Stop Chasing Low-Hanging Fruit

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 with my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's going today?

I'm fantastic. You're big Jim. How you been keeping?

Good. Good. This is number 99. I can't believe we're we're nearing the century mark. That'll be coming up pretty soon.

90 9. It's gone pretty fast, actually. Like, one a week

It has.

That's so it says we get to a hundred and four, that'll be like the two year mark that we've actually been doing this. That's that has gone fast.

That's a long time. I mean, I I don't think I dated many other people for more than two years. Right? So, like, this is one of my longest it's a long term relationship we have here, Tyson, between you and me.

And at a if it made me feel dirty, which is good.

That's always good.

Okay. Maybe once. But other than that, we won't bring that up. So anyway, we should get on to today's topic.

Yeah. So what are gonna jump into today?

Today, I'm gonna talk about, and I have a title written down here, stop chasing low hanging fruit. And this, the idea of this came about from a webinar. I actually did this webinar. I did this presentation in 02/2022 in Arizona. And then after that, I did a webinar, which is quite successful, and then I did it again towards the September.

So I just thought the information was really good, but it's one of those topics that when people just see the title, it's not a it's not a title that makes people want to, oh, yeah. I really wanna tune into that webinar. So when I did the webinar last time, I titled it what's your revenue gonna be in the future or what's your revenue gonna be in 2028. But one part of that actual webinar was stop chasing low hanging fruit. And what I mean by that is a lot of podiatrists from the first opening up their clinics, they just go and dive in and they they chase the easy money.

The patients that take no thought. They open up the doors. Anyone yeah. People that are chasing discounts or people that are sort of like in Australia, have this patient care plan, so EPCs, covered by Medicare. They just they they just they're prepared to take anything that is really easy work, and then sometimes, they stop building the whole business around really easy work.

And sometimes, that can be a dangerous way to build your business.

Yeah. Like, for example, what some examples of it being dangerous. I know that, like you said, if you just really focus on it, it can be a problem. What are some of the problems that can cause?

Well, one of the things that I reckon is quite short lived, mainly because some of them will always be cheaper. So if you wanna if you wanna try and build your business by dropping your prices and and being like a discount podiatry service, and you attract cheap patients, those cheap patients won't pay for your better services, and then you wonder why you get frustrated with them. But they're constantly looking for the next person who's cheaper. So if another person comes into town and they're cheaper again, then it's sort of like a a race to the bottom. The other part, I think, is funny when you're just chasing, say, just the referrals from the GPs that refer certain government patients is if you if you go back and you think about, okay, you went and saw this GP, this doctor.

You had a meeting with them, you seemed to get on, next thing, they start referring patients to you. If you stop and think, where were they sending their patients beforehand? These patients had to be going somewhere. So if you you might think you have a really stable business until the next podiatrist comes along. And when the next podiatrist comes along and has that meeting with them because you don't think you need to have many meetings with them anymore because you're their podiatrist.

No. The next vet, then they start referring there. And this actually happened to me with a shoe a shoe store once where I was getting a lot of referrals from the shoe store. It had nothing to do with discounting patients, but this is just how sometimes people will make decisions outside of what you think is normal. They stopped referring to me when I went and saw them, and I bailed them up.

So, hey, guys. Peter, Paul, how come I'm not Mary, George Ringo, all the rest?

Half the magic dragon.

Yeah. I said, guys, you don't refer patients to me anymore. What what what's the story? And they're like, oh, there's this stupid Irishman town, and she came and saw us. I went, yeah.

But you've been sending patients to me? Yeah. But have you seen her? I went, oh, yeah. I know who she is.

Have you seen how big her wreck is? And I went so I said, so you're telling me you're now referring your patient to her because she has big boobs? And they went, yeah. And I thought, well, at least I'm honest. But sometimes, those sort of things are out of control.

So I think when you're just chasing low hanging fruit now this is going back to doctors. If you're just chasing low hanging fruit, all it takes is another podiatrist coming that for one reason or another is more appealing to that doctor, and straight away, you'll lose those patients. They just stop referring to you.

Yeah. That's some solid examples there. And like you've been mentioned in the past, you know, if you start going for, like, bottom, you know, bargain basement pricing, you're really trying to kinda race to the bottom, then, you know, it really kind of reduces the amount of money you can charge or the the kind of overall value of each patient that comes to the clinic. Right? Because you're gonna have to see more and more of those patients to to increase your revenue as opposed to, you know, having kind of higher fee services or different types of treatment options that may allow you to do less less work or less care, but provide a high level of service through some newer modalities or things like that.

Well, give an example of people that realize they they don't understand the numbers of their business. You might have a patient that comes in there, say, for example, pays a hundred dollars for a visit, but you might have another person that you discount for whatever reason and they only pay, say, $70 for the visit. So there's a $30 difference. That $30 is if if both patients if one's paying 70, one's paying a hundred for the same service, one, you're getting $30 more profit from every time that type of patient comes into your clinic. Then when you take all your expenses on board and all that, sometimes, I think some people, they're seeing patients, they're not actually making any money from them.

