Celebrating 200 Episodes with Don Pelto, DPM

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald. Welcome back to podiatry marketing, a very special two hundredth anniversary, two hundredth episode. I guess not the two hundredth anniversary. That'd kinda crazy.

That's the heaviest. We did. We've gone for two hundred years.

Been married a long time.

But we have a special guest today. We like to welcome actual practicing podiatrist, Don Pelto, to the show today. Tyson and are excited to have you join us today, Danto. So welcome.

Thanks. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Tyson. Appreciate the the the time to be on your show.

No. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say because like Jim said, we've got a practicing podiatrist on here.

No. Absolutely. But, you know, before we just jump into straight about, you know, these marketing topics and how it's, you know, 200 episodes, we thought having a, you know, actual practicing podiatrist that has an interest in marketing, who's, you know, built his own website that has a knowledge of this. You know, how did you kinda get started, Don, in having an interest in marketing and kind of when you started the practice?

I've been interested in marketing, ever since I read Michael Gerber's book, probably called the e myth.

Oh, yeah.

And that was probably when I was in in in in college. I read e bit e myth. I read How to Win Friends Influence People, Anthony Robbins, like Tony Robbins, all these things. This was when I was in high school. And then when I got into podiatry school, I quickly got bored of studying when I was in the in the in the in the bowels of Roslyn Franklin University in the basement.

And all of a sudden, I looked on the the the magazine shelves, and there were were something, like, much more interesting than anatomy to me. It was called Podiatry Management Magazine. And they've had to have, like I don't know how many years Barry has put it out, but I read through all the annals of podiatry management when I was taking breaks from my studying because I was I didn't really like studying, and I like business more. And and I was I loved it, and there were some great things from the American Academy of Podiatric Practice Management. And most of the ideas I like that resonated with me were were things like John Julianne and Lynn Hommesack or all these other people within podiatry or American podiatry anyway.

They were writing this stuff. And I was like, wow. This stuff is great, and no one's teaching me this in school. And I and I actually liked it much more cause it it inspired me. I've just always liked that.

I even think even before that, if you know, about me a little bit, I was a magician and a and a juggler. This was my I wanted to be a professional magician. It was a lot of nights and weekends. And I ended up kinda doing podiatry as my backup gig because, you know, it's kinda hard to be a professional magician. They don't get paid that much.

And so I but I enjoy that kind of being in front of people. I enjoy that's maybe why I like the podcast stuff. I like the public speaking stuff. And I liked the marketing because the marketing was like applied psychology, and I and I and I liked sales books. And I was like I'm like I felt like a fish out of water.

Like, no one else really liked these things except me until I find geeks kind of like you that like marketing and and things like that. And I still find it hard, when I go to these conferences. There's only a few conferences that they don't flex their surgical muscles. They you know, a lot of the conferences, they flex those muscles, and I don't not too interesting to me. But if you talk to me about, like, direct response marketing or, you know, ad, you know, AdWords and other things like that, I get really kind of excited.

How do you feel then? Because I used to cop this all the time. Very similar background to yourself. I read the e myth. When you used did you ever copy any flack from other podiatrists saying, oh, you're unprofessional because you care more about business and marketing than being a better podiatrist?

And I used go, but it makes me a better podiatrist. Did you find the same?

All all all the time. Every single day, even with my other colleagues. I have three other partners or two two other partners, and I and I get it from them.

Yeah. What was that like? And I

have more fun, and then I just enjoy it more, I think.

So so what was that like when you, you know, you go from residency into practice and you have this, you know, interest in marketing and business acumen? Do you remember some of the first things you had to kinda, like, how you got those things moving? Like, how did you introduce those even now to your your partners or to your colleagues that might be a little more reticent, about these different ways of getting visibility for your services and for your clinic?

Yeah. Well, we could even talk about residency. In residency, I I put together the residency website. Was interested in that. During residency, I had my protocols all set up for how I was gonna treat everything, like, you know, the top 20 conditions, what I was gonna do, visit one, visit two, visit three.

I was gonna, you know again, and now I know the words, how I was gonna upsell, how I was gonna influence, how I was gonna do these things like that even from residency. And then when I got into private practice, I walked into a practice that was already busy. So I guess my one I guess my one regret is that I walked into one doctor left one day, and I and I entered to a fully packed schedule so I have no I had no incentive for me to go out and market. And that was my one regret. I still did it.

