Standing Out

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 my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's going on today?

I'm just living life and loving it. Big Jim, it is great. I was talking to someone the other day, and your your name has come up three times in the past week. Just where I know somebody had written a glowing review of of the podcast and said it was absolutely fantastic. And my response is gonna be, of course, it was.

Of course, it is. And and then just two other people just made reference. They go, when are you talking to big gymnicks? And they just refer to you as big gym.

I guess I'm internationally known as big gym. So I guess I have you you to thank for that.

All of what are you? Six foot nine, Two hundred fifty pounds?

Three three twenty? Yeah. Six nine three twenty. Just a just a mountain of a man.

Okay. Let's get on to today's topic.

Yeah. So what are gonna jump into today?

Today, I'm gonna talk about standing out. I did a I did a talk a few well, back in 02/2016 or '17, I actually did a talk on the standing out up here in Cairns. And it went really, really well, so I thought, oh, I thought be a good topic to talk about now. Basically, all standing out really is is trying to be noticed. And it's the only way you're gonna get noticed is if you move away from the crowd.

Stop doing what everybody else is doing. And I know as podiatrists, sometimes they get a bit paranoid about, I don't wanna stand out because of I don't know if you have the saying, probably, may not in Canada, Tall Poppy Syndrome. They get cut. Get cut. Yeah.

And that happens a lot is in Australia. Everyone will cheer somebody on, but if they if they start to their head rises a little bit higher than anybody else, they're concerned that people start taking potshots at them and and wanna take them down. So people are a little bit concerned. But I think if you if you want to stand out, it's not so much standing ahead of the crowd, but you've gotta move away from the crowd, which I think is a little bit different.

Yeah. That's an interesting concept. I think a lot of people just they wanna kind of blend in. They don't necessarily wanna do make any waves, and that's not a great way to gain, you know, visibility for your expertise and and kind of stand out to the type of patients you wanna treat. So yeah, I'm excited to jump in and learn more about what you think about this topic.

Yeah. And and like I just said, the the thing that I think people can grasp this idea, it's not standing out by getting higher than them. It's just moving away from what everybody else is doing. And therefore, can stay you can stay under the radar, but you can still move away from what the crowd is actually doing. But it's in our natural instinct to want to blend in.

It's in our DNA. And and if you stand out, yeah, in the past, things could actually happen. So in our DNA was always just to blend in. You didn't go wandering through the jungle wearing bright orange clothes because you stood out and animals would find you and they would eat you. And everybody knew that.

So the idea was you need to blend in. Keep a low profile. Don't make too much noise. And I do think it's actually ingrained into us. And the other part people get concerned about if they stand it is, yeah, what if I look stupid?

Or what if I fail? What if I if I go and do something and stand it and I and I fail and everybody sees it, how am I gonna how am I gonna look? Once again, I I might actually look stupid.

Yeah. When you stand up for something or you you know, you're different than someone else or you're, you know, like you said, you don't have to put anybody down in order to stand out, but it isn't always in our nature to try to, you know, kind of bring attention to ourselves like you said. In the past, that's been a really bad thing. So not for sure.

Yeah. I remember when I was doing this talk and I asked the crowd, put your hand up if you love public speaking. There's about 250 people in the room. Nobody's put their hand up. Maybe a couple.

Yeah. A few people put their hand up. And I remember reading somewhere that the number one fear in Australia was public speaking at the time when I was looking at the research. Number two fear was death by fire. So people would rather die on a fire than get up and do public speaking because the thing with doing public speaking means you stand out.

So I just thought that was crazy. People would rather die on a fire than do public speaking. And and you're always afraid of things you you're not sure of. And standing out, if it if it worries you, could be one of those things. In New Zealand, the number one fear is snakes.

Yeah. Funny part is they don't have any snakes in New Zealand.

So you gotta keep them out.

So we we we tend to be a little bit afraid of things that are unknown, and we tend to be a little bit afraid about standing out because we don't know what will happen when we stand out. So I thought I'd just go over a couple of ideas that you can do that will make you stand out, but it's not about standing on a rooftop and screaming at everybody, hey, look at me. It's just doing things that are a little bit different, that will make you move away from the crowd so that patients, professional referrers, nonprofessional referrers will notice you. So when all of a sudden they're thinking of a podiatrist, they will think of you first.

That sounds great. I think it it makes me think a lot about the Seth Godin purple cow.

Oh, yeah.