By the time they take all their overheads, they don't realise that a $5 discount to the patient could be a massive impact on your actual bottom line. So it's really important, I think, for every business owner to sit down, understand the numbers of their business. So when they are chasing low hanging fruit and they're getting these people the discount mindset, it's just realized you can can chase the easy ones by giving a discount or you can just wait a little bit longer and chase the ones that are prepared to pay you for your expertise. Long term, you will make more money off the paper, and you'll have a more solid business by doing it.

Yeah. I think it's kinda like the the thought that like kind of attracts like, and if you're just going after bargain basement, you know, cheap patients in that way, that's gonna bring more of those people into your practice most likely. But if your services are a little bit more on the high end, you may not have the same amount of volume with those patients initially, but you'll kinda get into those that network of people providing them good care or great care, and your your name will kind of grow amongst that patient population. And, you know, as that grows, that can just multiply things as opposed to, like, being more addition.

Yeah. Well, I know there was a podiatrist in Cairns Many Years ago, and I used do a lot of marketing from a business. I targeted certain types of patients. And we were at an event one day, and I remember him standing right next to me and saying to this group of doctors, unlike some podiatrists in town, I don't need to market my business. And he walked off, and they looked at me and said, I think he's having a go at you.

I said, oh, yeah. He was because he's a dickhead. But you you move ahead twenty years, and I had an absolute roaring business that I eventually sold for a a good sum. And and if you now go to the Australian registration board and you look up his name, I'm gonna say his name. I'll just let people hunt him down.

Look for podiatrist and cans, and go look through the registration board. And you have a look at all the things that are attached to his name on the registration board? Yeah. He's getting dragged through the ringers at the moment because he provided substandard work because he didn't charge enough. He chased low hanging fruit, didn't charge enough money, so therefore, probably cut corners.

And by cutting corners affected his podiatry work, and now he's getting reprimanded for it. And I'm yet to see a podiatrist that goes through the whole career just trying to undercut everybody ever come out the end looking awesome. Yet to see it. They never come out where everybody just goes, oh, that was such a good podiatrist. That it never works out that way.

Yeah. There can be a high correlation between kind of what you charge and and the and the kind of percept perceived value of the care you provide. Right? So it's really important not to get in that race to the bottom.

Yeah. I just think it's it's your reputation on the line. And I totally understand when you're first setting up your business, you got bills to pay. You gotta put a roof over your head. You got family to feed.

I totally understand when you're first starting out in business. You you may wanna see people that you probably don't wanna see, but you don't have to keep dropping your prices, and you don't have to keep chasing those people. At some point, you gotta draw a line and say, I'm gonna start seeing patients that are prepared to pay this. And you start putting your prices up and you let some of that low hanging fruit, let it go for the next podiatrist that's actually coming through. I equate a lot to the difference between a professional and an amateur.

The amateur is the person who keeps chasing low hanging fruit. The professional works out that, yes, I had to do it initially, now I've worked I've worked my way through that. I I can have a bit more more of a strategy than just chasing tactics all the time, especially when it comes to marketing. And I equate it to to bank robbers. Now, I'm not condoning becoming a bank robber, Jim, in case you're wondering.

I hope I hope not. We we will have to have a disclaimer on this podcast, I guess.

But if you if you think of bank robbers, you've got the amateur. Bang. No no thought process. Cars just pull up at the front. Oh, we should rob a bank.

They throw on their mask. They bolt through the front doors. They pull out the guns. And what do they do? They go for the cash drawers.

They go for the easy money. They go for the low hanging fruit. They won't even attempt the vault because the vault takes time, it takes planning, and they haven't put enough planning into what they're doing, and they don't have the time to be sitting in there trying to get into a vault. The professional, on the other hand, will sit back, they'll take their time, case the place, create this whole strategy on how they're going to get into the vault because they know the real money is in the vault. It's not in the cash drawers.

And once they get into the vault, their only problem then is capacity. How much can they carry at any one time? That's it. It's no different to you. You have your clinic, you act professionally, you put together a strategic marketing plan on what you're going to do.

And when you put that plan together, the only problem you then have is capacity. How many patients can you actually see, and do you expand? Do you start doing something else so you can increase your capacity? But once you get a professional, we'll never chase low hanging fruit because they know they don't need to.

I think it's a good point. I think there is a lot of planning that goes into you know, obviously, when you're first getting started, you don't necessarily think of a plan. But, you know, as as people mature in their practice or having a general idea about what they wanna do, what kind of care they like to provide, having that strategy and kind of working on it on a over a longer period of time can be really helpful and help reduce stress and understanding what all those different options are, maybe, for example, like one thing big in North America, at least in The US, is that at some point in time, people don't enjoy trimming nails anymore.

