Just, boy, the time flies.

It does end. We have we have an audience, and they are cheering our one hundredth episode. Everyone's there. Okay, everyone. We need you to

get back up.

Sit sit back down. Sit back down. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for coming, and it's nice to have you all here.

So, Jim, a hundredth episode. Can you believe it?

Yeah. I mean, I I can't believe we've yeah. It it's hard to believe that it's already been close to two years, a hundred episodes. Here's to a hundred or a thousand more. We'll see.

But, no, it's been fun so far.

So what are we gonna talk about today? I know what we're gonna talk about today, but I'll let you introduce it.

Yeah. So today's a special episode. We don't have one singular topic. What we're gonna do is we're gonna go over the top 10 most downloaded episodes from our 100 episodes. So so, yeah, that's we're gonna we're gonna start off at number 10 and work our way down to number one.

Oh, okay. So we're gonna start at 10, and we're gonna go down to what has been the most popular one. Okay. This will be interesting. So what is what was number 10?

So number 10 is invest in solutions versus pay for services. So

That sounds like a gym topic.

Yeah. This sounds like a gym topic. I think there's lot of Tyson topics in this top 10, but this is number 10 is me. And, you know, this is one where we really kinda jumped into kind of the perception of marketing and podiatry and health care in general. You know, a lot of people will they see, oh, I need blogs.

Oh, I need social media. Oh, I need this service. And let's just, you know, figure out what my my budget is. I'm just gonna pay that and that then I don't have to think about it either Yeah. Paying someone on your staff to do it or, you know, paying someone as a marketing agency or consultant like myself to do it for you.

But really when people, you know, podiatrists and people in health care think about marketing, what they should be thinking about is more of a you know, something we talked about in previous episodes of our shows that you have to be thinking about a long term strategy and how to implement that over time. And so, like, any any any investment you make, you want to invest in the success of things over a long period of time, and you're looking for solving problems, not just like having services, but why what is the why behind you're doing the marketing? Is it to see a specific type of patient? Is it to increase the volume? Is it to eliminate certain types of care or treatments from your clinic?

Is it to get more of certain types of things? So, you know, when episode, you know, number 10 was really about digging into that, invest in solutions versus pay for services kind of, the the way some some podiatrists kind of view marketing and the services provided.

Okay. What's number nine?

Number nine is do less and do it better.

That sounds like my title. Definitely. And that particular episode and the good part is is I don't have any notes in front of me while talking about this, but I just know the topics. And I remember when I did that episode, it was more about a lot of times people keep wanting to add more services. They go off and do more training and they do different things and they just keep wanting to add more, add more, and add more into the business.

But sometimes, to bring more in, sometimes you gotta let something go. And I think sometimes you've got to look at your your practice and think, do you need to be doing everything, or should you be doing less or offering less services but just doing them so much better than what everybody else is doing? So I know there's a lot of podiatry clinics around now that have swift machines for doing wart treatment. I would have no interest at all in doing that. But if there was a podiatry clinic that did have one, I would contact them and say can I send my wart patients to you because I don't want to do them?

Now that podiatry clinic, if they know that all of sudden they can market themselves as being the wart place and they should really focus on that and get really good at it and become the best in town at doing that, and then don't worry about running off and doing dry needling or doing foot mobilization or doing some other course thinking, oh, we're just gonna keep adding all these services. Have less services but get really good at those things before. But then if you want if you wanna do more, you can do more. But just get really good at doing a few things first before moving on to a lot more. So that was all about doing less and doing it better.

Yeah. I think, you know, providing a high level of care and a few things is much better than trying to be all things to all people. So, yeah, I I really enjoyed not only that episode, but the kinda overall concept. That's definitely something I relate to. You know, I could do I could market all types of different things, but to kind of and you could probably coach different types of business owners along with podi but, you know, you and I have you and I kinda live by this one as well.

You know, we we stick with, with podiatry. So

I had somebody ask me that the other day. I said, how come you don't just do other health professionals as well? They said, you could quite easily do it. Everybody else helps all the others. Okay.

And that's why I don't. I don't want to do coaching for physios or optometrists. I just don't want to do that. Want to do podiatry. But I can understand why some people don't just do podiatry because a lot of podiatrists don't want to do coaching either.

Physiologists and chiropractors do.

No. For sure. But I think it does it helps you have kind of a clear, more direct message too. Like, we're talking to podiatrists. Right?

You know, people listen to our show. I'm sure the majority of people are the podiatrists or maybe their office manager or someone in their office. So when we when we kind of when you focus on providing a certain type of care in a similar way, then you can really speak to those patients, and they'll they'll feel heard when when you send out different types of messaging to them. So I really liked that topic. So for number that was number nine.

