Culture is Your Best Marketing Strategy (Lessons from Recent FIFA World Cup)

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

Welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined as always my trusted co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going today?

I'm fantastic today, Jim. I feel like I've been unshackled. Because if people are watching the video, normally, they'll notice that I have my headphones in and have this cable running down. And it's only because the audio setup that I that I have that I've I've had to be connected to an external recording device. However, I have now unshackled.

I just have the AirPods in, and we're doing this all online for the recording, and it's all in your hands. So if you push the wrong button, Jim, we are gone.

I know. There's no backup. This is it. I'm feeling a lot of pressure there, but I think I pushed the right button. And if people are listening to this, then that means it's a good sign that we recorded it.

But it feels fantastic. So so we dive straight into this. I'm quite excited about this topic. Yeah. Something different.

Let's go. Okay. So the topic is culture is your best marketing strategy. And this is lessons from the recent twenty twenty six FIFA World Cup. Now, I'm sure everybody listening to the podcast, whether you're a soccer or football fan, whatever you wanna call it, watched at least one game.

Even my mom, who hates all sports. Just not not sports orientated at all. Every time the World Cup's on, she actually says to me, are you watching World Cup? It just it just captures people's I don't know. Everybody gets behind it.

I'm not really a fan of football or soccer, but I watch the World Cup games because I find it interesting.

Yeah. It's just one of those things that kinda unifies the world. Right? Like everybody around the world can kick a ball. So I think there's some like whether you're a big soccer fan, football fan, you know, doesn't really matter.

It's kinda like a global conversation that can happen across people around the world when it comes to those things. So, yeah, I definitely I've become more of a a football fan over, of course, the last, you know, five or ten years with my kids playing and and that kind of stuff. But definitely, it's one of those unifying factors. So I I understand that what you're talking about there.

Yeah. It's funny. I I took up soccer at 32. Not the right age to be taking up soccer. And I just finished playing rugby union, and so I thought I'd take up soccer.

I made a real I was a really good goalkeeper. They eventually just said, you're safer for everybody to if you just make it a goalkeeper, which I thought was quite funny. And I know some people listening to this will be getting the shit because I keep saying soccer instead of football. If that bothers you, the do you know the story behind soccer and football? The the how the terminology came about?

Yeah. There's some kind of like association society or something. I don't know. Like, there's some wording that actually soccer Yeah. Did come from The UK and

From England. It came from The UK. Yeah. Yeah. So and the English get all upset that we call it soccer again, but you guys started it.

And then when it got to North America, they all started calling it soccer. And you forgot to tell everyone, now we've switched it back to football.

Exactly. All the it's all The UK's fault.

Anyway, it's a bit of a history lesson today as well. I'm gonna dive straight into this. So everybody knows the the World Cup was on. Everybody probably probably watched the game. And I'm almost certain that everybody saw some of the news stories about Japan.

So when Japan played, after every single game, the Japanese supporters in the in the stadiums were seen cleaning the stadiums up. Nobody asked them to do it. They weren't paid to clean it. They simply believed that it was the right thing to do. People who were sitting close by, the more games they played, everybody started helping it as well.

So also, it wasn't just Japanese people cleaning the stadium. People who were sitting next to them were then helping their Japanese clean up the stadium. But it actually went further than that. The Japanese players, when they showed their dressing room after each game, absolutely spotless. All the jerseys were neatly folded and placed in one section of the room.

Everything was organized. And the interesting part, once again, they were not asked to do this. I wanna share five lessons or takeaways from what I what I personally witnessed seeing this and how it actually relates to marketing. Because marketing isn't just advertising. There's a there's a lot more to it.

No. I totally agree. I think that's that's a great point and I'm looking looking forward to these five different lessons and how they relate to the you know, how you can relate the Japanese soccer team to ways to market practice. But yeah, definitely looking forward to this one.

Okay. So lesson number one. Marketing is what happens when nobody is watching. The dressing room, it wasn't cleaned for television. It was cleaned because that pretty much that was their standard.

That's just the standard that the crowd set for themselves, and that's the standard what the the players set for themselves. And here's the marketing lesson. Patients judge everything. They judge your reception area. When they're sitting there, people gotta wait for five or ten minutes.

