Creativity is Just Connecting Dots

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a Successful Podiatry Practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined as always with my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, the third time does a charm. How's it going today?

I'm fantastic today, big Jim. Good to be talking to you. We've had a bit of

a break. We haven't chatted to each other for a little while. And yeah, you couple weeks off and you just botched up the introduction multiple times. Jesus, mate. That's good to say you're human.

Yeah. I am human and I guess two weeks in the in The US hanging out with my family and going to the Kansas State meeting has rotted my brain a little bit somehow. But hopefully, I can get back on track and, you know, work with you today and have a successful episode. But who knows what's gonna happen? This could be the wild episode.

Well, it's one of those things I said when

I started. If anyone's watching the video on YouTube, you should go and check out the YouTube channel, Podiatry Marketing, you will notice that I'm in a different position in my office. And that is because, and I mentioned this on a video they did recently, that my desktop computer screen has shit the bed is the easiest way to explain it. So I'm now using external monitor with my desk that goes up and down. So certain things are good, but my microphone is also on the other side of the office.

So I'm using DJI microphone. So this will be interesting to listen to the sound quality. So if someone's already turned it off because they reckon it sounds terrible, then there's a lesson in there today for everybody is if you use your whole certain standard, if you go underneath, people will actually notice. But I'm interested to see how this turned out because when I did a video wearing this and I thought it sounded okay, but when I did the edit, I'll figure it out from there.

I know you're an audio wizard and you're gonna clean it up. You'll probably sound better than I will. So I'm not worried about that one one one one bit at all. So

Because you have the Shure microphone, which is beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful. But the good part with this microphone is if people watch in the video, I can walk all the way over here and it should stand the same, which is great. So I can actually... I'm actually feeling really loose and free.

So this will be a good episode.

I'm looking forward to it, Tyson.

Okay. So should we dive into it?

Let's do it.

Today, I'm talking about creativity is just connecting dots. And a lot of people think... When they think about creative people or the process, they think they've got some mysterious skill or this amazing talent and that they can invent something from nothing. But that is not usually the case. Creativity is simply like connecting two things usually that already exist.

That's where they get the inspiration from. So Steve Jobs described creativity as connecting things because Apple didn't invent technology, they didn't invent design, but they became brilliant at actually connecting those two things together. So here's something that I want podiatrists to think about. What two existing ideas could you connect in your podiatry business? Now we're gonna touch on this all the way through, so by the time we finish, hopefully podiatrists will actually put the time aside and really think about this and this is how you become a creative.

No, I love that idea. I think there's a phrase that I've heard previously as well called everything is a remix. So, you know, like taking one concept and kind of mixing it together. There's no, you know, I'm sure there's an original idea every once in a while, but a lot of things are just refinements or improvements or, like you said, combining two things together that seem kind of strange at the time but you combine those two things together and sometimes it turns out well.

And look, I'm going to go through a lot of examples that other businesses have done, things that I've actually seen myself and that's why when we go through all this, I hope podiatrists take this on board and go, oh, okay, so maybe I'm more creative than I thought. Because I think sometimes people see other people's ideas and they go, oh, if you just did this, that would be really unique but then they go, oh, am I stealing somebody's idea? And no, that's not what's actually happening.

No, for sure. Think like you said, there's very few kind of original ideas out there and even me just combining podiatry and marketing to start this podcast with you and provide services. There's a lot of kind of intersections where people have interests or expertise where they can combine two things together and, you know, create something really great.

I'm gonna go through some non podiatry examples that I have seen over the last couple of years. One was... A few of these were in Arizona two years ago when I was there. And it was... Have you been to...

Seen Capital One Cafe?

I'm a Capital One banker but I have not been to one of the Yeah. Cafes

So it's a bank and it's a cafe. So, it's like going to your traditional bank except it's a Starbucks as well. And if you're, I think if you're a client of the bank, you get your coffee for free Or it's 50%. It's something ridiculous. And I know we were there and all of sudden it must have been, there was some final, what finals are around usually in October?

Is it ice hockey?

Probably. It'd probably be hockey, yeah.

And they said, Oh, if you

can tell us if the two teams are Baseball, in the or baseball maybe.

Oh, it might've been baseball, yeah. Think it was baseball, yeah.