So if you're looking for number nine, once again, do less and do it better. Oh, Off to number eight, which is Is. Is. This I'm gonna I'm gonna butcher the name again. The zygamic effect, the open loop technique.

The zygamic effect.

Yeah. Zygamic

effect. Zygamic. The zygamic effect or the open loop technique.

Zygamic.

And it's pretty much about you're sort of telling a you're telling a story or you're giving information, but you don't close off the loop. So instead of saying to a patient, hey. I've got three exercises for you. One, two, three. See you next week.

Now they already know the three exercises. That doesn't really mean anything to them. But if you set but the it's all about you say, hey. There's four exercises. There's three exercises that we need to go through.

Now I'm gonna show you how to do this. Show me now. And I also want you to do this one. When you come back next week we'll go to that third one because that ties everything together. That's leaving an open loop.

It's like when people will tell a story and they'll tell comedians do this really well. They'll tell a story and and then all of sudden, they'll they'll tell a side story, which will go off, but eventually, they loop back to the original one. And that and some people say they're frustrated and go, I need to know the answer. And not so much movies, but TV shows. Tune in next week to find out, does little Johnny get saved by his pet kangaroo?

That type of thing. That was on Skippy the Bush kangaroo.

Sometimes there have you ever seen the movie Inception?

Yes. So that that has a bit

of an open loop at the end. Like, leaves you kind of there's two ways you can interpret the ending there. Right? So but, yeah, it's a little bit different than, you know, what you wanna provide a a patient. But, yeah, definitely Yeah.

And and some people know that like, they know when they watch a movie or something, and sometimes it's not like, American movies have a habit of they need to tidy up every loose end and make people feel warm and fuzzy at the end. They just yeah. Sometimes, all of a sudden, you'll see the hero come walking through the smoke at the end, and they hug, and then the children come running up, you're a hero. But sometimes the movie just ends and people go, well, did they make it or not? I assume they probably did, but did they?

And that's sort of, yeah, what the open loop thing's all about. It's just it's just leaving yeah. Not tidying everything up. Leaving something open which creates tension, creates suspense, but it also get your patients coming back the following week.

Yeah. That that adding that kind of giving them a little bit of expectation or wanting them to having them want more information or it will kind of keep them more engaged in the next visit. So I definitely like that topic, the Zeigarnik effect.

Yeah. If people like the idea that go and look up the Zeigarnik effect, but go and read more on it. It is actually really, really interesting, and it also explains why some people get stressed out at their work and and other things. So it's an important topic. Okay.

What was that? Was nine, eight. Oh, we did ten, nine, eight. What's seven?

Yeah. So we are actually on number yeah. So number seven is the top five things to learn before starting a private practice. So

This is yours.

This is kinda like yeah. This is mine. And we kinda went over, like, those five different areas for people just, you know, maybe someone is fresh out of residency, wants to start their practice, or maybe they're been working in a practice themselves. And, you know, what are the some of those steps you need to take? And the first one was, like, basically doing some general business and financial planning.

You know, what's your budget gonna be? Where are you gonna be located at? Do have a business plan? You know, just kind of securing the right insurance and kind of planning for the growth of the practice is kind of that first step. Second step is kind of legal and regulatory requirements.

So, you know, what can you do with podiatry where you're based at? Right? Was there when it comes to credentialing, license licensure, health laws, malpractice insurance, getting those kind of legal and regulatory requirements, you know, figured out is really, really important. Also, number three was practice management. You know, that's really critical for success.

You know, how are you gonna hire the right staff, implement kind of efficient processes, schedule patients? What is that kind of, like, daily routine within the practice gonna be like? The the fourth part was networking referral relationships. Would that be internal health care professional referrals, external with the the medical community? Maybe it's in the the private business community.

And then last but not least, like, how are you gonna acquire patients? How are you gonna market yourself? And what are you gonna kind of what do you wanna stand out for to kind of attract patients to your practice? So, yeah, that was, you know, a quick kind of overview of that kind of five things you need to learn before starting a private practice. It was our number seven topic, and definitely look that one up if that's something you're interested in.

Yeah. And there are solid five things that people should be looking at. And like you said, you could do the top 50 things you should do for your business, but that those five were definitely five big ones.

Yep. So we'll jump to number six now. This is a Tyson topic that developing micro pillars within your eight pillars or the six is it the six pillars or

the marketing? Come on. Yeah.

Come on, dude. My eyes my eyes are getting a little my eyes are getting a little little tough tough here.

