Dig the Well Before You Need the Water

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. Join us always are my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going today?

I'm fantastic today, Big Jim. I'm loving life, I must say.

We we were talking about food and Mexican restaurants and birthdays, and you the the the talk about Mexican restaurants got me hungry. So I'm gonna be sitting here talking to you, but I'm gonna be thinking about burritos and tacos and margaritas.

Oh, made Mexican last night, and it is it's my it's by far my favorite food. And so last night, I made pineapple de gallo or something. I can't remember the exact name of

it. Pico de gallo.

Yes. One. Yeah. But pineapple can you say that for me again?

Pico de gallo?

I'm terrible with other if anyone wants to know my Achilles heel or anything, it's languages. I find it really I can write them down, but I can't say them. Anyway, I made that with fiesta chicken and little tacos. Absolutely amazing. So good.

Sounds good.

I probably put in a few too many jalapenos, but other than that, it was really good. Alright. Today. So yeah. We're not talking about food.

So this feeds off of episode two thirty five when I was talking about nurturing, you refer as it, the forgotten marketing strategy. So that was the name of that title. So what I wanna talk about today is digging the well before you need the water. And I've said this so many times on the podcast when we've spoken about different areas of marketing, but basically, it's all about building relationships before you need them. So I thought this topic of digging the world before you need the water deserved to have its own heading, its own episode.

I think that makes total sense. You know, we talked about in February is, you know, you don't want to just be putting your hand out, you know, begging for, you know, reviews or begging. You wanna kinda build a symbiotic, you know, positive relationship with people. I think this is a great topic to jump into tonight.

Yeah. Digging for scraps. Well, so there's 10 areas I wanna cover. The first one is sort of that most podiatrists start digging way too late. When their business starts to slow down, they get a bit panicky, panic sets in, and then all of a sudden, they want referrals.

The problem is relationships, they don't work like a tap. You can't just turn them on and off when you actually feel like it. The main point with this is your best referrals relationships, and they're built over months and sometimes years, and that's what you need to be working on well before you start getting thirsty and thinking, oh, I need more referrals. Doing it out of desperation is not the best thing.

Yeah. I guess it's a bit of a mirage. Right? If you're just hoping you can turn on that switch and they're just gonna flow you your way, it's it's a bit of a, you know, it's a bit of a mirage in the desert for the for the referrals.

Yeah. The the second thing is referrals are a byproduct of relationships. And a lot of podiatrists, they they focus on getting their referrals instead of actually just focusing on building genuine relationships with people in the community. Referrals are just a natural outcome of building trust with people, familiarity with people, and being consistent. We've mentioned that a lot of times on the podcast as well that just consistent marketing, people seeing you on a regular basis in different areas.

So the key point to this is stop stop just chasing referrals and think about how can I just build better relationships with the people I already know, whether it's doctors, physios, chiropractors, local shoe store, it could be the person down the road that has an amazing bakery? Build a relationship with them, get them to know who you are and trust you, and I'm sure one day they're going to be talking to Mary who's buying a couple of nice soft buns, And Mary goes, oh, jeez, my feet have been killing me lately. Bang. Straight away, you're gonna pop into their head.

I think that's a great point because, you know, if you're not if you're just sitting in your office, you're just kinda hanging out, you're seeing patients, you're just kind of doing the work, that's not enough. You have to be out in the community, whether it be in the the medical community, in the regular community, in the the kind of non physician refers, and just being seen on a consistent basis, like you said, makes you more familiar. You just become kind of a pillar of the community, and, you know, it's it's just that kind of consistency over time that that builds that referral base and that trust.

Well, I've been to a lot of just social gatherings. And and while you're there, you'd be surprised just have a certain group of people, and you hear the same names of the same businesses always being brought up. They might be talking about someone might say, I'm looking for a plumber to do something. Next thing, three separate conversations, the same name will come up three times. Some of them have never used that plumber.

It's just they've heard through other people. You'll probably find that plumber is out and about in the community, probably not just because of their plumbing work, but they might be part of Rotary, They might be part of some other charity organization, or they might be into triathlons. But just by being out in the community, they actually get well known.