I think hockey starts in October, yeah. If you can tell us the two teams who are

in the final, your coffee's for free. And we went, we're from Australia. And he said, I'll give you a hint, it's this one and this one. He said, oh, this one and this one. She said, perfect, yes, you get a free coffee.

And plus we were ordering a few things. But I just, I really liked that here's a bank which is traditionally boring and cold and you have a coffee shop which is usually nice and friendly and they just, they blended the two things together brilliantly. So my wife was with me at the time, she was impressed as well. The other one we saw, this is in Scottsdale, Arizona, was called Yellow Spruce Roasters, and it was a coffee shop in a wine bar. And you might think, oh, how's that unique?

You can get a coffee at a wine bar, I suppose. But there were two entrances, wine bar on the side, coffee shop on that side, and there was a bar in the middle, but you could walk around. You could go through one door on the wine door and go around to the coffee shop. You go from the coffee shop to the wine bar, but it was a coffee shop from 6AM to 2PM. Then 2PM, the coffee side of the bar closed and it became a wine bar.

So you could still walk through the door, but in the afternoon and evening, wine bar and, yeah, nibbly snacks. But during the day, AM to 2PM, it was strictly a coffee shop. You couldn't get wine. And the staff really just turned from one side of the bar and then started serving from the other side of the bar, which I thought was pretty cool. And the other one that we saw there was an ATM, it was a drive through ATM machine.

I've never seen that in Australia. Maybe in capital C there is. Have you ever seen that? It's like ordering McDonald's at an ATM, but you're getting money at.

I can't say that I have it. Maybe when I was in Oregon, they kind of have these little kiosks the bank. So, yeah, I think I've seen them before for sure. Yeah. So...

And we've had another...

We went to an Asian Polynesian restaurant in Queenstown in New Zealand where they just took this like real traditional Asian food, traditional Polynesian food and they just blended the two together. And when we went there, we were with a couple of other people and was my decision to go there and they said, Tyson, really? They're looking at the menu going, Oh, is that really gonna go with that? And we were really hesitant. And they said, Well, if it's no good, then we'll eat for a bit, be polite and we'll go somewhere else.

The food was amazing. I never thought about combining those two things. Maybe other people have, but I wasn't one of them. And the other thing, one of my favourite drinks is called Howler Head, and that's infusing banana with bourbon. Have you ever had it?

No, can't say I've ever heard of that before.

Yeah, so I'm sitting there thinking, okay, somebody obviously likes banana, the flavour of banana, they like bourbon, and they go, why don't we happen if we put the two together? And then they come up with Howl Ahead which is extremely nice and a lot of people and a lot of friends who they absolutely love this stuff as well. The only problem is it goes down too easy. So it can be dangerous.

Can be dangerous.

It can be very dangerous. So all these examples, creativity essentially just connecting two dots. None of the dots are necessarily new and the connection, but it's the connection which is creative part. And then when I was talking about where a great idea just evolves from another great idea, like initially you would have to say, remember the drive in restaurants? Yep.

Where you pull up and the lamp perf would come out on their skates and they don't order it. So you've gone from a drive in which led to a drive through restaurants which we're all familiar with. Drive ins were before my time which then led to somebody go, hey, what about if we had a speaker? So instead of going to one window putting your order in and going to the next window, we had speakers out in the car park so we could have a couple of speakers going at one time, double the orders and people coming through. So that's where it sort of led from there.

And then boom, a new idea, drive through banking ATMs. The drive through ATM and banking would never have happened if the drive through hadn't come from the drive in, which would have come from pretty much the dine in right from the start.

Yes, the incremental improvements over time, taking a little idea and just making a small change here and there and then, you know, five, ten, fifteen or twenty years later you get these different kind of innovations or different experiences.:

Yes, so business innovation isn't often, is often, it's like an evolution rather than revolutionary. It's just evolving something over time. And I think, so you're gonna ask, yeah, what if I took that idea and applied it here? What would actually happen? So the next thing to think about is what other industry is doing really well that we could borrow or adapt it in the Podiatry.

And I'm forever, I'm forever. Every business I go into, I watch staff members, I see how things are set up. I'm always looking for something that's a little bit different that even though I don't have a podiatry clinic now and I get frustrated because I go, oh, this would be so good if you did this. But then I'll tell my coaching clients. I'll say, Hey, I saw this, this and this.