I still went around. So between July and when I started in October, I went and and met the other doctors, and I set up meet and greets and things like that. Everything that I read in the magazines that I should do, But I didn't have to do it because I was quite busy. But then after, like, that kinda calmed down, then I realized, oh my goodness. I probably should've done this.

But I was just so busy kinda with, like, everyone. I think there's phases of life. And and the that phase was starting practice, kinda getting board certified. And I didn't I couldn't really explore all of my marketing interests because I just had to do the duties of of learning learning the craft and being a podiatrist. And but the problem is I tried to imitate initially.

Like, my my partner hired me. He said, Don, you should do wounds. And I didn't realize I didn't like wounds. But I, like, went into wounds in terms of marketing. I developed a wound podcast, heal your foot wound fast.

I did, like, a ebook. I and but the thing what I realized is wounds, no one has any money. No one's gonna they're all noncompliant diabetics, and they're not gonna listen to a podcast. But I I I, like, I was getting my marketing out that way by doing a podcast, doing all this other stuff that really gave me more joy than doing wounds. And then eventually, I I kinda tweaked that, and I don't do many wounds anymore.

And I because in the beginning, you think you need to be like your partners or you need to be like others. And and it took me years to kinda be able to be comfortable in my own skin and realize I do much better within my lane of what I'm good at. And and I'm I'm good at certain things, I'm not good at other things. And it took me a lot of courage to finally get to a point where I can understand that. And so in the beginning, I was doing everything that people wanted me to do.

And then later on, I'm like, wait. I I kinda like this video stuff. And so that's where I started to make YouTube videos, YouTubes, marketing. So I went to the conferences. I wrote all the different types of books.

I just enjoyed that stuff, and I did that in my downtime between patients. That's where I was able to write the books. And then the the website, we had a couple of other websites we used to do. I had one on the on the back end, which is Kajabi that I liked because it was good for direct response marketing. And and that's why I kinda got into it and with with the with the marketing for the practice.

Very good.

So I I don't no. So it's a question, but an observation, which I think is just worth highlighting because I know other podiatrists will go into partnership. I think it's great that even though you you were partnered with other podiatrists who weren't into marketing at all, you didn't let that stop you from pursuing that that aspect of podiatry that you really loved. And I think podiatrists can actually learn some of it. You don't have to always have the same mindset with your partners.

You can do your own sort of thing.

And it was hard. And and they didn't I think in the beginning, they were skeptical. They were like, you know, I think Don should, you know, do all this big surgical stuff like us. And and I felt like I had to fill those shoes until I realized, like, you don't want me to fill those shoes. And I do much better referring and, you know, getting them in and referring them to you guys to do those things.

You refer things to me that I like to do, but that's taken years. And so I I think if you are training doctor because I think finding doctors that have batteries included for marketing is a really hard thing. We've we've struggled with multiple hires, and you you think you're gonna hire a doc, and you think, oh, they're gonna go out and market themselves and build their own practice. I've gotten to a point where I've realized I really have to develop a feeder system for them. And and I can tell you kinda what we've worked on recently, but getting some with, you know, batteries included to go out there and set up meet and greets and meet other doctors and this and that, I find it's hard.

Not everyone's gonna do that even though if you train them and tell them to do it.

Tyson and have talked about the the past. You know, like we talked about in, you know, the seventies and eighties, there's a lot of solo practices, a lot of more entrepreneurial podiatrists that had put up their own shingle and they had, like, a basically kind of, you know they didn't necessarily have the high academic or the hospital based training that we have, but they were a lot more solid in the basics of business and how to, you know, run a success successful business in practice. But we're finding in at least maybe around the time we went to residency, Don, you know, there's a bit of a shift where podiatrists wanted to be on staff at hospitals and wanted to do, you know, the the alizrof frames and the calcaneal fractures and was kinda seen as more prestigious. But and so maybe there's a bit of a shift away from that entrepreneurial spirit. And, you know, there's some people that just, you know, if they live at the hospital for three or during residency and don't get out and spend time in these clinics, you know, they don't have those.

The battery's included, like you mentioned, to kind of know what to do or know how to do it. So I I'd definitely be interested to hear more how you see, you know, potential associates, but then how do you try to onboard those new associates to the practice to make sure that, you know, they're pulling their weight and they see the value in, you know, going out and doing those meet and greets and marketing practice?

Yeah. So after I was a resident, they made time requirements in the residency. Because when I was a resident, I was like, well, if I'm not doing surgery, I'm gonna learn much more by being in doctor's offices. So I was always in in my attending's offices, traveling different places, visiting different doctor, taking time off to do that because I wanted to learn the practice management. And every time I went there, I used to ask them for all their forms.