Like, how can you be memorable? It's not necessarily about brag being braggadocious or putting yourself above everybody else, but just how do you stand out? Like, what makes you different? And what are those differentiators that, you know, will make a difference to people you wanna treat?

And you've seen sports people will do this sort of thing where to just move themselves away from the cat, they might just have a different haircut. And also, it makes them memorable. And I'm not saying that every podiatrist well, if you're listening to this, I'm not saying you should go and get a mohawk. Not condoning not condoning a mohawk at all at the moment.

Have you ever had a mohawk?

No. Never. Now, look at my head. Does it look like I've had a mohawk for while? No.

I didn't say it like this week. In your in your youth, in that that wild Australian youth of yours

Oh, yeah. Of course.

I once had a mohawk.

Yeah. Of course, I did. Yeah. In the eighties, it was probably blue or something like that. But it probably be like, I was able to wear it relatively normally at different occasions.

But I know at certain parties, yeah, you'd move it all in towards the middle and have this nice looking Mohawk going down there. But it wasn't one of those crazy ones where I totally just shaved the side of my head like one of the the last Mohican. Wasn't that crazy? But I have seen people do it. But I'm thinking something it's a little bit more subtle.

And there and some of these ideas I'm gonna share with you are things some of them I've done some I've seen other people do, but it makes them stand out. And one of the best ones was the find the toenail cake, where they drop it into a doctor's surgery and it just they have their thing. Yeah, ABC Podiatry, find the toenail cake, and they just deliver it. Now that makes you stand out. If people are wondering, is there a toenail in this cake or not?

But the advantage of doing this too is if you decide to do this on April Fools' Day, and if people eventually click that it's April Fool's Day, then it would become quite funny. But it would also very much stand out. And the business that I saw do this was over in America. They mentioned about each year when they did this, how many times photographs would get taken of their to find the toenail cake and get posted around the place. All over the place.

But that made them stand out from lot of other podiatry clinics.

Yeah. Definitely is an original idea. Like, when when you say like find the toenail cake, like like, I'm still trying to like picture what that means.

Find the toenail in the cake.

Like, do you send this to a patient? Is it like in your office? Is it in your waiting room? Like, where

is the It was dropped off at doctor surgeries at professional affairs.

Okay.

Yeah. So they actually got the cake made up, and they went and dropped it at professional affairs place on April Fool's Day. The receptionist would have got it and gone, oh my god. It's a find the toenail cake. Do you reckon there's really a toenail in there?

Maybe a sterilized one. But it reminded me when when I was a kid and they used to put coins in the Christmas pudding. Did you ever do that where you were?

No. We have like the king's cake like in I don't know, like in sometime in January, maybe like January where there's actually like a small figurine within like a dessert and whoever gets the, you know, the the whoever has the piece that has a little like ceramic king in it gets to wear the crown for the rest of the the dinner.

Oh, yeah.

It was

yeah. Probably something like that. It was I think it was in the trifle. It was in the trifle that they made, and then they put coins in it, and the idea you got it was good luck and you kept it. But I remember my dad always tell me when was a kid.

As a story, he says, oh, bitch, be careful. Remember once I swallowed 20¢ piece, and when I went to the toilet, I got 4 fives. And I just as a kid, I believed him. And then as I got older, I realized that that is not the case. It's not how it works.

That was a joke.

That was a joke. Yes. My dad had a good sense of humor. The another thing that I've seen people do was they take a certain photo or famous feet, and they would post that online and give people a comment. Do you know these five famous feet?

And the one that stood out to me was once again saw someone in America doing it, and they had the five Disney feet, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Pluto, and might have been Minnie Mouse. It had the five feet all standing in a circle. They said, can you name these five feet? So it was just a little bit silly, but it was something that nobody else was actually doing. Then from there, some other people were just posting, like, famous feet, and you had to try and figure who they were.

And they give hints on who these people were. And I know I just thought that was clever. It just it was something that nobody else was actually doing.

Yeah. I think it's gonna appeal to different folks And, you know, it's kind of a fun game to kinda engage with your audience or engage with some folks probably on social media or in some places where people can easily share something like that, so I can see where that would maybe catch on.

Yeah. And in our clinic in Cairns up here, we used to, once or twice a year, we to do movie premieres where there'd be a movie coming up, we'd hear about it. And I I had a close relationship with the person who was the manager at the cinemas at the time. And he would let me know what's coming. So I used to go into the cinemas once every three months, and I get to watch all the previews of what was coming out.