And some of them go, That's a great idea. And they implement it. Some go, Oh, they might try and go, I didn't really, they didn't feel it worked for them. But it's something you need to constantly just keep doing.

Absolutely, I think it's one of those things you can learn a lot from different businesses and apply it to your practise.

Yeah, so to me, it's really important to look outside of podiatry for better ideas. If you only look at other podiatry clinics, eventually every clinic starts looking the same, which many do. That's why you can go to a lot of podiatry clinics, you walk in, everything is set up the same way. There's nothing fancy or unique. You don't walk in and go, Oh wow, I love how they're doing that.

And when you do see that you'll probably find they saw that idea somewhere else. So you can look at hotels for customer service, airlines for that whole check-in process, restaurants for booking in and customer experience. Apple, it's just perfect when it comes to product presentation. I think of you. Do you have many Apple devices?

So I'm pretty much Apple exclusive when it comes to my computers and my phone. So yeah.

Yeah, so am I. And one of the best parts whenever you buy an Apple product is when you peel off that thin film of plastic over it and you lift the lid and it's almost like a... Has that feel to it and it just... There's nothing else that actually feels like an Apple product when you're actually opening it. Just my personal opinion.

Yeah. Unless someone listening to this has a Samsung phone so they just never, they'll never get that experience. But you can look at gyms for how, not only how they set things up and make things flow, also membership ideas. Dentists are fantastic when it comes for how they deliver treatment plans and how they communicate with their patients. I think dentists do it better than most because they've just, most of their treatment plans are gonna be a bit more detailed and usually quite expensive.

But even retail stores for merchandising and positioning and where they put things, you can actually learn a lot from every single business.

Absolutely. You can take a little something here and there from each of them and make it your own to really improve the overall patient experience and yeah, just kind of build that trust and provide a great patient experience.

So it's pretty much every time you want to improve an area of your business, just stop and think about who already does it really well. So if you want to improve retail or you want to display products better, check retail stores. If you're improve the patient arrival and waiting room, look at hospitality places. If you're looking at AI bookings or AI notes, I mean, online bookings, AI notes, automated follow ups. Just look at the different technology that is basically available.

Injury prevention or even running programmes, look at what people are doing in the fitness industry already. Just think about, can we use some of that in what we're doing in our Podiatry business? And even if you wanna connect with your community a bit better, think about what partnerships you can have with gyms, sporting clubs, shoe stores, aged care providers. But then the thing is that the question isn't necessary, has anyone done this before? Is could these two dots work together in your business?

So you see what other people are doing and go, I like that, I like what they're doing. Can I combine those two things and do something unique in my podiatry business?

Absolutely. Think there's lots of opportunities out there. You just have to be looking for them.

And at the moment, technology, it's giving us so much more opportunity than we probably had even ten years ago. So much has changed. There's Podiatry, we had CADCAM machines and then it went on to three d printing and you've got digital scanning and our podiatry clinics are using AI for clinical notes. But now people are also using AI to help with their marketing, to help develop better systems, help educate their patients, training and brainstorming. AI itself isn't necessarily the idea.

It's what you connect AI to is where things can actually start getting really interesting. You can use AI in reception training, in getting things organised for frequently asked questions that patients are always asking you, Treatment plan follow ups and even referral communication. You can use AI to help you actually develop all that. The biggest part is creativity needs problems. So without problems, you sort of wonder what's the point?

If there is no problem, you're just gonna keep doing everything the way it is. But it's when you identify a problem that you start trying to think of ways or trying to be creative to actually overcome that problem.

No, mean, there's lots of, you know, quote unquote problems that people can try to help solve, right? Whether it's being more efficient with your time, you know, how can you spend more time with patients and less time on doing paperwork? How can you provide the best possible care? There's always that kind of like consistent need to improve or to try to streamline things in ways that will continue to enhance the patient experience and if you can find some of those things, yeah, you can combine them with some of the other ways of doing it. It can be really helpful.

Yeah, so instead of just sitting around thinking, oh, we need to come up with some creative ideas, which is difficult, let's look at the problem first. Patients might forget their appointments. So what could you connect that could actually solve that problem? What could you put in place so that it's automated and doesn't happen? Or patients don't understand all your services.