And and I tell even residents this day when they visit me, you know, you have an open book to me. Whatever you ask, I'm gonna help you. And and I'm a type of person. I'm gonna help anyone no matter where they're at in their profession to be better. What I can teach them, I'll teach them.

But I'm saying but especially a resident, like, whatever you wanna learn, whatever you want me to teach you, and you know how many come and ask me? None.

Very few.

But I am I am I I will teach you how to do ultrasound, how to do shockwave, how to do marketing, how to do any if you show any interest, it gives me so much pleasure. They asked me to do one lecture a year at my residency where I do where I train residents, but that's all they want. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I'll I'll do that one for you and whatever you I'm here. Okay, guys.

I'm here. Just use me, but no one no one uses me. So when when new doctors come in, I have put together every single manual you want. I have a a new doctor provider manual of how to make the most profit off of every patient. I have the this Practice Mastery Academy, which I've developed.

They have full access to all of that. How many people actually go through it? No. None. I can the reason I have to charge for stuff is because when you don't pay, you don't value it.

That's true.

And the more you pay, the more you're gonna value. You know this, Tyson. You know, I would give stuff away if people do it. And so young doctors, the problem is so the best way to get them to learn it, frankly, is to shadow me. We we make them shadow us in the beginning.

So they have to shadow us for a long period of time. Whenever they're not seeing patients, I say shadow me. I say record me, record the other doctors, write out how they explain things because that is golden. Because there's my my other colleagues, they're actually better at explaining certain things than I am, and I go in and I shadow them. I still shadow them to this day.

And and one of them, Neil, he's a wordsmith. He does must be, like, 40 or 50 pairs of orthotics a month, all cash pay. And I'm like, how does he do that? And I still whenever I get a chance, I go listen to listen to him. I think that's so important because we don't know everything.

No. I I I agree I agree what you said though too about if you would give the information away for free, if people would just do it. But they only do it if you if they actually pay for it. I don't know

And they pay if they pay a lot. It's not just a little.

But I've run, like, marketing workshops, and it'll be at an event, and there might be five, seven hundred people going to 700 podiatrists going to that event, and you're killing yourself to get 25 bums on seats. Yet, they were all complaining, we just had more patients. Wish my clinic was making more money. You go, here's an event that you can go to and you can learn about it. Yeah.

They just they don't see the value in it. But to me, you only wanna talk to people who care about that side of things as well.

And and so you're asking about, like, grad food grade, we have a three year residency. All all the doctors come out, you know, four foot, rear foot train. That's what we call it here, and and they're very good surgeons. Two of them now are gonna be going to fellowship, so they're gonna do another year. And they are looking for high paying jobs.

High pay they're gonna get a higher paying job. If they go to, like, a UMass system, they're gonna make more than they would work with me in the beginning, but they're gonna be capped and based on RVUs. So I I think they're gonna be capped at what they can produce, the maximal amount, because it be it's based on production. There's no you can't buy into your clinic. You can't buy into the real estate.

There's a lot of other downsides if you're looking to be an entrepreneur. And but a lot of them, they and and everyone's buying up the as you know, maybe talks about this, about all these these super groups that are buying up a lot of the practices. And they're gonna pay me and for my practice, like, five times multiple, whereas a young person coming out, they can't afford that. And then you're gonna put someone in there, and you're gonna pay them an okay salary. And but you're not gonna even encourage them to do anything out of the curve.

They just this is the way we do it, and you have to do the mini orthotics. And that doesn't you know, we my partner who's at a perfect age to sell out, but I'm about fifteen years out. It's not a good time for for me to do that. But I have I have buddies that are doing that, but I'm just that would restrict me from what I kind of the stuff I like to do that gives me energy.

What's the perfect age to sell out?

About five years before.

I know. But you said your partner's at the perfect age. What what do you what what's the

perfect age? He's about five years. Yeah. He's about five years out before he's ready to retire.

How old is he now?

He's Neil so I'm, what, 40 he must be 56 or 55, something like that.

Yeah. It's a good age.

And so he's he and so even with us, he wants to go down to three days, just get his percentage, and then we would buy him out, and we'll do, like, a five year buyout for him.

That makes sense.

So We we that's how it's scaled. So I'm the other guy's ten years younger than me, and the other guy's, you know, five or six years before that. So we're we're trying to have some type of succession planning.