Absolutely. Like you said, sponsoring events or teams, It just it's that repetition, seeing that name, seeing that they're out kind of being a good community member, that that that sets people apart from others.

So the third thing is, and I think most people would be aware of this, is business can sometimes be seasonal. Every clinic is going to experience fluctuations, you know, up and down. It could be school holidays. So during school holidays, depending where you live, if your clinic is very based around pediatric work, you might find during school holidays that a lot of the children leave the area. So you're gonna have a certain number of weeks or, like, I think in North America, it's like a three month summer vacation, isn't it?

Yeah. At some places in The US. Yeah.

So if you were very heavily towards pediatrics and you're finding that a big proportion of your clinic is going away for three months of the year, then that is going to affect your clinic. It's other things like economic uncertainty. If you have a clinic that is based around a lot of people that have a low socioeconomic area, and all of sudden there's a tax reform or the government says we're going to take away this funding, that could have a major effect, on your business. But even even good and bad weather bad weather, sometimes there can be patients who can't get to you because if you're seeing a lot of elderly patients and it's raining a lot, they're gonna cancel because they don't wanna go out in the rain. Younger patients, they won't care.

They'll whip up an umbrella, jump over a puddle. I've got some coaching clients that live in areas where it snows, and they'll say during certain times when it snows heaps and they've got a certain number of patients booked in who are elderly, they know they're not leaving the house. It's too cold. But it can also work the other way too. If you've got exceptionally good weather, you might have some patients not that they can't see you, they just don't want to see you because there's other things that they could do.

So just be aware of the type of patients that you have in your clinic, the different seasons and things that happen could really affect it. But the good part is if you've dug several wells, a temporary dry spell in one of them is not going to affect you too much. So the idea is to have multiple referral sources, multiple types of patients. You may not rely just on one specific type. And if you do that, one well dries up, you can rely on the other wells without any problem at all.

Yeah. That's great point is having kind of that multiple referrers and just kind of knowing, you know, after you've been through two, three, four years in your practice, maybe you can see those seasonality trends, and there's ways to kinda combat that through different campaigns or, you know, different things to try to supplement the clinic in certain ways. Like for the build into summer, you know, maybe fungal nails is a great way to market that and try to get people excited about, you know, taking care of the problem before summer hits. So it's just one of those things where as you kinda spend time doing it, you get the referrers there and you know kinda some of those seasonality trends, and you can really when you know the data, you can really take advantage of it.

Yeah. And pay attention to what other businesses do. Now I'm not quite sure about where you are, Jim, but I know like here in Australia, there's a burger business called Grilled. People would know I like burgers. But Grilled, on a Monday night during the actual football season, if your team wins, you get two burgers for the price of one.

So where was I this Monday night? My team, the roosters won, and I like their burgers. Even my wife said to me this week, and we had friends from Bali in Cairns, and their team won as well. So they said, hey, we should go out for burgers, not a problem. But they do that on the Monday night because Monday night was their slowest night.

So they've come up with something that's actually going to boost that area. Look at what other businesses do when they have slightly slow times or slow days and think, okay, how can I use that idea in my own business? So by doing that football competition thing, they've just dug another well. There's something that they can actually tap into at a certain time of the year.

That's really smart.

So the fourth thing is the best time to network is when you're busy. And I know some people would just go, hang on. That sounds a bit wrong. It sounds it sounds a bit backward like, I'm really busy. So now that I'm busy, why should I be networking?

But when you're busy and then you're networking, it actually feels unnecessary. And that will actually it strengthens your relationships when you're actually talking to people and there's zero desperation. You don't care whether they refer someone to you or not. You are generally just talking to them. And you'll find you get just as many referrals when you're busy by networking than when you're not busy and you're and you're actually a little bit more desperate.

And I think people can actually pick up on desperation a little bit. You smell it. I

was gonna say that. Yeah. It's a you reek of desperation.

Oh, yeah. It smells terrible.

But it's one of those things like you talked about, you know. When things are going well, a lot of people just kinda like sit back, oh, things are good. I'm doing well. There's no reason to network or do do marketing. But, you know, just some somewhere over the horizon, there's gonna be some downtimes or just, you know, seasonality issues.

