Fitting In More Ideal Patients Into Your Podiatry Practice

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 by always is my trusty cohost, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's going on there today?

Oh, fantastic day, big Jim. Beautiful weather here in Cairns. And and I assume it's cold where you are, which is our normal sort of speak at the moment being on opposite sides of the world. And I was talking to someone the other day just about our podcast and just telling them that we we were just talking about getting information from one place to another. And I said just how cool it is now that you can be in Canada, I can be here in Australia, and how technology it feels like we've been you know, we we talk to each other every week, so it's a small it's a small world now.

No. It's amazing. Like, you know, meeting you, spending time with you online, it's almost like, you know, it's like a lot you know, growing up, you had pen pals and things like that. Yeah. I do.

With it. But but nowadays, you have, like, these either Twitter friends or people you've met through some online way of and and, obviously, our friendship kinda formed over the podcast has been kind of a fun and interesting way to, you know, connect, but also just have that daily contact with some people that are, you know, a person like yourself that's as interested in these these topics as I am. So I'm really excited to to jump into what we're gonna talk to today.

Well, today, we're gonna talk about fitting in more ideal patients. And for some podiatrists, that seems to be a really big problem, and they really struggle with it. But I've got a few ideas that I think if they implement it, they will get they'll be seeing more of what they like, and they'll be seeing less of what they don't like, and long term, the business will just grow.

That sounds like a great topic. I think that's you know, when I'm working with with with different podiatry clinics, that's one of the thing that it's one of the first questions I ask, you know, when I get to know them is, you know, what is that ideal patient or what is you know, what brings you joy in your practice. So I'm excited to jump in with you today and learn about how you kind of you know, what are some ways to actually make that happen?

Well, one of the things that is quite interesting, there was a group that I was doing some work with, and one of the people in that group said it's to employ a new podiatrist these days. It's easier to win lotto than it is to find and employ a good podiatrist. And and I went, wow. That's it's quite a negative mindset to actually and and I understood what they meant because in Australia at the moment and it's probably the same everywhere. Trying to find quality employees is difficult.

And I said to them, part of the problem though is I think there's really good employees out there. The problem is a lot of the jobs that are being offered are so average that these good employees don't know where they should be working. I said, so you need to make your offer better, but the only way you can make your offer better and be a place that attracts people is you you need to make your place better. And the only way you can make your place better is to be attracting and having more ideal patients and less of the patients you don't wanna see. And to do that, it all comes down, I think, to to fit something in, you've gotta let something go.

That's the that's the bottom line. And a lot of people don't quite understand what that means sometimes, but if, for example, if you wanted to do you you do running, Jim, don't you?

Yes. I am a runner. I run a marathon from time to time.

Okay. So for you to do run if you were training for a a marathon at the moment, say there was a a marathon coming up in, say, April, couple months away, and you went, okay. I wanna train for that marathon. For you to put the time and effort into training for that marathon, you probably have to give up something else. It it could be

For sure.

Yeah. It could be time with your family. It might be you may have been going to the gym doing weights, or you might have been doing kickboxing. There might be some other activity that you're doing. But to be able to train for that marathon, you've gotta give up something to put time aside to train for that marathon if you wanna do well.

If you wanna sort of just struggle over the finish line and do it in seven and a half hours or a day, which it'd take me probably take me three days to do it. I'd need to stop overnight somewhere and have some accommodation. You have to give up something. So to to fit somebody else in, you've gotta give up something. This applies to your business as well.

If you wanna get more ideal patients in, to be able to get them in, you've probably gotta let something go. And a perfect example, podiatrists will say to me, oh, we're at capacity. We cannot fit any more patients in. Well, if you can't fit any more patients in, therefore, you can't get more of your ideal patients in, what are you doing at the moment that you don't really enjoy doing? Are you doing home visits?

Are you doing nursing homes and hostels? Is there a certain type of government agencies you might be working with? And normally, they always say, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. And I get out of them or which do you like the least? And then I go, oh, I don't like doing home visits.

Okay. Well, stop doing home visits. Straightaway frees up time.