Yeah. So micro pillars yeah. So developing so I always talk about the six pillars of marketing. Professional referrers, non professional, internal marketing, external marketing, verbal marketing, and online marketing. So these are six pillars.

But within each pillar, there's what I call micro pillars. So it's a whole pile of little pillars that make up. So when you're looking at the six pillars, the reason why six pillars are better than four pillars, if you think of like a roof of a building, if you've got six pylons holding it and if one pillar falls down, the other five are going to hold it up. If you only have four and one gets knocked down, there's a chance it's gonna tumble over. So the more marketing pillars you have, the better.

Then within each of those pillars, the more little micro pillars you have, and I I picture it in my head almost like all the little individual strands that make up rope. And if a cup and if you have a at rope closely, you'll see there's a lot of those little strands start to break. But if a couple of them do break, the integrity of the rope, though, is still intact. That's what I look at with micropillars. So you might have, say, in professional referrers, physiotherapists, chiropractors, dietitians, general practitioners they're all micro pillars.

But you can go even deeper with your physiotherapist. How many physiotherapists? Are there two physios that you refer to, or are there 15 physios? If 10 physios stop referring to you, or if all the physios stop referring to you because all of a sudden they found out podiatry is better than physiotherapy and they don't wanna refer anymore, then you don't need to worry because you've still got your GPs, your chiropractors, your dietitians. They are the extra pillars.

So it's like so within every pillar, try and find as many referral sources within each pillar. So if one micro pillar breaks, the rest of them will keep the integrity of that pillar. Makes sense. It does. Okay.

What's number five?

Number five is how trust grows your reputation and practice. I believe this was me.

It has to be. I can tell by the topic names.

This is, we kind of jumped into like, what are the things you can actually do to grow trust with patients? Because I think that's really kind of the foundation of everything we do as podiatrists, as healthcare providers, and really needs to translate into your marketing. So the first thing that people can do when you're in practice is provide excellent care because no matter how great your marketing is, your advertising, if you're not providing excellent care to your patients, there's really nothing you can do that that to kinda like to kinda, you know, for lack of a better term, like, polish a turd. Right? So

You can put what they say. You can put sprinkles in the turd, but it's still a turd.

You can't you can't polish it. It's also like, how do you how do you treat people? Right? Like, how does your staff treat people? When people walk into your practice, when you establish that rapport with the patient, is that kinda like the first step towards building trust, or is it gonna lead to, like, to negative, you know, interactions in the future?

And, really, communication is hugely important with this. Right? So you have to communicate with patients. You know, communicating with your staff about how to communicate with patients is really, really, really important. And, also, you have to maintain a professional demeanor.

Right? Like, not everything is gonna go perfectly in your practice, but you have to maintain professional demeanor about how you treat people. Even if someone disagrees with you, like, how do you handle disagreements, you know, either with your staff or with patients. That's really, really important. And also by providing patient education and good thorough follow-up of your patients is a great way to continue to build long term trust.

You know, if you're just having someone come in for one visit, and then just write them a script and then, you know, see me PRN, like, you're not gonna build trust, and relationship over time. You really have to, take into account, educating patients, kinda helping them see that, you know, you're a valuable and vital part of their improvement along with their own actions. But, you know, getting that follow-up care can be hugely impactful to really kind of basically growing that trust of your reputation and of your practice.

Yeah. I I say when it comes to relating with your patients, trust is the key. And if you break a patient's trust, it's really hard to earn it back. So it's something that when you first meet a patient, you slave on a build a trust over a period of time. And once they do trust you, you wanna make sure you maintain that trust.

Well, that was a good topic.

Yep. Well, off to number four. This is gonna be the kind of a murderer's row of Tyson topics here. But the first the number four is 13 things you would do differently.

Oh. I remember this one. I don't remember the third, and I've no. I can't remember what they were.

That's okay. They don't wanna hear the model. Just give us the the overview.

The other view of it was you're sitting in your practice and all of a sudden, you see now, what's funny about this, this was all based on some of this is reality, this is what really happened. I've seen this happen a few times. I remember when I was on the Gold Coast I don't know if I said this in the podcast or not, but this just flashed in my head. When I was on the Gold Coast, there were two businesses opening up, I mean, directly opposite the road to each other, 60 feet apart. It's just a two lane road.

Both businesses are opened up. You could tell, oh, they're both sort of like medical type things, but you didn't know about the work. You just tell by the way the car park was getting done and they're both houses that were being converted. And boom, boom, boom, and this one particular day, the signs went up at the same day, the big unveiling, and they were both chiropractors directly across the road. One was, like, 48 Bayview Street, and the other one was, like, 45 Bayview Street.