And if you can continue to kind of network and build those relationships even during the good times, then hopefully that will smooth things out in the future.

Yeah. It's I always say, people, when when everything is going absolutely fantastic, and this sometimes sounds negative, but it it can actually be a real positive, is expect the worst. Just expect the worst thing to happen. If you expect it and you plan for it, if the worst ever happens, which it rarely ever will, you're prepared. You're ready for it.

But anything happens underneath it, go, oh, could it be worse? And you're and you've already take you've already put things in place. So that's sort of how I I used to run my business. Always planning. Yeah.

Just always expecting things to go belly up in one way or another. But because I was ready for it, it it never ever happened.

Always be prepared.

Always be prepared. But as I say, two is one, one is none. Have you heard that saying? Yeah. Yeah.

It's a navy seal thing. And if anyone's gone to my workshops or not, they would have heard me say that before. Two is one, one is none. If you don't know what it means, Google it. It's actually very clever.

Number five is dig more than one well. I've seen podiatry clinics that will advertise or they'll say, I have this really good relationship with this medical centre down there. They send us so many patients, which I think is fantastic. But try not to become reliant on one GP clinic or one major medical centre. It can get risky.

You better have a strategy with multiple connections, multiple GPs, physios, exercise physiologists, personal trainers, running coaches, pharmacists, sporting clubs, just different community groups. Because if if one well dries up, you've got another 10 wells that you've dug that will sort of take up this, like, very easily.

Yeah. It's kinda like investing. Right? So either can go all in on one stock and hope that it just continues to outperform for for years and years and years. And maybe you pick the right one, and congratulations if you did.

But like most people, you know, it probably makes more sense to do something like index investing where you're kind of making small bets on kind of the top 500 or top 100 stocks in an index. And if one falls out of the index, you don't lose your shirt. So it's a matter of just kinda building those relationships and having those multiple referral streams that can really, you know, be a good thing.

That's a great analogy, Jim, because that's how people do invest. Now you have heard of some people where they'll put the house on one thing, and it pays off. And next minute, they're living the the life of Riley, and they are just everything is absolutely fantastic. Happy as Larry. Think I've explained happy as Larry to you before.

It's a saying Yeah.

Think at some point, didn't.

Anyway, yeah, you can do that. Put the house on on one thing, and it booms. And it goes up to but the chance of taking all that and putting it in another one that is gonna be an absolute winner, few are far between, which is why all investments, they they say spread it out. Because if one thing goes belly up, whether it's shares, you might have property. Property drops, you might have shares.

There's our investment advice for the day. This is not an investment podcast.

Not not investment advice.

Don't take anything we say when it comes to investing your money. Do not listen to I used to say jokingly say, if you wanna know if you wanna find a share that's gonna go really, really well, just find one that I've just sold recently. There you Whatever I've sold, go and buy it because it'll boom. And and if I reject something, pick it up. It'll boom as well.

There you go. Yeah. Not my thing. Anyway, number six is give before you are. So the fastest way to destroy potential referral relationships is to make it all about yourself.

So instead, I said this in episode two thirty five, is share useful information. Help solve problems, yet introduce people. I used to love, and I still do it today, where I will introduce someone that I know to somebody else that I know. They end up forming this relationship, And if it goes really really well, do you know who looks fantastic? Me.

No. Reciprocity is huge. Think when you're seen as a giver and not just a taker, it just, you know and you make those those kind of like you said, you know, introducing people or just giving yourself. It just people really like them.

I do. I I like I really enjoy connecting people with each other. But it's also if promote other people's services. If they've got an event on, promote their event. Don't think that, oh, if you promote their event, therefore, if you run events or do something yourself, you're gonna go, oh, people won't see mine.

No. It just it just works. Reciprocity, like you said, you help them, they will help you, and generosity creates really good goodwill long term.

Absolutely.

So number seven, stay visible without being annoying. A lot of podiatrists, they will disappear for years. If they're busy, they'll just bugger off, and then suddenly, when things have a bit of a a turn, boom, they appear again. And and people notice when you're there, then all of a sudden, you disappear and you come back again. You want to you just wanna sort of stay in touch.