Yeah. I think that's a great point. I think in The US as well, obviously, we have people from around the world listening to this podcast, but insurance plans are being on insurance plans that aren't paying kind of a reasonable wage is another kind of criteria or factor that a lot of podiatrists kind of deal with on on a daily or a weekly basis.

Yeah. Well, one of the funny things that we they have they call them we just refer them as EPC patients or patients who on a patient care plan. And some podiatrists, they'll say, oh, the the doctor this is a conversation I had with someone the other day. The doctor said to me that I have to bulk bill, which means I can't pay a gap payment between what the government will pay and what a private patient would pay. The doctor said I must I must I must bulk bill.

I went, alright. Okay. I said, so when when you bought your house, did did you take a photo over to your your doctor's office and say, can you have a look at this house and see whether I should or should not buy it? And I said, well, what about your house? Did you get their approval on the type on on your car?

Did you get approval on the car that you should you should buy or whether you should have one or two children or should you even gotten married in the first place? As I said, they have no they should not be telling you how to run your life. If you wanna bulk bill, then bulk bill. But if you do not want a bulk bill, do not bulk bill. And if you no longer wanna see EPC patients, then just stop seeing them.

Just say everyone is either a private patient. I'm not I don't wanna deal with all the paperwork. You let them go. If you can keep your your competition, your other podiatrists in your area busy seeing the type of patients you don't wanna see, then means the good patients can't get into them. So where else are they gonna go?

They're going to come to you. It's it's it's just it's common sense.

Yeah. It's common sense, but it just it takes a little bit of kinda outside the box thinking, or you have to kinda, like, take a step take a step back in order to kinda go two steps forward. Right? And that's not always, you know, it's not always intuitive to someone that's kind of in that daily grind and not kinda having a, you know, a higher perspective as far as what they wanna do with the practice.

Yeah. It's scary. I I think it comes back to it sometimes like a scarcity mentality. They think, oh, but but if I let this go, what will happen? And and it is a question you gotta ask yourself.

If I let this go, what will be the outcome? But if you don't let it go, what will be the outcome is probably another question that you should ask. So sometimes people will just hang on to the home visits, the nursing homes, government type patients, and they know they're not making as much money as what they should. And some people are really happy doing it. They go, I love home visits.

I love doing nursing homes. And I think if you but the quickest then they are doing more of the patients that they like seeing. So there's nothing wrong with doing home visits as long as you enjoy doing it. There is nothing wrong with government work, nursing. If you love doing it, then you're you're happy.

No. I totally agree with you. I think there's a huge aspect of I know it's within American podiatry schools or through residency. Things have changed. I think we've talked about this a little bit in some previous podcasts.

But, you know, the nineteen fifties, sixties, and seventies, there was more kind of an entrepreneurial spirit Mhmm. With people opening up their foot and ankle clinics in The US. And, you know, they didn't have the the luxury of insurance plans. And, you know, they basically have these fee for service practices. And it's only been over the last, you know, thirty or forty years where insurance companies have come in and really driven down compensation and and kind of a disbursement of payments for podiatrists.

So, you know, I think it's really important if someone's in residency listening to this or just getting started off in practice. You know, not only do you need to have those podiatry skills to do the the the work that you love to do, but, you know, having understanding there is a business aspect, and that that that can sometimes be counter to what some people wanna hear. Some people went into medicine to get away from kind of being in the business. But if you're working for or in a a private clinic, medicine in North America is a competitive landscape. So whether you like it or not, you have to learn how to do those things.

And like you're talking about, you know, it's really, really important if you wanna do more of the work that you wanna do is that you are making the decisions that lead towards, you know, you actively doing more of the care you wanna do as opposed to just like like you said, letting things kinda fall your way, feeling the sense of obligation. You definitely wanna be a great provider in your local area, but that doesn't mean initially you have to treat everything. And if you're passing along some of these things you don't wanna do to people who want to do them, you're actually doing not only yourself, but the patients a favor.

Yeah. And I know some people that may listen to this and go, oh, yeah. Everything's always talking about money, or this is very this is being very money focused. And my response to that is grow up. It's it's it's not about the money.