The circle of life from the Lion King. Yeah. That's why but that's Yeah. But to me, that was there's a conversation with another podiatry friend, Jonathan Small. And he said the same thing where America might be different, in The UK and Australia, sometimes people will build the practice up.

They can't sell it, and eventually, this practice that's been there twenty, thirty years got this great reputation just closes. Whereas, ideally, you want that next person coming through who takes it over. And you see that with accounting firms, law firms, but unfortunately, with podiatry clinics, it doesn't that transition doesn't always happen. But I think you've got a good plan in place at the moment.

We'll see. You know, it's it's because we're not just like we're not trained to be business people, we're not we're not trained in in in how to how to transition thing and train new doctors and and things like that. Yeah. We have a pretty good thing going now.

So that that's really helpful information. I'm sure some people that are in similar situations will get some value from that. I wanted to change the topic here a little bit and kinda dig deep into, you know, what things you find is working, you know, for your clinic there in Massachusetts. Right? I know I think every other week, there's some new shiny object in the marketing world.

You know, people are cold calling or cold emailing clinics saying, hey. We do this type of, this channel works really well for podiatrists. You should Or there's a new EMR. There's a new, you know, bright shiny object in the marketing world. But just from your experience and kind of, you know, you don't have to give out all your secrets that are that are working for for you and your clinic.

Them all out, Jim, because no one's gonna do them. You will give out everything because you know no one will do them.

That's true. But at the

same time you will give out everything, but no one will do it.

I I used

to say that

I'd I'd get people come and visit. They would bring me up. They contact me an email. Oh, we're gonna be in Cairns. Would it be okay if we came out to your clinic?

Yeah. No problem. They come out and I say, walk around, take photos, ask me any question you want. I said, because I know when you leave here, you're probably not gonna do any of it anyway.

So I will give you everything. So Yeah. My number one thing, I'll I'll I'll tell you what what we have and then how we did it.

Do we need a drum roll for this? This would be really let's build it up. And the number one thing If is

you Google podiatrists in Worcester or Westborough, every other one practice has 100 reviews. We have 10 times that. That's how that's what we do. How do we do it? Let me explain.

There's a company that's called Swell, s w e l l. They automatically, at 6PM, send out an email to every single patient. There are two requests. The first request happens at six hours after to that specific location, Westborough or Worcester. Okay?

Once that goes out, hey. How do we do? Give our practice a review. Perfect. Then three days later, depending on where the doctor is at, we wanna dominate Google.

So we have two spots, one for Westborough and Worcester, and then we have eight other spots because we have four doctors. So we have four doctor pages in Worcester and four doctor pages in Westborough. And so the second email that goes out three days later, hey. Thanks for giving us a a rating for our practice. Would you guys giving the actual doctor that you visited in Westborough this review as well?

And so that's my number one tip to dominate online reviews because the people come in, and and I'm and I'm very humble about it. You know, we've done a good job. Oh, you know what? I you had so many good reviews. You know, people say some nice things.

You know? If if I do a good job, maybe you'll give us one too. You know? I just kinda plant that seed, and and I people have a lot of nice things to say, but it's orchestrated. If it's not orchestrated, it's not gonna be done.

And we pay big we don't pay big money. So we pay $600 a month. So it's 400 if you only do the main clinic. And if you wanna add each individual sub Google My Business pages, it's another $200, which is what chump change. $600 per month for that.

That's what that's what blows up our our practice.

Okay.

So that's the number one thing. So go ahead and do that. Pace well and tell them I sent you. I don't know if they they haven't given me a kickback yet, but maybe they will. That's number one.

My my second thing to get where do we get our patients from? The second thing would probably be now we're having a I don't know. We have, like, a good web page, I guess, but, you know, Jim can talk better to that. We have SEO optimized pages. They come in from that.

A a lot of them come in from referrals from the primary doctors and and referrals from other patients. That is is how a lot of them. But these days, a lot of them are coming from online. Like, I I think the majority are coming because they're just searching for us. And and usually, it's due to Google, and we just rank so much better than anyone else.

Do you still go out there and do many, like, live presentations to groups of people or anything like that?

I'm try what I'm trying to find, I would do it if someone set it up for me. If you wanna develop something, and I would pay for this. I'm trying to get a virtual assistant, a a a virtual practice practice rep, kinda like a drug rep, a virtual practice rep that would set these up. Because if you set up one or two a month, I would go and do them. I just don't have the time to set it up, and my and my office managers don't have time to set it up.