Yeah.

Like, you know, the chip and clip. But what are you gonna do with those when they do come? Are you going to hire an associate to kinda help you do some of those? Are you going to bring on a nurse nurse practitioner? Are you gonna send those off to someone else in your community that enjoys doing it?

There's there's no right or wrong answer there as long as you go into it with a plan.

Yeah. Well, there was a I spoke to a podiatrist only, yeah, a couple of weeks ago. He actually contacted me and said, oh, there's a podiatrist, a local podiatrist, one of my competitors has all of a sudden sent a message out to all the other podiatrists in the area to say, I'm no longer doing general foot care. I've got a list of so many hundreds of patients. Do you mind if I start pushing you your way?

I'm now only focusing on MSK, biomechanics, orthotics, sports patients, weekend warriors. The person that contacted me was sort of a bit taken aback like, oh, hang on. Is that the right can you do that? And I'm like, said, yeah, you can. What they've done, they've got their clinic to a point where they realize we don't have to keep doing all the work for everybody.

We can now say, we already know we and this comes back to knowing the numbers of your business. When you know the numbers of your business, you know that you can give away a certain section of it and it's not going to you're not going to lose your house, you're not going to lose the clinic. So for example, and this is where the strategy comes into place, I know that seventy percent of every patient that booked in with some form of foot problem, yeah, depending on the type of treatment we're gonna do, would end up with, say, say, orthotic therapy because we did a lot of orthotics in our clinic. And if that upsets anybody, oh, you did too many orthotics, I don't care. Bugger off.

Don't stop listening to the podcast. No. Keep listening. But I just knew for every hundred people that came in, seventy percent ended up getting orthotics. Thirty percent, either some other treatment or they didn't do anything.

So out of that seventy that said they got orthotics, I'd look at where did they come from, and I'd break it down to what were the referral sources, how did they come into my clinic in the first place. Once I figured that out and you just reverse engineer it until you know where your patients are coming from, so you know where to put your time and effort into, where to start marketing your business. And then you just create these pipelines. But this is strategy. What some podiatrists do, they'll listen to some of these marketing companies and go, hey, use our one text message and we'll guarantee you 40 new patients in two days.

Bullshit. I call BS on that. That is BS, unless you agree, Jim. Sorry. But no.

It's what they don't realize is it's not 40 brand new patients. You can't you like, in Australia, I'm not sure about Emera, but you cannot just send out unsolicited text messages and emails to people that you do not know.

Yeah. You can't do that in The US either. It's yeah.

Yeah. So so in Australia, it's what this comp what they're telling the company is, we're gonna give you some text messages and emails to send to people in your database. So they're existing patients. They're not new patients, they're existing. And we're gonna get them to try and come back.

Now I'm not saying that doesn't work, but once again, it's short lived. It's just a tactic. Do this and you get these people coming in. But they don't tell you about how long does it last, how many patients do you annoy with that group of messages that you're actually sending out. So I know I get the shits when I see marketing companies trying to convince podiatrists and other health practitioners that there's this one email or there's one, you know, one text message or there's there's one way of just getting these extra 40 people coming in clinic.

It's not it's not that easy.

No. I totally agree. It's it's something that takes a long time to build up your your reputation, and you don't want to kind of fall back into kind of cheesy tactics that really help, will sometimes help erode kind of some of the trust you built over time if you're really getting super into the marketing in a way that doesn't seem like it's a win win for the patient. Right? If it seems patients are smart.

Right? So if something feels extractive or, you know, they're people, you know, they're gonna they're gonna know what those kind of messages are like from other sectors of their life. Right? This kind of high pressure tactics. Not that, you know, all those those forms of trying to get the recall patients or other things.

I mean, there there are certain ways to market in a kind of a patient centric way that makes them understand the opportunities and the kind of skills and the treatments you provide in a in a very helpful nonpressure way. So, you know, like I said, anyone that kind of kind of says, oh, get 40 new patients or 15 new patients or 40 patients or 50 patients next month, be a little wary because that's more in that tactics, and it's not really a long term strategy that you wanna employ.

Yeah. So but there there are some tactics that do get produce really good results. I had an ad that it was a written ad that we used to use in a on a Sunday magazine that used to be in the newspaper many years ago. It was a really popular magazine, and this is back when people still bought the newspaper. Whenever we ran that ad, our phone rang constantly with without without a problem, without fail.

And we would get 40 or 50 patients from that over, yeah, a six or eight week period. So there there are certain tactics. You do it, and if you do it well, it it does work. Some Google Ads just attract patients. But just trying to do one tactic like that can be very hit or miss.

It's the strategy behind the tactic that is is the important part. Because there's there's no point someone just come to you and hey, Jim. Do me a Google ad. And you're

like Exactly.