They're seeing if there's cobwebs in the corner, if there's paper underneath the desk, if pictures on the wall are crooked or whether they're straight. It's even like the picture behind me. I'm forever making sure before we start a recording, I look at it and go, is it straight? Because I I will admit, I've seen the odd recording where it hasn't been straight. I apologise if that annoyed anyone.

But it's like patients will judge your treatment rooms. They will judge the bathrooms and toilets. Even if it's not your dougie in there, if they walk in there and there's a dougie sitting in the bowl, they are going to blame you. It may have been the I assume it probably I'm assuming it probably was a patient who left it there, which is why you need to look at those things. But staff behaviour, they'll judge emails that receive from you.

When they receive a phone call, they are judging you, your parking area. So if you whether whether it's whether you're in control of the car park or not, patients are judging you. So if they drive in, it's untidy. There's weeds. There's paper everywhere.

There's a body. They're gonna blame you. I'm just gonna say body because I drove into a car park once and there was a body in our car park. They were alive. Once I honked the horn, they did get up and move, but my daughter was a little bit concerned at the beginning.

And and they're also gonna blame you when they walk into your clinic, how the clinic smells. Whether they can smell glue, you might have had a patient who sat in there who was just out the front sucking on a cigarette just before walking in. They sat down, and that smoke smelled. They will if someone smells it, they've b o, like on Seinfeld. Remember that episode b b o?

The b o was that bad. There's a guy at the gym. We call him Stinky Pete at Muay Thai. His name is not even Pete, but we just refer to him as Stinky Pete. So we can talk about him, and he doesn't know it's him.

As soon as he walks in the gym, he could be 40 meters away, we know he's in there. You could get that patient sitting in your waiting room. So if another patient comes in and they smell that, it's your fault. They're going to blame you. So these are things you need to really pay attention to because patients don't separate each of these things.

To them, what they see or what they smell, they will bring that as one experience. Some them are walking, car park is nice, receptionist is really friendly, but then they sit down and they go, Oh my god. What is that smell? Nothing to do with you, nothing to do with the clinic. Could have been the patient beforehand.

You need to be aware of that because that is going to reflect on you. So here's the big question for everybody to consider. What parts of your clinic would impress someone if you didn't know that they were actually coming? If they walked in your business, think about what would if they walked in, what would really impress them?

That's a great point. And I think one of the important things you brought up there is that not only will they internalize these experiences themselves and either judge you or have a good or a bad experience, but then they will will share with others. You know, for example, recently I've had kind of a run of some of the Google reviews from the the clinics I work with have been praising the parking at the at some of the clinics. And it's like, those things matter. And like I said, not only do they matter for that specific patient, but if they share it either positively or negatively online, that you can have an impact on your clinic and on your business.

I've been to businesses that have fantastic car parking, and I've been to businesses that have poor car parking. And if everything was equal and had to choose one of those businesses, I'm going to get one for the better car parking. But if I went in that car park and there was rubbish everywhere, it looked like it was neglected, untidy, I'd be questioning, is there a safe car park to have my car in? So, yeah, all the all these things basically reflect on the business. So I'll move on to lesson number two.

Consistency creates trust. So Japan and the Japanese supporters, they didn't do it just once. They did it every game, and they do this at every tournament. Now, I haven't watched other tournaments, that was what I've heard through other people when we spoke about it. And now that's what everyone expects.

Now that they've seen Japan do it and the Japanese supporters, they probably expect if Japan was playing in your town, more than likely, their supporters are going to do exactly the same thing. They're not going to leave a mess everywhere. So here is the marketing lesson for everyone. Anyone can create one amazing experience that is really, really easy to do. But great businesses repeat it time and time again, hundreds of times without exception.

And patients love it when things are predictable. If they get a really friendly greeting at the front, when they get the same level of care with every practitioner, it doesn't matter which one they see in the clinic, whether they saw me or one of the female podiatrists or one of the male podiatrists, they're getting the same level of care. If you have a follow-up process, it's the same process each and every time. They know, and this is a perfect this is a good podiatry example, and I've seen this where things have failed. They get that reminder phone call twenty four hours or forty eight hours beforehand.

This is how we used to do it. Now I know people now, everything's text messages, it's all set up and it's automated. But if you're still making phone calls in the past, I remember a patient once didn't turn up, and when we contacted, they said, oh, I don't normally write it down anywhere. I usually wanna get that phone call because this person was older. When I get the phone call, that reminds me that my appointment's the next day.

