The Five Decisions That Set Up a New Practice for Success

<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>00:51</time>
<p>You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>01:00</time>
<p>Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of Podiatry Marketing. With me as he is every week, big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>01:09</time>
<p>I'm doing well, Tyson. How about yourself?</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>01:12</time>
<p>I'm fantastic. I've had a had a slight back problem the last couple of weeks, which I'm coping with. So I appreciate when patients used to say to me, I've had really bad side ache pain. I was going, oh, yeah. Pain's pain.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>01:27</time>
<p>Oh, no. Side ache pain. It's a ripper. Not a good one.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>01:31</time>
<p>Yeah. It's not good. You're you're you're a soldier for soldiering through on this episode. So, yeah, definitely, yeah, I hope you're feeling better soon.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>01:39</time>
<p>But is it what what's amazing though, I think it's even like in the past, I've I've had problems with plantar fasciitis. Not until you have it do you appreciate what patients feel. So I think sometimes it's it's good to remind yourself to have the odd injury or some problem go on so that you can have a little bit more empathy for the other people. Because I've been seeing a lot of different medical practitioners and different therapists getting treatment, and I appreciate the empathetic ones a lot more than I thought I would.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>02:12</time>
<p>For sure. When when I was in residency, I had a blood clot, and I ended up in the Oh. Like, critical care unit of the hospital where I was a resident. So, you know, people some of the nurses and staff that, you know, for surgery and stuffs, you know, saw parts of me that not many people have. Yeah.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>02:30</time>
<p>So</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>02:31</time>
<p>I know that one too.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>02:31</time>
<p>Yeah. Definitely was it. But it definitely yeah. It gives you changes your perspective a little bit and and makes you realize, you know, bedside manner and the way you're treat the way you're treating people and the way people treat you for sure.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>02:44</time>
<p>Yeah. Okay. So let's get on to today's topic. It's not about medical ailments?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>02:48</time>
<p>No. Today is about decisions that people should make when setting up either a new practice for success or just, whether you they're starting off by themselves or they're starting something new. Because this past week I got a call from a resident who still got about a year left and is really gung ho about opening his own practice. Okay. There's no lease, there's no location, no patients yet but instead of waiting around, he wanted to know kind of what he could do right now and actually he's already built out a website for after listening to the show and listening to podcast.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>03:19</time>
<p>He's built out a website already. So it kind of made me think about you know, what are some things that people can do to to kinda like get started or start thinking about ways to improve or to start a practices online presence.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>03:33</time>
<p>Okay. So where where do we begin?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>03:35</time>
<p>I'd say a little bit of context. You know, most of the decisions that, you know, determine whether a new practice exceeds or struggles really happens, you know, before the doors even open. You know, no you know, these are not clinical decisions. These are more business decisions. So nobody walks, you know, walks through you when you're in residency or you're in school.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>03:53</time>
<p>No one's initially gonna sit sit you down and kinda talk to you about these options for you. So today, we're gonna go through kind of an order of operations, you know, five important things I think you need to figure out before you see your first patient and why that matters. So, you know, we'll kinda jump into that and we'll start with kind of knowing your market before you sign a lease is kind of the first step.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>04:14</time>
<p>Oh, yeah. Good. That's a good that's a good bite. That's a good place to start.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>04:17</time>
<p>Yeah. Because most new grads, know, they pick a location because it's either close to home, because a realtor found an open suite maybe, you know, and that's really backwards. Before you commit to a ZIP code, you really should know the population trend, the median household income, not how many podiatrists are already there. There's a, you know, there's a difference between a town of 80,000 with one podiatrist who's gonna, you know, retire in a year in a suburb in a suburb with, you know, established groups. Maybe someone's got 500 Google reviews.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>04:46</time>
<p>So there's a lot of free data out there, whether it be census data, Google Maps, competitor websites. You can do it from, you know, your apartment during residency or where while you're still an associate to kinda get that information.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>04:58</time>
<p>Yeah. Because I I know a lot about did the same thing when I first graduated, when I set up my first practice. I it wasn't far from where I where I grew up and where I lived. And I remember one of the the head of the department at the time at QUT, Alan Crawford, I remember him pulling me aside and saying, stop going where everybody else is going. He said, you've got to branch out.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>05:18</time>
<p>You gotta look at other areas outside of your comfort zone. He said, and then that's where that's where things will actually really start to happen. But a lot of people, oh, I was brought up in this particular town. I know this town, and they wanna stay in that town. And they don't think about what you just discussed.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>05:34</time>
<p>Yeah. It's it's it's really important because like you said, it's not necessarily just the population size, but it's also the trends. Right? Is this a community that's, you know, growing exponentially? Is it a town that has certain industries that are no longer viable and there's you know, the the people that live in that town are struggling for employment or getting laid off by the automobile manufacturer or the local factory?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>05:54</time>