It was fantastic. Anyway, and from that, I could go, oh, I like that particular movie. And then we would put a deal together, and I would be able to book a cinema out, and I could do a movie premiere for that particular night. And it wasn't as expensive what people think. There's certain ways that you can do it where you pretty much get sponsorship at the same time.

It doesn't actually cost you a lot of money. But there was one particular movie that stood out to me, and it was called The Inlaws. It was a Michael Douglas movie. Michael Douglas and Elliot Gould, I think. And Michael Douglas, he worked for the CIA and the and Elliot Gould was a podiatrist, I think.

Okay. And he said, one of them is used to clip in bad guys, the other one clips toenails. That was how they promoted it. That yeah. Well, not great for podiatry, but it was quite it was quite funny.

And and that we used to do it, like I said, once or twice a year. We pick certain movies, but that made us stand out from what every other podiatrist is doing because nobody else is doing it. And we didn't buy professional referrals. We'd have patients come along. Our whole team would go along.

All I do is walk out the front and go, welcome. Enjoy the movie. There was no speeches. It wasn't, hey, send your patience. I didn't need to say that.

They're at the movies on me. Have a good time.

Yeah. You're providing like a memorable experience and a and it sounds like a fun experience, you know, you know, these comedy movies and just having a good time together is worth more than, you know, it just it ingratiates kind of good feelings towards your practice even if you're not, you know, out there shilling it. You're just just kind of giving back and having a fun time with them.

Yeah. And if you pick and the reason why it doesn't cost a huge amount to put these things on, if you go to a cinema that holds a hundred people and you can pack it out, that's a lot of people buying a lot of ice creams and snacks to go in the cinema. So the cinema actually likes, yeah, a screen an actual cinema full of people because they know that generates a lot of money for them. Another thing that we used to do or if you wanna stand out. Okay?

Some people will celebrate Christmas. They might drop off cards or gifts and things like that to professional referrers. I don't think you should because there's so many people doing that. You will just blend in. So pick another day that will actually make you stand out.

We used to celebrate Australia Day, and we used to actually have a bottle of wine done up that we'd actually go and drop in. And and it would say, yeah, happy Australia Day, the one day of the year where it's okay to wear thongs. Now if you listen to this in America, it's thongs on your feet, not thongs up your bum. But you could do either on Australia Day because we don't we don't mind. We're very flexible.

And but that stood out because we knew nobody else is celebrating Australia Day with the other podiatrist towards your professional referrers and non professional referrers. So that that actually really stood out for us.

Yeah. Because everyone's gonna hit up, you know, Christmas time and New Those those two ones are just so taken that you're they're gonna have like a barrage of different gifts from different people, and it's just gonna get lost in the stack. I know that even, you know, when I go to my family for Christmas and things, know, get so much stuff you forgot who you got it from. And it's not that you it's not that you're like ungrateful about it, but just just the amount of gifts that are giving given that time of year, you're not gonna stand out. You're not gonna be memorable, so it's, you know, it's better to pick a different day to to get that kind of recognition and that kind of remaining top of mind with those professional referrers.

Yeah. Well, another day that we did was happy April 15. And the reason we chose the April 15 because nobody else was celebrating the April 15, so we used it. And then we'd send a letter, and we go, happy April 15, and we we drop something off. We go, at ProArch Podiatry, we like to do things differently.

Because nobody else celebrates the April 15, we thought we would. And just include a few other things. And straight away, the doctors and professional affairs as I bumped into them afterwards just went, why the April 15? And I go, well, actually, the person I heard do this idea the first time, I think it was his wedding anniversary. I said, so we just ran with it.

But you can pick any particular day. And we went from the April 15 deciding, hey. Let's do Australia Day because it's at the beginning of the year, January 26. So let's do that instead. And and we wouldn't do it on the day because it was a public holiday, but we'd do it just leading up to it.

That makes sense. The April 15 is tax day in The US. So

Oh, right. Okay.

The the account, you know, if you have some professional accountant refers, they would probably enjoy kind of winding down a little bit after a busy tax season, but that's that's like at least personal taxes are usually due on April 15.

Well, imagine if you, as a podiatry clinic, send something to in America, to all the accountants in your area just before the April 15 celebrating happy April 15. And they might even know who you are, but it's a great way of actually it's a good excuse to to reach out to them. And that leads on to, like, corporate wine. We used to do a lot of corporate wine bottles. We get carts of them done up with our own logo on there.