And this is why text messaging and everything is probably a lot better and more efficient now. But patients just accept the same professionalism and consistency really just becomes part of your brain. And this is the part that I think is really important that people don't realize. Patients may not always notice or mention consistency, but they definitely notice inconsistency. And I used to go to a hairdresser.

If people are watching the video, will go, that was a very long time ago. I used go to a hairdresser, and I went to the same person for over twenty years. What I used to get annoyed with is I'd turn up and one time they'd ask me if I wanted a coffee, but then the next time they wouldn't. And then they'd ask me the next three times if I wanted a coffee, and also I was about to go to get a haircut. Should I have a coffee before I go before I go?

No. I'll get one when I get there. I get there, and I never got a coffee. And it used to annoy the crap out of me. And when I noticed that, then I started paying attention to other things that they would do sometimes and they wouldn't do at other times.

You would have noticed this, Jim.

No. I think you're right. That consistency and care, the consistency in the way you're treated by someone is definitely something that you don't realize how important it is until you don't have it anymore. And it's just one of those things you have to you know, sometimes, like you talked about, anybody can do something good once. Right?

Like, you can just get lucky and have a good, you know, patient outcome or a good if something happened, you know, by chance, but it's those brands and those clinics that are consistently showing up and doing things right by the patient. Are the clinics that stand out and deliver a great experience that people will remember and then make them talk where you know, kind of noteworthy and people will talk about.

Yeah. Another experience once when I used to get a massage at this certain place, all legal and above board in case anyone's wondering. I'd go there and the lady sometimes would be at the front eating lunch, which I didn't have a problem with. It was a small business. And when I'd walk in, she'd sort of put her lunch away, and then she'd go at the she'd walk down the corridor, and I'd hear the tap running, washing her hands.

And when she came in, she started the massage, she could smell the nice soapy smell on her hands. This one day, I walk in, and she's eaten a chicken leg. She took me off her massage, but she didn't wash her hands. And all I could smell was fried chicken. She's rubbing around my head and my neck, and all I can smell is chicken.

It it was so off putting that I never went back there after that. So be aware if you're eating fried chicken, just make sure you wash your hands before you see the patient. Because fried fried chicken are like fried chicken on somebody else's fingers. When they're rubbing around your head area, it's not enjoyable. Not so much

not so much at all.

Yeah. So if you take nothing away from this episode, wash your wash your hands. Get rid of chicken fingers.

For sure.

I got home and I told my wife and she was going, that is disgusting. And I went, well, I couldn't tell if she'd put oil on me or whether it was still the fat from the chicken.

Anyway,

on that note, we should move on to lesson number three, Jim.

That sounds good. What's lesson number three?

The little things become the big story. So no one when I talk to anyone about Japan or what they saw on TV, no one mentioned the score of their games. I don't know if they they won the game or they lost the game. Obviously, they didn't get through to the round of 16, I don't think, or even the round of 32. So obviously, they probably didn't win too many games.

So no one talked about the score, but millions of people talked about how they cleaned the dressing room. And and why? It's because remarkable things spread. People love to share good news stories. It's just I don't know.

It's just in us to do it. Pretty much like I'm sharing this one. I'm sharing what I'd learned from the World Cup. Here's the marketing lesson. Small unexpected touches become stories.

So a handwritten thank you card, people will talk about that. I have a drawer in my office here that whenever I've received a handwritten card I don't think I've received one from you, Jim, but I'm just saying that when I've received handwritten cards on something, I I keep them in my drawer. And every now and then, yeah, you flick through in your room. I haven't received a card from you, though. It was a while ago.

Yeah. It was a little while ago.

You can't remember. Anyway, other things like reception staff remembering names when people walk in or following up after treatment to see how things have gone. Helping someone to their car, whether they're elderly or helping them if you've got steps, helping them down the front steps. Those little things don't take a lot of time. Calling people after nail surgery or sending a birthday message.

Giving kids stickers or coloring in books. The thing is people rarely recommend competence. They recommend experiences. If they've been to your clinic nothing better than when our daughters, Christine and I, with our daughter, we we would go to a business or do something, and they would make her feel special. By them making her feel special, we loved that business even more.

So if you've got patients with kids, go out of your way to make sure those kids feel special.