It's about finding the type of work you really enjoy doing. Like I said, if you enjoy doing home visits, do home visits. But you can't keep doing home visits and then complain that you don't have enough money to buy a new car or to have your kids go to a private school if that's what you choose to do. So they've gotta find that balance between doing the type of work you enjoy, but also making a living. But if if you're if what you want out of life, you you don't need to make a lot of money, then then don't kill yourself to make a lot of money if you don't need it.

You you've gotta you've gotta find that happy zone. And I think it's it's finding what makes you happy in podiatry and then finding more of the patients that you like. It's it's getting that really good balance between it all.

No. I I like that that way of framing things. I think it's also one of those things. There's like having that dream of your dream practices, but then it has to be based on some type of reality. You know, if you wanna treat elite level marathoners.

Right? And I'm based in nowhere Iowa or nowhere Nebraska. Nothing against our Nebraska, but unless you're providing incredible care and have the the most social connections in the world, you know, you're probably better off being in some place like LA, Chicago, New York, where there's a lot of people, easy to tran you know, transportation to those places. You know, the where you start up your practice will also lead to, you know, these different types of opportunities. If you wanna treat small town rural folks, you know, maybe Nebraska or Iowa is the right place for you.

But you have to have that match between what your dream is and the reality, and location is one aspect of that as well.

Yeah. And but it's everything takes time. So you you might have a really busy practice at the moment. We have a lot of home visits. You might have a lot of work that you do in nursing homes or external work and government patients, and you're you see a certain amount of private patients, but you're not but you may not be seeing a lot more of your ideal patients.

So just over a period of time, make the changes and be prepared to let something go so that something else can actually fit in. And I think if you can do that through your whole life with everything, like we said before, if you wanna become a better runner or you wanna do a marathon, you've gotta give up something to fit time and to be able to do the training. So that applies if you wanna have a better relationship with your with your wife and your kids, you may have to give up some of the time that you spend at work and actually spend it with your family. So it's let it go to fit other stuff in.

I know when I was training for my my marathon, Tyson had to wake up a bit earlier and skip some of those those brunches in the morning to get those two or three hour runs in. So, yeah. It's you're always you're always trading time for for what you wanna do.

Well, when I wrote the number one podiatry book out there, it's no secret. There's money in podiatry. Might as well give it a plug. But when I wrote this book, to write it, I got up at 4AM every morning for six months. And I wrote from 4AM to 7AM, because at 7AM, my daughter would wake up, and then we'd have breakfast, get it ready, and take her to school.

So and I was still working full time at the time when I wrote that book. To get it done, I had to get up early, spend three hours writing, and then I will say to get up at 04:00 in the morning meant I had to go to sleep a little bit earlier. So some of my favorite TV shows, I had to give up on them. You gotta let something go. And to me, that is exactly how you run your business.

The watching TV at night might be doing a home visit in comparison to your clinic. Let that go so that you can then fit in more of the sports patients or ingrown toenails or nail surgery or just higher paying clients. It could be laser. There's so many parts of podiatry that are fun that I think you've you've gotta have them scattered throughout your day just to to keep it interesting. Unless you're a boring podiatrist.

Unless you're really boring. You're a boring person and a boring podiatrist, which you probably wouldn't be listening to this anyway. But if you know any boring podiatrist, get them to listen to this because this might offend them, and it might spice their life up a little bit.

I'm not sure they're ready for us, but definitely, the the more listeners, the better. Right? We like to have a good time here and always whether making you smile or you're making me smile, definitely happy to put some more smiles on listeners' faces.

I'm sure sometimes you I say things and you go, I keep forgetting that I'm I'm paired up with Tyson. I just gotta remember that. But what I what I tell people, there's three hats that you'll wear. You've got the hat of a podiatrist. You put on right across the top that says, I am a podiatrist.

You must do podiatry work. At another time, you put a hat on, and you are a manager. You've gotta manage people in your team, so you've gotta spend some time doing that. But another time, you put your hat on, and you're actually the business owner. Sometimes you gotta step back and realize, as a business owner and as a business, what's the best thing for my business?

You gotta take the other two hats off. You gotta take off your podiatry hat. You gotta take off the management hat of looking after you. So what's the best thing for the business? And sometimes you gotta move certain patients around.