For what? What do you want? And then you go, I just I want patience. So that that there's no strategy. So the thought process is going, who yeah.

What type of patient do you want? And then what sort of message are you putting? What what call to action do you wanna have? There's all this thought that needs to go into it. Then you start going, what platform?

Where are we gonna put this? What medium are we gonna use? And this is still a part of the strategy. Then the tactic is then actually doing it. And think the biggest part that people miss out on where the money is lost It's the patient who rings your clinic and says, yeah.

I was just wondering, I've had heel pain for a while, and I was wondering if you'd be able to help me. And they go, yeah. Not a problem. Yeah. That's exactly what we do.

And they go, oh, how much is it? Oh, it's Hundred and $50. Oh, okay. Well, let's give it some thought, I'll get back to you. Okay.

Bye. Lost opportunity right there. You've you've done your Google you've done your strategy. You've done your Google. You've done everything.

This person has reached out to you. They're engaged with you, and you've just let them go. And as part of your strategy should be when these people contact you, whether it's through your website, through on the phone, online booking, If they choose not to make a booking, there should be some way that you can connect with them with it, getting their email details, their contact details, a phone number, so you can nurture them. Because you might say, hey, Jim. Thanks for the call.

And then I'll go, I'll get back to you. Or, Jim, while I've got you on the phone, is there any chance could I grab your email address? I've got some information that might be helpful that you can use, or I can send you a link or you can watch this video. And I start pushing you there, and I stay in touch with you. The money is in the follow-up.

The money is in the nurturing of these patients, and that's all part of the strategy.

No. I couldn't agree more. I think it's one of those things where it's somewhere along that kind of, like, patient journey or that kind of patient interaction. You have to you know, there's one weak link in the chain. Like you said, like, you did the Google Ads.

You did everything to get them to call in. Have to be able to kind of offer them something to to continue that relationship or to build that trust. And if it's quickly, oh, yeah. Just get back to us whenever you're ready. Yeah.

You're you're probably never gonna see that person again. So you kind of the other actions you did beforehand, I wouldn't say they're initially a waste, but your kind of cost to acquire new patients is definitely on the up and up. It's going higher than you probably want.

So Yeah. We'll get a coaching client working with at the moment. I've I've did up a new phone sheet for them to have on the at the reception area because they still get a lot of phone calls. They don't do online bookings. And I said, how many people ring your clinic and don't make an appointment?

I went, I don't know. I said, well, it's time to start measuring that. I said, because you might be doing everything right, and the phone calls are coming through, but your receptionist may need training on how to actually book them in. Is she giving the correct information? I said, you're getting a lot of calls and nobody's making appointments, I said, that's a number you need to know.

And what and and then you can try and find out what, you know, what were they trying to book him for, and why didn't they book him? Was it was it the cost? Was it the the times you were open? Was it some other factor? I said, this is all part of gathering information and then using that information to create a strategy to then build your practice.

Like I said right from the beginning, it's not about just chasing the low hanging fruit. Stop chasing the easy stuff that that every podiatrist to me, I can't believe someone that's been out fifteen, twenty years chases the same fruit that the person who's been out one year and sets up the business for the first time. They're chasing the same fruit. Makes no sense. The experienced podiatrist should have moved on.

Yeah. And over time, you become more business savvy. You know, the kind of patients you wanna see and you need to make kinda objectives to kind of go after that. And because it's it's not gonna just happen by happenstance. You have to kinda plan it out and execute a strategy along the way.

Yeah. To me, it's it's a sign of no maturity in business ownership. Somebody who's had a business ten, fifteen, twenty years, if they're still doing the same work that they did when they first opened up their doors and not a lot's changed other than just more of the easy patients and the business that hasn't really grown and the practitioners are going to me. It's it's just a sign of immaturity. They just at some point, they need to go, I I need to unless they're happy doing that, I suppose.

Yeah. I can't imagine many people are happy doing that, but you'd be surprised, I guess.

If you have twenty years later, you're still getting patients bitching and complaining about, oh, you charge too much, and you're the cheapest person in town, and and you're happy with that, then you're gonna end up like my buddy in Cairns who's got a shit clinic, and and I I I smile every time I think of him. It's terrible. I should be that way. But he just does does bring a smile to my face.

Yep. That could happen.

Okay, Jim. I got nothing else to cover on this subject. I think people I actually think people who listen to this podcast are the type of podiatrist that may may be chasing low hanging fruit at the moment because they need to, but they understand at some point, they've gotta go a little bit higher up the tree and and not take the easy stuff.

Couldn't agree more.

Okay. Talk to you again next week for episode 100.

Looking forward to it, Tyson.

I should go through my sound effects and have a good sound effect for the opening of it. Okay. Talk to you later. Bye. Okay.

Bye.

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.