<p>Having some general knowledge about that can be really, really helpful. And then also, talk about kind of understanding what the median household income, you know, if you're looking to do you know fee for service or you're looking to do kind of higher cash pay services like is that a community where you could do it in. Right? Or is it you know heavily you know, Medicare based or, you know, kind of understanding those things is really, really important. So that I think that's something definitely people should not just jump into.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>06:20</time>
<p>They need to do a bit of background research about competitors and kind of see who's established there, you know, and just get general sense before just saying you're committing to that location.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>06:31</time>
<p>Yeah. And a lot of this information to you is readily available online. You can you can search through different places and find it.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>06:37</time>
<p>Absolutely. And and you can find those gaps in those places by searching. Right? So maybe it's an underserved town. Maybe it's only 45,000 people, but there's no podiatrists.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>06:47</time>
<p>Or there's a podiatrist you can tell by just looking at as, know, he graduated from podiatry school in 1976.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>06:52</time>
<p>Yeah.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>06:53</time>
<p>He's probably about ready to, like, you know, cash it in. So, there there's some definitely some opportunities there if you do the research. So a lot of this research is free. You just have to kinda maybe pick out three to five different areas where you think you might want to explore initially and just kinda compare and contrast those different opportunities. And you can also even reach out to people in the community.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>07:13</time>
<p>Right? Like whether it</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>07:13</time>
<p>be Yeah. Hospital</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>07:14</time>
<p>systems or or even people that are in practice. Right? A lot of people, know, it's not necessarily like totally cutthroat. Right? I think some people are concerned about over saturation and those kinds of things, but most people are willing to have a conversation with you.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>07:28</time>
<p>Yeah. Well, I've always said that to people, if there's a town that might have it might be one or two podiatrists, but there's a podiatry clinic there that is huge. It's got six, seven, eight, ten podiatrists working in there. That's a good sign. If you can have a practice that's got 10 podiatrists there, it usually means there's a lot of work.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>07:46</time>
<p>So opening up another clinic is not gonna be a bad idea. But you said too about talking to other business people in the town is chat to other people that some that have been established a long time, and probably someone that's only set up in the last one or two years, and talking to both of them about how they what they feel the vibe of the town is like, and you then getting different opinions.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>08:06</time>
<p>No. Absolutely. I think that's it's it's really really important to have that, you know, that kind of information that you just can't necessarily source online or through free searches. So that's something that could be definitely be helpful.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>08:17</time>
<p>Okay. So what should they do next after that?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>08:19</time>
<p>Next is trying to decide kind of what kind of practice you wanna have. Right? Sometimes when you're in residency, maybe you had a chance to see some private practices, maybe you didn't. But it's a real opportunity to kinda like search for the type of practice or try to help determine the type of practice you wanna have. Know, a lot of docs new docs will skip this kind of niche question and just say like, I'll treat everybody.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>08:40</time>
<p>Yeah.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>08:40</time>
<p>But that's how you ended up, you know, being busy but broke. You know, book solid with low reimbursement visits and no time for the cases you actually want. So before you build anything, decide, are you a general podiatry practice? Are you gonna take everything? Are you learning more towards surgical or different things like fee for service things that that's just, you know, a lot of custom orthotics, shockwave, and how much Medicare do you want?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>09:05</time>
<p>Because, you know, practice of 60% Medicare in a retirement community looks completely different than a sports focused clinic near a university. So that decision really shapes everything downstream.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>09:16</time>
<p>Yeah. It's it's true because, you know, some coaching clients that have approached me and we'll be talking about the breakdown of private patients to say some that are reimbursed from the government. And some of 50% of their work has been relied on the government, and they're only doing a bulk billing, not getting any extra fee on top of that. And the amount of money they're losing because that's the type of clinic that is set up. And they've said they wanna slowly change it, and over a period of time, you can show them what to do, and it just totally turns it around.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>09:45</time>
<p>When they get a little bit more focus on what they wanna do more of and what they what they wanna see less of as well, and then changing their diary and structure around that.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>09:54</time>
<p>Absolutely. Like determining that niche and kinda understanding what you wanna do and how that kinda combines with pair mix decisions really needs to happen before like you name your clinic or you have a branding or before you do website or before you do ads because, you know, the way you name your practice might be, know you if it's a sports medicine practice and that's what you want to see, maybe that should be incorporated in the name. So you know your your payer mix and the mix of patients you see will it'll change your website copy, how you targeted ads, the zip codes you focus in on, and even the photos on your home page. So you you know, like I said, I'll I'll treat everyone is not really a strategy. It's kind of a default that a lot of people fall back on, and it leads up maybe to a practice that you don't necessarily enjoy running.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>10:36</time>
<p>And we just say about websites too. If there's three or four other podiatrists in the location or in that area where you're gonna work, go and have a look at their websites. And what when you look at the website, what's the thing that jumps out at you? And if nothing jumps out at you, then you know that town is screaming for somebody to put their hand up and say, this is what I love doing. And you and you will get more of those patients more than anybody.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>10:59</time>