Just and I looked at it and went, that is hilarious. But anyway, here in Cairns, where my old clinic was and I sold it to a corporate group, another podiatrist bought the building across the road or just up from where you can see each other, and they set up a really nice podiatric clinic there. So this whole thing was the third thing is what you would do differently is if a podiatrist moved into town straight across the road from you, what would you do differently? When you think of your actual business, would you reach out and contact your patients, your your current referrers? Would you make sure you've got a yeah.

You really have a good relationship with them? We list through 13 things that you would do differently if a competitor opened up a a crossroad, and this happens more often than people would think.

It seems like a great opportunity to leave an open loop for them to go and listen to podcast.

Definitely. This is definitely an open loop. Go and listen to that episode because there's 13 things that we came up with. Part of this too is I did this talk with a group, and this is some feedback that other podiatrists giving me feedback on what they would do differently. And even though people go, oh, but that won't happen, it happens all the time.

It may not be across the road, but it'll be in your suburb. It'll be in the next suburb. There's podiatrists opening up all the time. So if they open up across from you, what would you do differently? And if you and thing is, if you do that differently, if they open up across the road, why aren't you doing it already?

That's the key to that episode. Very good.

Very good.

Woo hoo.

That was a good one. Alright. We're into the top three now. I don't have to give a a little drum roll here, but how how micro storytelling can improve the patient physician relationship.

So what was that one again?

Topic for sure.

What was that?

So how how micro how micro storytelling

Oh, yes.

Can improve the patient physician relationship?

Yes. Okay. What I meant by this particular episode was a lot of people I I will say to them, I'm always surprised how many podiatrists you go to their personal profiles on Facebook and there's nothing about podiatry. It's like they don't want to tell anyone they're a podiatrist. And then you go to their podiatry pages and it's only really boring podiatry stuff that they put there.

They never share anything about themselves. And the number one comment I get from people is, I like to keep my personal life and my business life separate. And I'm like, they're the same. It's still part of your life. To me, you should be proud that you're a podiatrist and all your friends should know about it.

And all your patients should know a little bit about you so they get to know that you're not a monster. You're you're a human being. You're you're a parent. You're a husband. You're a wife.

You're you're someone's child. It's and people go, oh, but I don't and I'm not saying take a photo of your house and give everybody your address. It's not what I'm talking about. It's all about micro storytelling is you divulge little bits about yourself over a period of time so that your patients feel like they know who you are without really divulging exactly who you are. And the perfect example of this is if anyone's ever listened, watched CSI or Law and Order or any of those things, you pick a main character, and they don't just dump everything about that main character on the first episode.

On the first episode, you might find out they've been a police officer for twenty years. That's all you know. And then there's got whatever story we're not. A couple of episodes later, you find out, oh, they're married. Oh, they've got children.

Oh, they used to play baseball. Oh, they they played football as well at school but didn't end up getting in the was gonna go pro but did their knee. So you learn that they divulge a little bit about them over seasons. So at the end of a decade of watching a particular show, if I said, hey, tell me about detective Stabler, who was a character in Law and Order, SUV, special victims unit, SVU, special victim SUV, that's a car. Sorry.

But if I said, tell me all about him, I could tell you about his whole life, but I really don't know the person. This is what Michael's storytelling is. You create the narrative. My patients would know that I like hamburgers. My patients would know, yeah, I like the USC and and martial arts.

Now they wouldn't know at what level of martial arts they ever did. They wouldn't know how many hamburgers I actually eat. But they but they'd know enough about me, so they feel like they really know me without knowing my address, knowing the the date of birth of my daughter, knowing what school she goes to. I'm not I'm not you don't want them in your life. You don't want them turning up when you got a barbecue happening and they just rock through your front gate.

That's not what I'm talking about. But it's just it's letting enough information about you so they feel like they're connected with you. Because if they see you eating a hamburger with your family, then they go, oh, he's a family man. I'm a family man. He likes hamburgers.

I like hamburgers. Or he he follows the Sydney roosters, which every team everyone should, but not everyone does. And they realize, oh, he likes the Rugby League as well. Oh, I like Rugby League. Oh, I like sports.

So you start relating to people when you tell them a story.

There you go. That was number three. How micro story micro storytelling can improve the patient physician relationship. So now off to number two, and the last topic for Tyson, fitting in more ideal patients into your podiatry practice.

Yeah. All this one's this is really just sitting and working at who your ideal patient is for starters. Who who what do you want more of? Then going through your schedule and making sure you block out time so those patients can get in. And I've had people where they've said, oh, I did this particular marketing thing and it didn't work.