But I I I love that gives me so much energy doing those things. That that's just something I personally like to do, and I would love to bring the new doctor to go introduce to the to the PCBs. I just don't have time to set it up, and I don't have a good practice rep. I don't have a I don't have that setup.

Yeah. And it takes I

find it beneficial. But I don't I'll invest the time. I don't I I just need it takes time to set it up. That's the thing. And the phone calls

But it also takes time to build that relationship with the the person that will help organize, put the talk together.

Yeah. And and I thought of a couple of other things. I thought about piggybacking. So there are certain reps. For example, there's a vein clinic that always always meets us, and I'm, hey.

Would you go out and rep us as well? So you're already going to the same primary cares for veins. Would you mind setting up something for us? He did a little bit of that, but there was no incentive for him to do that. We also try to do that with a pathology company that reps us, that comes to us and say, hey.

Would you help us get you know, they have no incentive. Like, if I paid them maybe 500 a thing they set up, they might do it, but I struggle with that. I'm trying to do that. One thing that's also working really well is I'm a big advocate of I like following, like, Jay Abraham.

Oh, yeah.

He's a good marketing guy. And he always talks about kinda stealing things outside of your industry. And you don't have to be smarter. You have you just have to look what's working in other industries. And and one of the things I think that's working really well are these this idea of urgent cares.

And I think urgent cares I don't know if they're popping up where where you're at there, Tyson, but in the in The US here, all these convenient MD urgent cares, right, are are showing up. And I and I thought to myself, we were always struggling with a a really good offer. And so when you talk about, you know, any of these marketing guys, you know, Dan Kennedy, things like that, they always talked about a free visit. And I always thought that felt tacky.

Yeah.

My colleagues didn't really like the idea. So if you if you can't do it for less money because usually insurance covers it. Right? Usually, insurance covers most of the things that we do. You know, certainly, we do.

We can talk about cash pay things if you want afterwards. But for getting them in the door, it usually an insurance thing. And so if you can't compete on price, you can compete on speed. And and I think speed is a is a good way to compete, and that's how urgent cares do it. And so I thought to myself, well, how can I imitate this?

So I asked my virtual whatever my people that help me, and I say, can you make, like, a urgent care page for podiatry? And then can you write, like, 10 blogs pointing back to that urgent care page? And and by the way, there's this one other company that does it. Here's their podiatry urgent care, and they kinda copied it. And and then we're we we spend, like, $5 a day on Facebook ads kinda going to that urgent care.

So it's it's neat because in our in our schedule, I can actually see which patients come in from that urgent care page because it's an actual separate booking block. And so the ad is, you know, guaranteed appointment in twenty four to forty eight hours for urgent care appointments. And so that is prefacing it on based on speed, whereas most podiatrists, it might take you two, three, four weeks to get in. Usually, these urgent care patients are pretty simple. At least you can triage them initially.

I thought about doing it like you'll be seen in fifteen minutes or your co pay back, but I didn't really like that. I liked, you know, being seen twenty four to forty eight hours, and we can do that now because you have a new Now once this new doctor gets too busy, we might not be able to offer that twenty four to forty eight hours. But I think, you know, marketing yourself based on speed is something that because we do really well with patients that are in pain. Right? And then I did a whole bunch of videos on, like, patients that came to me after going to an emergency room.

And I told this story. I said, you know, this patient was waiting twelve hours in the emergency room. You know, they got an X-ray. They didn't have a fracture. Then they came to follow-up with me.

There was no fracture, and they didn't need the boot that they had given them. And I did a video on that. And then another patient that came in went to the urgent care for an ingrown toenail. They got an antibiotic, but they couldn't take out the ingrown toenail. They came to see me, and I did it.

And I and at the end, said, you know, you should just come to see us for the ingrown toenail, for the fracture, for whatever it is versus the urgent care. And we we see these multiple times a day. And then so I'm marketing guy, and so then I think, okay. This is working. So how can I always think of, like, what's working, and how can I make it work even better?

Yeah. This is what I always try to build off of what's working. So now that this is working, I think to myself, okay. I'm gonna make up a a three by five business card or a postcard and give it to every single patient saying, hey. By the way, priority access for your friends and family for our urgent care.

They'll be seen within twenty four to forty eight hours. It's the same offer, but it's now saying for friends and family, twenty four to forty eight hours as an added bonus benefit to you guys and give that. And then how about going taking that same card and then bring it to, like, the shoe stores and say, hey. Every patient that comes in for a pair of shoes, would you mind putting this little three by five card? You know, we send all of our shoe stuff to you.