But like I said, if you do this long term, you end up creating a business that you enjoy more, that you go to work when you've got your podiatry hat back on that you're enjoying. You've got people that you work with when you've got your management hat on that are saying, wow. We're enjoying this. Tell you right now, you're gonna find it so much easier to attract more podiatrists to your business. There won't be a scarcity because they'll be going, the job looks great.

The hours are great. Everyone there is happy. They're seeing the type of patients I want. Yeah. That's where I wanna work.

No. I like that that metaphor. I think that sometimes people get so tied up, especially when they're starting practice, right, is that I am the podiatrist or I am the foot and ankle surgeon that they only wear that one hat. And then after a couple of few years, they don't realize that there are those other two hats. Whether, you know, maybe they join as an associate with someone so they don't have to wear the manager hat

for

a while. But they still have to realize that there are business aspects of the, you know, of the of the clinic. So just, you know, treat it whether you're the the associate or the owner wearing that ownership hat. Because even if you are an associate, you contribute to the bottom line. There are business related things that are that you deal with every day or you should be aware of that you're dealing with every day.

So I think there is maybe it's you have some training wheels by being an associate with someone, but it's a huge opportunity to improve not only your practice, but someone you work with as well.

Yeah. And I know when it comes to, you know, massaging your schedule to to move certain type of patients out and bringing in so you there's more room for other patients. And some people go, oh, it's it's almost impossible to do, or it it did take me two or three months to be able to to make those changes. We'll start making the changes now. So in two or three months, it's actually a reality.

And and but normally, you'll talk to people and say, oh, it's because the first reaction is, oh, that would be impossible to do. They go, have you ever taken a holiday? They go, well, yeah. I go, well, how'd you manage that? If you just waited until there was a week free so that you can actually take a holiday, that week will never ever come.

It's unlikely. But what you'll do is you'll look six months ahead, block out a week or two weeks or a month, and you take that holiday. This works exactly the same way. So and it's no different to if when they go, oh, but I couldn't move these patients around. But if somebody rings up tomorrow and they're sick, what do you do with all the patients?

Do you just say, I'm sorry. You missed your appointment. Bad luck. We're not gonna be treating you at all. No.

You find you work it out. You move things around, and you fit those patients in. So if you can do it for sick days, if you can do it for injuries and accidents, emergencies, you can do it for taking holidays, then it means you can actually do it. You just gotta switch put a little switch in your brain going, oh, this is this is a reality. I can move my schedule around to fit more of my ideal patients in.

I think that time blocking aspect of thing is really, really important concept. And like you said, you have to do those things in other parts of your life. You know, if you're gonna go to a conference and you're gonna be away for two days, that those patients have to be moved. So why not start off with maybe an afternoon? Let's say you wanna do sports medicine.

Thursday afternoon, after lunch until close, that's only for sports medicine patients. So if there's anyone kind of in that that niche that you wanna expand into, that's the initial time block you start with. And once you fill up that, then it's time to, you know, maybe make it all day Thursday or maybe another afternoon. So it's that next action step you can take to make that dream practice or those ideal patients more of a reality. Because like you said, if you're just kinda waiting for the clouds to open up and for it just to magically happen, it's never gonna happen.

And that's the joy of owning your own practice. You can have ownership over your schedule and more more podiatrists need to be proactive about that.

Well, every podiatrist I've sat down with, and we've been working one on one, and we've looked at this schedule, and I've said, okay. And we've we'll we'll go through it. We'll break it down. And I like to break it down into morning and afternoon sessions. So I'll ask them, show tell me what you make this session here.

Tell me what you make there. We do this for the whole week. Then we go through what type of work they're doing on those sessions, and I go, okay. And I'll say, let's move this one first, and I'll tell them why we're gonna move it. And these are the rules around it.

And we'll start with, like you said, one afternoon a week, and all of a sudden, it fills up with what they wanted. They go, oh my god. And we say, well, let's do another one, and then they do another one. And all of sudden, they can within a matter of months, some of them are are doubling their revenue purely by allowing more patients to get in. And what podiatrists don't realize is some of them are doing marketing or they might go out and do a talk to a to a particular group, and it's a spectacular talk.