I think it's like it's a quote that I really enjoy. It's like patients are you may never remember what the patient may not remember what you said to them, but they're going to know, you know, like how you made them feel. Right? It's the same thing. Kind of what you're explaining here is that if there's some affinity or some like feeling towards a business, that's going to mean a lot more than sometimes even specifics.

Know, we think, oh, we are the foot and ankle specialist. We need to let them know about their pes planus and all this like, all these terms, and we're just going to shower them with, you know, information and to make them feel better. But really like showing that you care by some of these small touches like you're mentioning is going to have a much bigger impact on the way they felt they were taken care of as opposed to like, you know, the scientific knowledge that we have or the care and the treatments that we try to like, you know, show them how smart we are in a way.

Yeah. Well, I've had treatment with different health care professionals, and I've had some who have rang me up that night, may have done something different. And they phoned me at home 07:30 at night just to see how how it went. Did I feel better? And I've had other people where I've seen them so many times, and they don't care.

You're just a number that's walking in and out of the place. Lesson number four, your internal culture becomes your external marketing. The players and even the fans didn't need instructions. Their culture basically made that decision for them. And here's the marketing lesson.

Marketing starts with your team. So you mentioned, Jim, if your team genuinely cares. If your team enjoys coming to work, people can tell when when staff members do and don't wanna be somewhere. They can tell if your team supports one another. They can see if they're if they're being helpful or not, and they can see if they take pride in the clinic.

I've been to businesses where you can tell that the people that are there, one, don't wanna be there, and two, don't give a rats about what's actually happening in the business. It's sort of like, oh, that's not my job. So they'll they'll walk past paper on the floor. I used to actually do this as a test. Every now and then, I'd roll a bit of paper, throw it on the floor, and see if a staff member came out, whether they'd pick it up or not.

And fortunately, they did.

Yeah. That's not my job mentality is definitely red flag when it comes to people working in the clinic.

Yeah. And patients feel all this immediately because you can't fake culture. And advertising advertising will definitely and marketing will definitely get people through the door. But the culture of your business will determine whether those people come back and come back on a regular basis.

Yeah. For sure. Like, it's it's just one of those things. Right? They they have to feel it from everyone otherwise, you know, they might look for somewhere else in the future.

So this moves on to lesson number five, which is the last lesson. Leave everything better than you found it. So the Japanese players and fans left the dressing room and stadium better than how they actually found it. And here's a little side note that people may or may not be aware of. If anyone's been to some of my marketing workshops, I've spoken about this.

But the do you know about the New Zealand All Blacks? You would have heard of them before, Rugby Union Absolutely. Yep. Yep. They are, like, if you look at the record books, the most successful sports team in the world.

They've won more games compared to percentage wise than any other sporting team in the world. And they also are very similar to the Japanese soccer team, who they will leave the dressing room better than how they found it. It's just part of their culture. They have these 15 cultural things that everybody must do, and it's always sweep the sheds. They also have this policy, no dickheads.

You're not let if you are in their team and you think you're better than everybody else, and you don't have to sweep the floors or pick up rubbish in the dressing room, you're basically out of the team. That's just one one of their policies. Imagine applying that same philosophy, yeah, everywhere. Every patient should leave feeling like they've been listened to, feeling hopeful about the treatment that or the plan you've put in place, understanding their condition, walking away far more confident than when they came in and and feeling respected even if the pain hasn't gone. Even if they still got a bit of pain, instead of them coming just whinging about that, they're gonna feel so much better if they like you said earlier, if they just know that you care and they leave being informed.

Absolutely. I think that's a great point. You just have to stick to that culture. Right? You need to like when you when you leave things better than you found it, yeah, it just it just creates gratitude.

And it just shows respect for the patients and the time and the the fact that they've come in to see you.

And if you wanna take it that little bit further, isn't it even if yourself personally, whenever you're with your team, you should leave your team feeling better. You should if you're interacting with suppliers, they should leave feeling better. Your profession should be better because you're part of it. Your community should be better because you're you're part of it. So if your goal is to always just leave everything better than you found it, you go to a networking meeting.

You should leave that feeling that everybody at that networking meeting is better because you were there.

Yeah. This shows care for other people's.