Would you mind putting this in there for me? And then I thought I'm just this is how my mind works. And then I thought, well, these urgent cares, they're really messing up on a lot of these things. Maybe I could go and be a resource to them and kinda I could go teach them how to do a paronychia. I could go teach them how to, you know, look at their X rays.

I could even be a resource. They can text me an X-ray if they're unsure their radiologist read it twenty four hours later. They can text me. I'll be a resource. Why?

So then they're gonna and I'm gonna give them my urgent care podiatry things. They can get their patients in in twenty four to forty eight hours because they're gonna send them over anyway, but we're gonna give them, like, a direct access line to our clinic. So they're going right there, then boom boom, right to us because they're not treating that stuff. And now everyone gets scared. This is so funny.

So I when I started, I made a great video on teaching exactly how to do ingrown toenails. And I had some colleagues that came to me and said, Don, you're teaching them how to do it. You're you're giving away our secrets. And I said, do you think emergency room doctors or primary cares are gonna do ingrown toenails? No.

But they're gonna know that I'm the expert, and they're gonna send them all to come and see me. I feel like so many people are so insecure about teaching, even practice management stuff, like business stuff, marketing stuff. Oh, they're gonna it's my idea. My you can take my urgent care idea, make it better, and tell me what you're doing, and I would love that for you. So these are I just like to help.

Yeah. But if you even fight if you think about, like, even yourself, people that you follow with marketing or you've learned from marketing, you've read their books, usually, the people you you follow who is it? Hamaz oh, what's his name?

Alex Ramosy right now.

Yeah. Alex Ramosy.

Alex Ramosy.

For example, you will follow him and may spend money with him based on the free stuff you obtained from him first. And because there was so much value there, you then go, well, if that's good, then I'm gonna spend the money to see what else he's got. And I think that works with what you're doing now with your marketing, is you'd be giving that information or that education away for free. People go, well, I don't wanna do it, but you're you are the person I should be sending them to because you're the expert.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm gonna share I'm gonna share what makes me the most money right now.

Tell us. Okay. That we need to hear this. Everyone needs to hear this.

What gives me the most joy too?

That's even better.

It gives me joy, and it makes me money, and it makes patients better. So if I could only do one thing so the eighty twenty rule. Right? Yep. What brings in 80% of my revenue and, you know, takes away 20% you know, only gives you 20% of the stress.

And I think there's a future for this. I just I'm I'm not at the phase right now where I'm where I'm willing to do it. But my number one thing, if you could give me one thing to do all day long, it would be shockwave. So shockwave, both radial and focused shockwave for any type of musculoskeletal issue because I think it really, really helps patients. You have to be really good at explaining things, and I guess you could call that sales

Yeah.

To to to make it work. And so all these things that are coming out like Swift, like Shockwave, like, you know, the self pay things, I seem to do very well with those, and it's taken me time. But I I think they really help patients, and and that's what I do. And and the majority do, like, three sessions. I do, like, six sessions on everyone, and I get great, great results.

And so most of my day is filled with that. Now I haven't talked to my colleagues because I'm I'm a marketing guy, so I'm thinking, you know, anyone I can train anyone to do this, so I don't wanna occupy my time with all these visits. Can we just hire someone to do this? And I'll train them. And they're like, no.

You have to do it because you're the doctor. I'm like, okay. So I just breathe deep, I'm like, okay. They don't buy all my ideas. You know?

Because then I would just be like, okay. I could just work three days. I could just sell a package of Shockwave, and someone else would do the six six treatments, but I'm not I'm not quite there yet.

Well, I mean, think when I sold my clinic, the one thing I wish I hadn't have sold with it, I wish I had kept the Shockwave machine for myself. Because I thought it was great. Great piece of equipment.

Yeah. So it's that that's what I like the most. And yeah. And I'll give you one more one more of my my my favorite things. I so Jim remembered when I used to do something called patient presentations, and I think I talked to you about this.

I remember that. We did a whole podcast in your patient present patient presentations.

I I did did patient presentations, and I thought about I I found something even better. I don't know if it's probably not my idea. It was probably someone else's idea I stole. Actually, I think it was. I don't remember who.

But I basically made something else called a treatment sheet now. So I have treatment sheets on everything that I treat. And on that sheet, it has, you know, has shockwave, anti inflammatories, everything, initial treatments, follow-up treatments. And and I give these out to any podiatrist. If you guys want these, I'll send them.