And everyone there gives them, you know, accolades afterwards since they're fantastic. They come back to the clinic and they go, I was awesome. Next minute, 10 people from that talk are ringing up, can't get in. But you've just told them they should, but they can't. So they ring the opposition.

Who's got their diary massage, yeah, managed the right way, and their diary or schedule because we're remember different countries, we use different terms. They have their schedule lined up that those 10 patients ring you, can't get in, ring your competition, are able to get an appointment. And and they don't realize how much they're missing out on by not really planning their schedule around the type of patients they want.

Yeah. So whether it's a diary, agenda, or a schedule, I think that really rings true because Appointment book. Like you said. Appointment book. Yeah.

Yeah. Patient soft scheduling software, whatever it is. Yeah. It it's having kinda giving themselves permission, right, to do that. And that it seems like a no brainer.

Right? It seems like, oh, yeah. Of course, I could let myself do that, but a lot of people won't. They're just gonna let you know, whatever trickles in or whatever the flow is, it's just kind of like ever expanding or ever contracting. But when you really take ownership of it and you give yourself permission to have that time blocking, it's a it's a great thing.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is fear. They're scared. It's that scarcity mentality. If I block out that afternoon, oh, do you realize it's eight patients I won't be able to see?

But it could be six patients that are better than the the eight patients you were gonna cram in there, and you will make two or three times more from those six patients than you will from the eight patients. And it's a very gradual change. And like I said, every single person I've had do this within a couple of months, especially with when the practice is just starting, they double their turnover, I mean, so fast. And as soon as they do that, then they start realizing I know what I'm talking about, and I know how to do it. And they go, oh, what if we did this?

I go, yes. Let's do that next. So it's a gradual step as you go. I don't believe in just, yeah, just getting rid of every single patient you've got. Oh, okay.

I'm gonna start from scratch. Don't do that. That's crazy talk.

I think it's about taking baby steps and small steps in the right direction. Right? It doesn't have to be drastic. It just has to be something manageable to kind of get to where they wanna go.

Yeah. Coming back to your your marathon running. You don't say, I'm gonna start running a marathon, and the next day, first training session, go and run 15 k's. It it you will it'll hurt you. You'll get injured.

You'll never end up doing the marathon. This is works the same way. Just go out there and do do something simple to start with. Prove it works, get yeah. Proof of life that this actually works, and then increase it from there and just like you would increase your training.

Yep. That's a perfect example.

Okay, Jim. I am done on this topic. Have nothing else. I'd probably talk

for

another two hours on this topic if you got me going. But for this particular episode, I am done over and out. No more bids.

Well, I just actually learned that's in Australia that some houses most do your houses go for bid? Is that in, like, auctions auction off auction off houses? Oh, it

depends. Yeah. During quiet times when the real estate industry is not booming, usually, there'll be a price and they'll, yeah, make an offer, you know, formal offer will go in there. When the real estate is booming, you can normally tell because nearly every house is an auction. It'd be an auction on a certain day because they're trying to get get more of it.

And I I've gone to auctions, and I I'm not a fan of myself. I'm like, just tell me how much you want for the house. Just just tell imagine going to a to a podiatrist. I always wanna make an appointment. I what do wanna offer?

What's what's your bid to come and see me? It's oh, you wanna buy that car? Oh, yeah. What are you offering? I'm not gonna tell you how much it is.

Just you tell us what you're prepared to pay for it. I personally find it really annoying, but that's just me. Some people probably love it.

Yeah. I'm sure they do. But on that note, I would I would please bid everyone to give us a review on iTunes or Spotify. I think, you know, it's a great way to show support for this the podcast that Tyson and have been doing for a year now. It's been a great journey so far, we're excited to have everybody along the way.

So if you have a chance, head over, give us a five star review and some comments on either iTunes or Spotify. And until next week, Tyson, I'll talk to you then. Okay?

Yeah. That is fantastic. Just let everybody know too before I finish up that the the twelve week reboot has already started. So if you were sitting on the fence thinking about it, you missed out. But last time I had I had three people joining last time, two weeks after the thing had already started.

So, anyway, Jim, it has been great talking to you, and I will talk to you again next week. Bye.

Sounds great, Tyson. 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.