What communication or retail ideas could you borrow that will help patients understand? And it doesn't always have to be technological. Even just having posters on the wall like some retail shops do that have promotions or explaining other things that they do. Look at how they put that together and what captures your eye think, okay, how could I use that with this service that I want patients to know more about? And then, but also where you position it is really important.

You know, sometimes poster on the back of a toilet door may be better than a poster in the reception area, depending on what the message is. But if you get new patients and they're nervous about nail surgery, what ideas could you borrow from airlines? What are... Because there's a lot of people that are afraid of flying. Look at how some airlines promote travel and promote the airline and promote safety.

And so if someone was a little bit nervous, maybe you could take some of those ideas. So the best thing is problems give creativity somewhere to actually land.

Yeah, exactly. Like you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can try to learn from some of these other industries and providers and just kind of use it in your own practice. So I think you hit the nail on the head. Sometimes you can innovate or you don't have to revolutionize but you can just evolve what you're doing a little bit in those directions and your patients will appreciate it.

Yeah and the next thing I

want talk about is just give your team permission to have some bad ideas. Not every idea has to be brilliant because if you're waiting for a brilliant idea that's going to stop people actually suggesting things. Have occasional... Get your team together and have brainstorming sessions. Ask everyone to bring one idea that they've seen outside the podiatry clinic.

We used to do this at team meetings. Everybody in our team always knew when you were out and about if you were at a restaurant you were anywhere. Watch what people are doing. Maybe our next team meeting just bring that idea along. We'll see it.

We wouldn't say we'd never shut an idea down. We'd sort of go, okay, how could we actually use it? And then when you're coming up with ideas there's no criticism during the initial brainstorming. Afterwards you decide what's practical because 20 really average ideas you might sit there and go, geez, they're all shockers. But you put those 20 ideas together and also you might come up with something that that is is truly amazing, that you may surprise yourself.

Creativity needs psychological room to wander around before someone sort of puts it on. Especially when I do my, I've done a few where I do creativity days where I go into podiatry, I get the owner of the business to get the whole team together and the whole day we just do a creativity day. And I said to the business that at the end of the day you are gonna have, you'll be surprised how smart your team is when I put different scenarios in front of them and have them brainstorming and doing different and you do this over an eight hour period. I said, At the end of the day, everyone will be bouncing off the walls. Everyone has fun.

It'll be one of the most fun days at work. I said, But you will have so many ideas that you can run with. Now afterwards we'll sit down and just go through them, What you should implement next. If anyone wants to know anything about that, go to my website, tysonfranklin.com and just follow it. Just go through.

If you can't find it then yeah, you probably shouldn't be doing it or just send me an email. There you go. I think the other part, it's important that not every connection works. Connecting two successful products or something doesn't automatically create another successful product.

I don't

know, has anyone tried Coca Cola Oreos? Did you try that, Jim?

I never did. No. I can't say I've had that flavor combination. It doesn't actually sound that great to me but I guess you don't know until you try.

Yeah. I tried it. I'm open to suggestions. There was another one, Ned's Whiskey which is an Australian whiskey and they put cherry cola with it. But they made it quite concentrated and made little cans 6%.

Once again, what is funny, I've tried both of those things. Both of them were commercial successes. So the IRA one, it was a limited edition and they just, they sold out. But the feedback from the people that tried them was mixed reviews. But some people said, yeah, it was okay.

And others have gone, it wasn't so good. I was in the not so good category where I had it the once and I never went back to buy it a second time. But that's just part creativity. You should never fall in love with an idea simply because it's new. You should test it, get feedback, tweak it and improve upon it.

If people have ever been to any of

my events, they'll know I say this thing

called the OODA loop. If you don't know what the OODA loop is, one day you may need to come to one of my events and find out. If it's improved but if it's not working, just drop it if you have to. Creativity creates possibilities but business judgment will decide which possibilities will actually survive.

Yeah, I think that's the important part that you talked about is it's great to brainstorm and not be judgemental of those initial ideas but then you have to take those ideas and really kind of take a look and see, you know, maybe two different ideas combined into something that's going to work or be practical for the practice but you know definitely have to sift through those ideas to make sure it's something that you want to implement and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and there's nothing wrong with that, at least you've tried but I think there's some huge gains that can be made so it's definitely worth the time and effort of doing it.