I go, oh, okay. This surprises me because I've done this with five other people and it worked really, really well. And and then this and this is where I now will have them have a phone sheet there or some sheet that it's not that the people didn't call up from that marketing that they did, it's just that people called up and they couldn't get an appointment because they were booked out four weeks clipping toenails or just general foot care. And we're going, see, you want more runners, but when that running person rings up Monday, they can't get an appointment. So it's all about finding who your ideal patient is and then putting sections in your schedule so that these people can get an appointment and you can also follow them up, but knowing at a certain point when to then fill those appointments with other stuff if it can't be filled.

So it's it's a real timing. It's a scheduling thing, and it's something that people need to be shown and taught how to do it. So anyone wants to learn more about doing this in Ontario, and your business profits go up, go through the roof when you can actually do this right way, reach out to me.

Yeah. It's a real practical exercise. Right? It's like, you figure out what you wanna do, and then practically figure out how you can do it in your clinic without like you said, a lot of people will say they wanna do it, but they have to take that extra step to actually make it happen. So I think So it sounds like should definitely reach out to you.

Yep.

That's that's the part that people, like, it is so easy to do. And people go, oh, but I couldn't do it. I'm booked at six weeks ahead. Great. Don't keep your booked at three months ahead.

It's still really easy to do. They just they just they they tell themselves they can't do it, so they don't do it. Alright. So let's get down to number one, which just hit well, there's no doubt that this one wasn't gonna be number one. This was a gym topic, but

Yeah. It was a gym topic, but it's kind of like the topic of the the 2023. So It's a world Exactly. So number one is chat GPT and podiatry, automating administrative tasks, and what else did I say there? And improving patient experience.

So I

think you could have just put chat GDP, and it would have would have done just as well.

No. This is definitely a topic I think a lot of people are thinking about now and kind of how AI and generative AI is gonna affect clinical practice, right, whether it be documentation, writing notes for, you know, surgery, writing notes for a clinic, you know, evaluating wounds. You know, we all have, you know, high definition cameras on our phones now. Just this AI and how it's gonna change the computation and the kind of machine learning that happens with AI is gonna really transform different aspects of our life, and podiatry is one of them. So I think it's important to and we'll have some more podi you know, some more podiatry marketing podcast on this topic in the future.

But, you know, it's what are those ways right now that, you know, we kinda went over initially. I guess it was back in March. It's been a little while. I mean, even back in January, actually, when I when we published

I just had to look then. It was January that we did it.

Yeah. Thought it was almost So it's been, like, you know, I guess nine months. So we probably are due for an update in a in a future episode. But just really, you know, we talked to some of the basics about what ChatGPT is, some ways of using it initially, but will definitely be a topic we we kind of touch base on because there's some definitely there's been some improvements over time. We've gone from ChatGPT three to three and a half now to four if you are on the paid plan for ChatGPT.

And there's outside of ChatGPT, there's a lot of other different app software applications, whether it be graphic design or ways of marketing or practice can be really improved by utilizing, you know, chat these kind of different AI technologies. So we'll definitely touch base on some of them, and I know that Tyson's been digging into some of the stuff as well. So we're excited to to bring you some more of this stuff in the future.

I will admit it. When you first spoke about ChatGTP, like, in January, and I'd heard a little bit about it, and I'd play with it a tad, but didn't really know too much about it. But every time I get an email, it's like every third email someone's trying to sell me something about training on chat GTP or or and chat GTP seems to be the one that everyone's talking about. But there was another one. We're not gonna talk about it now.

We we should do I reckon we should do, like, a series about three or four episodes where we just pick on some AI programs that people can actually use to improve their marketing.

Yeah. Definitely. We'll we'll we'll we'll figure out some nice little series we can introduce folks to it, but also provide some real specific advice about how to use it, how can benefit their practices.

Sounds good. Okay. Well, that's our top 10. I hang on. I I know everyone's standing up again.

And okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for that. Yep. That's really good.

And I know I know some people. It's oh, that one. Not that.

There you go.

This is a if people listen to these episodes and they apply what they learn, this is what they'll hear every day. That's what they'll they'll hear in their business.

No, Tyson. Thanks a lot for, the first the first one hundred. It's been a lot of fun. There's been a lot of ups, a few downs, but, you and I are keeping it steady with the podiatry marketing podcast. It's been a pleasure to partner with this with this with you so far, and I can't wait to see where we continue to take this.

So It will it has been fun, Jim. And when we first started this year, we're just Jim McDonald. Now you're big Jim Mac. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah. I'm still World

world famous.

I'm still Tyson. So okay. So I look forward to talking to you next week for one zero one.

Sounds good, Tyson.

Okay. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.

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