Or anyone that's listening to this, if you want them, shoot me an email. If you wanna give my email and after you can or if want me to give it, it's up to you. But I give these and that's why I take it out. They're in my treatment room, and I and I flip it over and I go through the patients. And it basically explains how we're gonna treat it and has all the most expensive things first and all the other things there.

And I and I pretty much say, you know, we're gonna you know, I think the best thing is this thing right here, Shockwave. You know, it's it's and I say it's really expensive. It's about $1,500. We can try some of these other things. So I plant the seed.

Right? And then I go, we're gonna try these other things first. If this doesn't work, we're gonna do an ultrasound that'll help me decide we're gonna do the shockwave. So they might try night splint foam rolling, all the other stuff. When they come back in three weeks, I'll do an ultrasound and show them it's thicker on one side than the other side.

So what sells shockwave all the time is ultrasound. K. Can't do it without ultrasound in my opinion. And then they're gonna get that package, and I and I hope I charge more than every anyone else. So I charge $2.50 a session for one side and then 500 a session for two sides.

So it's 1,500 to 3,000. And I say and some patients wanna do amnio injection, which is another $1,500. So that's called price anchoring. So I anchor it up, and then they're like, that's $3,000. Yeah.

But most people don't don't in your case, I don't think you need it because I didn't see any tear, so it'll just be 15. And they're like, okay. It's only 15. So this is, a technique that's more advanced marketing, but it it really helped. I do the same thing when I'm doing nail fungus.

So I always talk about, like, they're gonna need the UV light, the shoe spray, and then the biotin, which is, $200. And I say, you know, in a lot of patients, you know, they wanna do luminal or laser. It's like $1,500, but, you know, I don't really think it works, and I truly don't think it works as well as terbinafine. And and so but that's called price anchoring. So everything that I do, I price anchor it up, and I drop it down.

That's more of an advanced marketing technique, but it really, really helps me. I know in doctors, we don't tend to talk that way, but and talking to you guys so I think you guys understand that.

Yeah. We get it.

No. That's really helpful, and I think there's a lot of people who learn that technique on the podcast and definitely could use it into practice. You know, we're we're kinda getting close to half an hour here. And before we let you go, we've really enjoyed having you on. You know, if if there's any podiatrist that, you are listening to the podcast this far into it that are you know, haven't started or want to improve their marketing, are there any pieces of advice you would give to to those folks looking to, you know, grow their practice and better understand marketing?

Besides listening to the the first 199 episodes of podiatry market podcast.

First 199 episodes.

Yeah. Listen to them twice.

Podcast. Listen to them twice. And I'm serious. Like, when I was interested, when I was getting into marketing, I listened to the first 200 episodes of I love marketing with Dean Polish and and Joe Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. I I think podcasts are a great way to absorb information.

But

I think even better than that is find someone that is positive on podiatry. It doesn't even need they don't even need to be a good marketer. And and even if they're not your colleague in your practice where you work or at your hospital, go spend time with them. Okay? Spend time shadowing.

But it's gonna cost me a thousand dollars. Who cares? You're gonna learn so much more by come to visit me. Come to visit, you know, anyone that's positive on on podiatry. We're gonna let you come and visit.

I'm I'm I'm gonna may charge you only so you'll come because if I give it out for free, no one comes and visits me. So, you know, people come, and then they they they don't do anything. But go visit someone. I even think that's more important than reading books. Think I it's more important than listening to podcasts.

I think it's more important than anything. We go to find a doctor that's really good at marketing, really good at sales, really good at business. And if you can't do that, then you binge everything that they produce. So let me give you an example. I wanted to get better at orthotics.

And and my other my other I'm like, I'm just joking with the romance thing, but my other friend is Larry Huffman, and he has an amazing YouTube channel. And he teaches everything in how he explains orthotics. Everything. So all you do is you just binge when you're in your car everything that he's ever said about orthotics, and I'm like, oh, this makes sense. This is how he explains it.

And I'll just explain it the same way as Larry, and I'll probably do just as many as him. And so anything with shockwave, if you wanna learn shockwave, you see how people are explaining it and just binge whatever they're listening. So what I have done, I'm gonna give a plug for my podcast. Is that okay?

Yeah. Totally fine.

No? Yeah. So I have a podcast. It's called the podiatry practice mastery where I teach every single day what gets my practice to the million dollar mark. I basically go through and I write down my list of patients.

And every single day, I say this is my most valuable patient. This is my least valuable patient. This is what I did wrong here. And I go through and I teach you every single day how I get to the million dollar mark in my personal production. And and and you'll see I'm talking about, okay.