Simple emails every now and then. Maybe a newsletter that goes out periodically. If you know the people pretty well, just, if you know, just catch up catch up for a coffee. And I know sometimes general practitioners might be a bit more difficult because they're sometimes a little bit up themselves, as well as being busy, they have gatekeepers that you've to try and get through. But a lot of your local physios, sports therapists, exercise physiologists, they're down to earth, really cool people who would love to probably go and have a coffee with you.

So just go out of your way and do that on a regular basis.

Yeah. The consistency in your outreach and just maintaining those relationships is huge. And, yeah, like you said, you don't want to wait until the last minute when you need something. You just need to, you know, kinda continue and keep those relationships going.

Yes. So visibility, it creates familiarity and also creates trust. And this is something that a of people don't realize. All your marketing does the same thing. So if you're really busy and all of a sudden you go, I'm not busy now.

I don't need to network. I don't need to keep maintaining those relationships and wasting my time having coffees. I could just be making money in my clinic, and I don't need to market anymore. But you don't realize every time you're marketing your business externally, all your professional referrers are seeing it not just new patients, but someone who normally refers to you. If they're seeing some of your marketing, that keeps you top of mind with them.

If you just stop all your marketing altogether and you let another podiatrist take that space? When they're thinking about referring someone, oh, I haven't seen you for two years. Are you still in town? But all of sudden, this other podiatrist has opened up. Oh, he came in and visited us.

That's why you you lose those referrals. Well, that's why that well just just dry just dries up really, really quick. It's gone. It's gone. Yeah.

Gone.

She she gone.

Yeah. Anyway, number eight. Your existing patients are Wells too. So Most people think about external referrers, but your current patients are sometimes some of your strongest referral sources. Keep educating them with internal marketing.

Whether you're you're educating them about heel pain, and this might be through newsletters. You might talk about heel pain. You might talk about orthotics, sports injuries. You might talk about shock wave, nail surgery, or even diabetic assessments. If you're continually educating people about the services that you offer, if if they're totally unaware that you you do those things, if they're talking to a friend who's got an ingrown toner and they have no idea you do nail surgery better than anybody else, that person's going say, oh, I've got this ingrown toenail.

They'll go, oh, well, it sucks to be you. That's all they're going to say, instead of going, oh, well, actually, my podiatrist that did my orthotics also does nail surgery. I've seen it a few times in their newsletters. Here's their details. You should go and see them.

That's where your patients are really, really important. It's a well.

No. It's a huge well. And like I said, it can be newsletters. Sometimes it can be, you know, displays, video video displays within your waiting room, within your treatment rooms, just to, like you said, educate them about all the different types of care you provide. So, you know, the next time, you know, a kid has an ingrown toenail, someone needs an orthotic, someone needs a bunion surgery, you're the one they think of.

You're the you're that expert that now they know what you do so they can refer people to you.

Yep. You bet you're the man or woman. Pretty much, you just become the podiatrist that's top top of mind. And this leads on really well to number nine, which is build a reputation before you ever need one. Your reputation is something that like, you can destroy your reputation really quick, but it's almost like an underground water tank.

Every interaction builds or contributes to your reputation. Speaking at events, whether it's a local event like, I remember when my daughter was in grade two at primary school, and them approached me saying, oh, we're thinking about doing a bit of a health day for some of the parents. Would you come along and talk about podiatry? Yeah. So I went there, did my talk, and there was chiropractor who was there that I'd met that day.

The first time I'd met him was that day. Technically, he is now my chiropractor and I'll be seeing him tomorrow. That all came about because of that interaction at that school. I was invited to speak so I spoke. But other things, if you can get on podcasts, if you're writing articles, whether it's for yourself or for other people, posting social media content, this all builds your reputation.

Getting involved in the community, which we have mentioned numerous times, and just delivering exceptional patient experiences. Every time they come into your clinic, if they're walking out just going, I love coming to my podiatrist. I just I just know this is the best place in your particular area. They're gonna talk about you. So reputation really, it just compounds over time.

Yeah. That word-of-mouth or digital word-of-mouth is just a is a huge component to, like, position you as that act that foot and ankle expert in your local area. So the more you can build your reputation and just show that you're a generous, knowledgeable provider of foot and ankle care is just a it's a huge competitive advantage.