Yeah, and that's a problem. Sometimes people come up with an idea and because they put a lot of time into it, they might put a lot of money into it. If it's a dog's breakfast, it's a dog's breakfast. Just, it's really hard to walk away from something where you've invested so much and you're thinking, oh yeah, but I've given this a year or two years or I've put all this money into it. Sometimes you know when to hold them, know when to fold them, you know when to walk away.

Know when to run.

Know when to run, yeah. But I think that is actually probably one of the most difficult things to do, is to say no to an idea. And sometimes too, you can let a good idea or a couple of good ideas get in the way of a great idea and you're still focusing on those good ideas, whereas if you just let them go because they're not actually that good, a great idea might be just sitting behind it.

Yeah, you never know.

So here's the two dot challenge I'm giving out to everybody. I want you to draw two circles on a piece of paper and on one dot just write podiatry. Nice and simple. You should be able to do that. But on the second dot you can choose.

You might put hospitality, you might put retail, fitness, education. Put something else on their zone in the other circle then ask what could happen if I connected these two dots? And then just start writing down ideas. And don't judge them as you're doing it. It's just let them flow.

There's this thing, I don't know if I've spoken about the podcast before, it's called Ideas for Free. Have you done that on the podcast?

I'm not sure.

I know I do it. I do it in my creativity days. It's just about... It's just the way that you just let ideas flow without judging them. Because if you write down an idea and go, Oh no, this one's stupid.

You cross it out. As soon as you start judging the flow, it hinders the flow whereas you just write the ideas down and don't care. It's... Yeah. Be the first orthotics on the moon.

Oh, sounds silly but just write it down because one idea leads onto another idea and you basically just keep going from there. So to wrap this up, you probably don't need another completely original idea. The ideas pretty much everywhere. Like I said, there are coffee shops, hotels, airports. I've seen some great ideas at airports.

Restaurants, walking to an Apple store, whether it's the gym, it could be the next time you see a drive through ATM machine. You might look at that and just it may actually spark an idea. But the thing is your next great business idea might simply just be two dots that nobody in your clinic has thought to actually put together yet. And I think that is the most important thing to remember is when you see other podiatrists and they come up with these amazing ideas, really sit back logically and think about what they've done and say, you see where they've put the dots together? And you might find that if you can go, oh, they've done this and they've taken that and they combine this.

If you can re engineer that then you may actually come up with a more original idea yourself.

Yeah, think you talked about it earlier tonight but that's identifying those areas where you feel like it's a problem or you feel inefficient somewhere, you're kinda butting your head against the wall and having some problems that either are operations or different things and there's solutions out there, but sometimes it does require you to kind of connect those dots. You don't have to, like I said, other people have also done it, so you know, they have to kind of copy what they do, but also, you know if you're talking to a business coach like yourself Tyson or someone that has more experience with more across more practices sometimes it's a it can be a way to kind of fast forward into those ideas and to connecting those dots in ways that maybe you couldn't do on your own or you didn't set a time aside for yourself to figure those things out. But sometimes either through coaching like you provide or just taking the time to identify those problems, the solutions become much more clear and connecting the dots makes a lot more sense.

Yeah. Is one of those things when you realize creativity is nothing special. You know, people are really crave fitness. They're not special. They know how to connect dots.

They do it on a regular basis which is why they seem to come across like they're very creative. But just to remind people, if you want me to come to your clinic to do a creativity day, send me an email tftysonfranklin dot com. I'll do it anywhere in Australia. And if two people in any country in the world want me to do it, I'll do that as well. I'm actually doing one in Canada very soon.

It should be fun.

Mr. International.

Oh, yes. Get and out and about. So and what are you up to Jim? Go give yourself a little bit of plug before we finish.

Oh, I'm just trying to wrap up a good 2026, you know, bring on a couple of new clients, help them out. But if anybody has questions or wants some advice or ideas about how to help them get more visible online, obviously go check out podiatrygrowth.com and I'm always happy to provide people a free practice visibility scan. You can find that either on podiatrygrowth.com or if you go over to podiatry.marketing we have that practice visibility scorecard that we provide for our listeners for free. So yeah, hop in there. We're getting close to wrapping up 2026 and we need to make sure we can finish the year off great and then obviously have a great start to 2027.

Yeah, is just around the corner, isn't it? It's not far away. It's almost here.

Okay, I've been Jim. That's it

for me. I look forward to talking to you next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay, see you later. Bye.

Bye now.

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