This is shock wave number four out of six. This is it gets a little repetitive. This is three out of six. This is six out of six. Now if you want an office visit, this is how I did this.

This is how I did the fracture management code. So I go through that every single day. So it doesn't have to be mine, but find someone that's passionate that you wanna follow and that's how that's the best way to learn. So the I figured people can't visit me because they're tightwads and they don't wanna take time out of the practice. I'm sorry to say that.

They're probably not tightwads. No one no one values it enough. I can't get them to come.

This tight wad do

So I teach them. I teach them. I teach them every single day what I do and the problem is people still don't listen. So anyway, that's my word. And to get better is listen to my podcast and and ask me questions and I I give it all for free.

That sounds great, Don. Thanks for sharing all that info.

That and I do believe though there are tight wads in their profession. They just I call them I call them free people. They're free people. They're the people that only want free stuff.

They but free free doesn't benefit you because you need to invest in yourself. And I bet you these free people people also don't buy books. They probably don't invest in their own selves to go to conferences. Like, single year, go to a shockwave conference. Every single year, go to the AAPPM.

Like, you have to invest in yourself too. That's the only way you're gonna get better. So invest in conferences. I learned a while back, and you probably know this, take what you earn, and you have to invest in yourself 10%.

Yep.

It's hard to get to that number. You know, you're looking at, you know, anywhere between 15 and 20,000, $30,000, but there's no better investment that'll repay you. So you try to buy as many booked, get as many courses, go to as many things, and it's gonna it's it's it's a business expense. You're investing in yourself.

Any other sources of this or, yeah, the podiatry legends podcast. Give them mostly get the pod like podcast a plug as well. But I get to Arizona every October without fail. Been doing it for, like, over a decade now. And airfares, accommodation, yeah, my few drinks I have, the burgers I eat, when I add that all up, it, yeah, it costs a lot of money to do that every year.

But what I get out of it every single time I do it, I can't put a price on that. The friends I've made, the connections you make when you're at those events, you cannot put a price on it. So the the podiatrist that sit in their clinics and go, oh, no. I don't wanna spend that money. It's too much.

I think you you're going to get out of the profession. You're gonna get out of the career what you actually put into it.

And and it's not all podiatry. I'm I'm a big believer in, like, cross sectional learning. Right? Because a lot of the best ideas come from other other other things. I I've been going to something called strategic coach for about, I don't know, twelve years now, and I think I'm trying to get to be in the million dollar club and the amount I invest in him in that company.

But I go every three months. I fly to Toronto. I get to get out of my head, work on my business, and it's a non podiatry specific coaching program. And it's just the one that I've gone to, and they're they're tending to be my friends, kinda like your friends that you have, Tyson, and these things. And so

Have you got other podiatrists do that?

So there's there's there's other or there's MDs. There's other people like that. There were some podiatrists in it for a time. I'm just I'm just a slow learner that wants to spend a lot of money. I just keep going.

That's what you like in our coaching that's what you like in our coaching programs. But but it the truth is you have to work on yourself. And however you wanna do that, you know, you but usually, the more you pay, the more you value it.

Yeah. I agree. Well, the the event I go to in October, there's maybe three or four other podiatrists that go to it, like, each year. Sometimes there's two, sometimes there's four. Everybody else, their lawyers and real estate and pilots completely

Which which one is that? Is that entities event or who's

Oh, that's Day Freeze, Business Black Ops.

Day Freeze?

Yeah. Mhmm. So it's it's always great. Have you ever gone? You haven't gone, have you?

I haven't gone. You never invited me. You never told me. I know about Day Freeze. You never invited me to go.

Reach out to Day Freeze and come along. It's fun. You'll enjoy it. Cool. It's a crazy group.

Alright. Well, I think we'll wrap there for the two hundredth episode. I wanna thank you so much, Don, for for joining us on this this exciting conversation. We kinda went some different areas, but appreciate your openness and your sharing. And even though this is free, I think people will get a lot of use out of it.

If they don't get any use out of it, they can

I'm be charging

with one of us and get charged for it.

Are we charging for this episode? No. No. We ain't charging them and talk to us afterwards.

No. You should go to their go to the the podiatry. Go to their next conference. That's what you want you need to do. Invest in the next conference that that Tyson and Jim are gonna do.

Yes. Yeah. One one of these times.

Okay, Don. It's been fantastic seeing you again.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate your time.

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