Yeah. And the the tenth thing I wanna talk about is just dig a little every week. Just a little dig. Couple of shovels here and there. Because the mistake people make is they do nothing, and then all of a sudden, they they look at networking or digging these wells as this massive project.

Yeah. Well, they need excavators to come in and dig these holes. Whereas if you just just keep digging a little bit at a time, you will actually notice it. So call a referrer. Yeah.

You might call one a week or just contact them. Send someone a thank you note. Organise a coffee meeting with someone that you know you're fairly friendly with. Go and buy them a coffee. Don't be a tight arse.

Yeah. Attend a local event, something that's actually happening in your community. Or make a goal that you're going to connect with one new person this week or this month, and continue with your other marketing, especially when you're busy. And I said that before, no matter how busy you get, whatever marketing you've got in place that seems to be working you know attracts patients, do not stop when you're busy. Just keep working at it.

And keep trying to improve upon it. Tiny actions performed consistently over a period of time do give you really good results.

I think sometimes people are a little bit too much into kind of a boom and bust mode. Right? Like, gonna work really hard for a while and then just put the you know, take the foot off the gas. Work really hard for little while and take the foot off the gas. And what you find is that when people do that, yes, they can make some progress, but it's that daily consistency over long periods of time that's gonna make the biggest difference.

And I'm I'm the worst at this when I when it comes to now when I'm running or even going to the gym, you know, trying to get there to the gym four days a week to lift, you know, maybe run four or five times a week. It's not always easy, but you gotta put it in the schedule, be consistent. And when it's there in in your schedule and you're committed to it, you're gonna see significant gains over the long the long haul.

Yeah. It's one of the things that like, when you mentioned about exercise, I was listening to a podcast last week, and they were just talking about how they were talking about consistency, they're using exercise as their example where, you know, some people say, I can't find time to exercise. And they go, yeah. Do you do you bathe? Yeah.

Do you shower? Do you brush your teeth, you filthy buggers? Or do you not find time to do that? So things that are important enough for you for you to do, you will actually allocate time to do it. And I think digging the well before you need the water is one of those things.

You just gotta allocate the time to do it. Otherwise, you you could end up being a stinky podiatrist. I don't know. But it is it.

We're getting

back to

the the reek of desperation and you just smell in general.

Yeah. You walk into referral, everyone's woah. Jeez. Obviously, I haven't been networking for a while, and they smell. Everyone knows that person.

Just a closing thought is many podiatrists spend their careers waiting until they are thirsty before they actually start looking for water. A smarter approach is, like I said, is just keep digging even when things are going well. Build relationships, stay visible, help other people where and wherever you can, and be generous with your time. Because one day, you will hit that dry patch. Everybody goes through it.

Something, for some reason, happens it feels like the wheels are actually going to start to fall off. But if you've got multiple wells dug, there's never going to be a problem. A quote I want to leave everyone with is, the podiatrists who survive difficult times aren't always the most talented, and we all know that. They're often the ones who spent years digging wells while everybody else was just enjoying the rain. How's that as a quote to finish on?

Yeah. That's a good way to finish up.

It's true, though. You can have rainy weather, and people can be dancing in the rain going, oh, this is so nice, but the smart ones are actually digging holes and saving that water because they don't know when the next rain's gonna come. I I was watching I was watching a program once, and it had this native American guy in there. He told me about rain dance. He said rain dance works 100% of the time.

Guaranteed. Never fails the way that we do our rain dance. They were serious. They said, how long are gonna dance for? They said, until it rains.

Guaranteed. One hundred percent. They start dancing and they do not stop dancing until it actually starts raining, and that's why it's 100% guaranteed to work.

There you go.

And I bet the native Americans and other people like Doug Wells, they save that save that rainwater while they have the opportunity. So podiatry, you need to do the same. That's all I'm say on this subject, Jim.

That was great, Tyson. I love this this topic and hopefully I know I know people got some value from it tonight, so so thanks a lot for bringing it up and look forward to talking to in the next one.

Okay. I shall see you next week.

Alright. Bye now.

Okay. See you.

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