Sometimes red wine, sometimes white wine. But we would attach a funny letter when we dropped in and they go, Dear big Jim, just to let you know, I had to try a lot of bottles of wine to select this one. That's how committed I am to doing the right thing by you, yeah, and making sure that you get a good bottle. And then we'd have a bit of a spiel and and we drop a bottle of wine. We didn't ask for anything in return, but same thing.

When you bumped in these people, they would always bring up, hey, thanks for that bottle of wine. It was really good. And by the way, how many wines did you have to drink before you found this one?

Sacrifice.

It's the sacrifices we make.

Appreciate

it. Yep. For the for the general public. Yeah. So you appreciate it.

You haven't even got one from me, but and you appreciate the effort I've gone to.

Exactly.

So and there's other things where you can just try and be clever. Like, you you can do, yeah, swag with hats and pens and all that sort of stuff if you want, but there's a lot of people doing that. But if you're then gonna do marketing as well, just think you wanna you wanna stand out from the crowd, be a little bit different. And we had one of our best campaigns was our fungal nail ad, and it said, hear that? That's fungus eating your toenails.

And then it just went off from there. And that pause was effect because you'd be on a say this is on radio, for example, and there's music playing and people talking, and all of a sudden, this really deep voice that sort of echoed and went, hear that? That's fungus eating your toenails. And we talked about how fungus is very silent. You're not gonna hear it.

I remember walking down the road one day around my area, somebody driving past who recognized me, and all of sudden, they honked the horn, and I stopped and they said and the window went down and said, hey, Tyson, you hear that? And I said, what? And they went, that's fungus eating your toenails. And they laughed their head off and drove off. So and it was a younger person, so I knew it must have got through.

Yeah.

Connecting with the kids there about fungal toenails.

Yeah. But it's trying to be just a little bit clever. If you're going to do if you're doing traditional marketing or even if you're doing something online, don't just do what everybody else is doing. Try and be I don't know. Just think outside the box a little bit more.

Another audio ad we used to have was one that said it took god seven days to create the universe. And this voice would cut in and go, seven days? And it takes proarch one day to make your orthotics. And they go, it's almost a miracle. And then God's voice would come back in again and go, no, my son.

It is no miracle, but it's definitely fast service. But, anyway, something along those lines. But everybody that heard that ad loved that ad and only got one complaint, which I thought was fair enough. And it was somebody who rang up and said, oh, do you know it actually I took six days to create the universe and one day of rest. I went, fair enough.

I said, so in total, how many days would that have been? And they go, well, seven. Okay. Exactly. Including the day of rest.

And I had a couple of priests in the clinic, and I ran it past him before we did it, and they went, that's funny. I said, that's actually really, really funny. I like that. So that was alright. And another one that I saw somebody else do, and I'm not sure where I got this from this one from, well, because I got a copy of it.

And it said, some funguses are good for your health. And then underneath, it has a photo of cheese, wine, and mushrooms. And then under that, it says, nail fungus is not one of them. And I'm thinking, that is very clever. It's very visual.

So what I'm trying to get through to everybody here is don't just keep doing what everybody else is doing. If you're on social media and you see people doing these stretches and doing some other things and giving advice, if you're just going to be just like them, then you're just gonna blend in and you'll be boring and beige. Try and find an angle. Try and find something that makes you a little bit more unique that you can use to your advantage. And if you can't come up with any ideas, ask Jim and I.

We are full of ideas. Absolutely. It's I had a guy I was doing some work with. He was a dentist, but he was riding scuba diving as well. And I said, why don't you just combine the two?

He said, what do mean? He said, well, instead of getting on the video and just giving dental advice, I said, why not go, you know, do your diving? I said, then have somebody filming you come out of the water, take your head's thing off, pull out your respirator, give a dental tip, and go, okay. Until next time, put your respirator back in, thing on, and then dive back under the water. I said, you're still giving a dental you become you'll be known as the diving dentist.

The scuba diving dentist. Just like you got the singing dentist. Have you ever seen the singing dentist?

I have not seen the singing dentist in

my life. He's pretty cool. But, yeah, it's sort of just be a little bit different if you want to stand out. You don't have to be crazy if you don't feel comfortable doing that. Just come up with some other ideas, but just don't be like everyone else.

That's the main thing I want everyone to sort of take away from this.

No. I think you brought up a lot of good points. Like you said, you wanna be memorable. How how can you be remembered for your expertise and to be visible in front of the patients that you wanna treat and and by standing out and by you know, doing some different things we talked about today. I think that that people that own a practice can really make that happen.

Okay, Big Jim. Until next week. Bye bye. Okay. See you.

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.