In all the right ways. So I just got a, like, a bonus thought because we still got a little bit of time we haven't haven't ranted on too long, is reputation travels faster than advertising. So Japan never had to announce, hey, look at us. We're respectful. People saw it.

Marketing works the same way. You don't tell people you're caring. You just demonstrate it. You don't tell people that you're professional. They just they just experience it.

The best marketing actually doesn't sound like marketing. It just seems so natural.

My son has the dreams of becoming like a professional soccer player. He loves he loves the game. And he always always ask me questions about, well, when I become pro and I do this and I do that, I'm like, well, the first step is not just to talk about those things. The first step if you really want to do it is you got to get outside and kick the ball around and go with your friends and go play at the soccer local soccer pitch and and do some things. He's only nine, so I'm not trying to be mean to my little son, but at the same time, like, you know, it's one thing to talk about things in life, it's another thing to actually do them.

So I'm trying to convince him that the doing part is something that should focus on and maybe some of the other stuff will take care of itself.

Yeah. So many people say, I to have one of the best podiatry businesses going around. I want to be one of the best, most respected podiatrists. Well, if that's what you wanna do, then you've gotta put the work in. You won't have a fantastic business.

It doesn't just happen by itself. You won't become the most respected podiatrist going around until you respect others that are around you, and you you give up time. You volunteer at different events without wanting anything in return. And by doing that, people can see that you you truly care about the profession, then your reputation just slowly builds up from there. And I think if you look at the most respected people in podiatry, they're not the most famous people, but the people who have the most respect.

They may not even be the most well known. They're usually more givers than takers. And I I've been listening to that audiobook that you put me on to. Yeah. What is it?

Give to Grow?

Yeah. Give to Grow.

Yeah. So I started listening to that and I shot a video the other day about something that I took away from it. So this is a short video. This book was recommended to me. Do you think I could remember who it was?

I couldn't remember. It was you. And then I was editing the podcast that you told me that it was on. All of sudden, I've gone, oh, Tyson. Jim is going to

think you're Just stealing all my ideas.

Yeah. You ungrateful bastard. Respect. You took

took ideas that I took away from a book and then they'd give me credit. Oh my gosh. I'm I'm pretty upset.

It's funny when I'm listening to that book. He's talking about another book that he read where he got a lot of the ideas from.

Yeah. I'm actually reading that book now right now. I think it's called Give and Take.

I'm thinking maybe I should've let you finish that one and then tell me which one was better. Anyway, I'm gonna finish on a quote and then I shall end. Advertising gets attention, culture earns admiration, but reputation creates referrals. There you have it.

I like that. It's a good strong way to finish a quality episode. I definitely I was I've been watching a lot of World Cup, but, you know, some of these stories that come outside of it, the Japanese fans being one of them, is some of those kind of fun stuff that, you know, it makes you optimistic about the world and just, you know, like you said, kind of figuring out ways to implement some of these things into life, into practice. Yeah. It's inspiring and hopefully some people can utilize some of these lessons you kind of taught here today in their own practices.

Yeah. Well, I think yeah. I think if you look around, sport sport is a great I think it's a great thing to see how people behave. Like, even in, like, rugby league, I probably watch rugby league more than any other sport or except cage fighting. And but you'll see the kicker sometimes, they put the kicking tee down.

They'll take a kick. The kicking tee might go 20 feet in front them. Some of them will jog out, pick it up, they're jogging back, and they walk over to the the ball boy, ball girl, or one of the trainers, and they place it in their hand, and then they jog off. See other ones where they'll kick kicking to you, they run down, they pick it up, and they they're not even looking at them. They just know that, and they just flick it towards them, and and then they jump back in position and I go, you toss her.

Boy, chief technically because they are tossing it as well. But I can just see you've got yeah. Are you that important that you can't just walk over and hand it into that child's hand? You have to go and flick it. And a lot of times, he goes nowhere near him.

They've got to run over and go and pick it up. And I noticed that in the World Cup soccer as well, some players, that big Viking guy from Norway, and he would always walk over and hand the towel back to the towel guy, where others were just flicking them. Yeah. They'd wipe their feet and just throw the towel on the floor and keep jogging back. So, yeah, respect everyone around you.

Absolutely. Okay. Big Jim, that's it for me this week. I look forward to you talking to you next week.

Sounds great, Tyson. Good luck to you then. Okay. See you later. Bye.

Bye now.

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