<p>So for example, if it was ingrown toenails, if you just said, I just wanna do more ingrown toenails, and that was prominently displayed on your website and nobody else has that, you will get more ingrained toenails.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>11:09</time>
<p>Exactly. It's one of those things where you just think about the cases you want more of, and you build around that. This is the kind of the hardest step because it requires saying no to some things like we talked about. You gotta say no to some things, but even before you get started. But at the same time, it can be much more powerful than just having a generic message that doesn't resonate with anybody.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>11:28</time>
<p>That's true. So next?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>11:30</time>
<p>I think next is, you know, after you know what you want, it's kind of building a brand that reflects the strategy. So a lot of people go wrong early on the brand. They pick, you know, something generic like the name of the city, foot care, without thinking about what it signals. If you're building a surgical practice, your name and branding should convey precision and expertise. If you're positioning as the local family foot care provider, that's a totally different, you know, that's a different feel entirely.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>11:55</time>
<p>So don't spend $5,000 on a brand identity and a logo before you know what you're building. But also don't slap something together in like five minutes that you'll outgrow in like two years. The name, the logo, and the tone, it should all connect back to your practice in the way you decided to build it back in statue.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>12:14</time>
<p>Yeah. And that's exactly what we did. When I had my clinic in Cairns, the first business name was North Queensland Podiatry. Made sense. We're in North Queensland, and we're podiatrists, so that's what we did.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>12:24</time>
<p>But then as time went on, we gave our orthotics a name. We called them ProArch Foot Supports. And then it just made sense. Where would you get ProArch Foot Supports from? You can get them from ProArch Podiatry, and that's how the name came about.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>12:36</time>
<p>So it did develop over a period of time. It doesn't mean the first name you have, you can't change it. And I think if you've got a business name and your business has developed over a period of time and it doesn't really suit, then change it. Don't hang on to somebody just because, oh, that's the name we've always had.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>12:52</time>
<p>No. Absolutely. I think that name has to reflect your current strategy or the the way you're the direction you wanna move towards. Right? So if the first one is not working well, there's no harm in changing it.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>13:04</time>
<p>Obviously, if you haven't named it at all, it's a good opportunity to start from scratch. Okay. You know, the people that are already in practice out there, you know, there there's no harm in changing. You might wanna hold on to things like your domain name and some other stuff and point it to a new domain or just use the old one, but changing the name of the business name of the business is definitely can be helpful even for things like Google's, you know, Google business profiles and Google searches. So generic names aren't necessarily bad.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>13:29</time>
<p>They just don't differentiate you from other people. Right? You don't wanna overspend necessarily like spend, you know, tons of money on a logo and tons of money on a name, but you definitely wanna have a good one. So think about whether your brand, you know, will still fit, you know, in five years. Is that the way you wanna go?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>13:44</time>
<p>But if you if you need to change, you can always change in the future.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>13:47</time>
<p>Yeah. I remember a medical center here in Cairns, and they were called Abbott Street Medical, which was fantastic when they were on Abbott Street. But the building that they were in got torn down. They eventually had to move, and they moved to a different area. But for the next two years, they were so called Abbott Street Medical, and I'd have patients come and go, it's so confusing.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>14:06</time>
<p>I thought they were on Abbott Street. I couldn't find them anywhere. And eventually, they changed it to Abbott Medical. So I think if you're if I usually say to people, do not name your business the name of the street because you can't guarantee that's where you're always going to be unless you own the building.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>14:21</time>
<p>No. That's that's sage advice. I think that people definitely should listen to that one.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>14:26</time>
<p>Okay. Next.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>14:27</time>
<p>Next, I would say is when you build out your website, make sure that it's around like conditions and procedures. You don't need a physical location to start building a website like like the student or the resident that contacted me. You just need to know and make decisions kinda steps one through three. Right? So individual pages for each condition and treatment you plan offer.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>14:47</time>
<p>Sometimes I see websites that have, you know, 50 different diagnosis and treatments on one single web page, and that really confuses Google. You can also utilize these kind of errors we serve pages for surrounding communities. Obviously, you're gonna rank well where you're located, but building these areas we serve pages that we talked about in the past can be really helpful. Now content that positions you as the local expert before you even open. So most docs who've been in practice for fifteen years still have, like I said, these kind of sometimes you see these one pagers with 50 different conditions.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>15:17</time>
<p>You can be ahead of them by just, you know, by building out individual pages for these conditions and treatments, and that will kinda get people a head start for some people who've been residency or just getting started in practice before they even open the doors.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>15:30</time>
<p>That's really good point because I was talking to someone during the week and it was in their frequently asked questions section. And the questions that they had, they were good questions, but to answer that question, they had them all on the same page. And I said to him, okay, let's take that question out. Let's put it into Google and see what happens. We took the question, put it into Google, and then Google gave us a bit of an AI overview first, but it had links to three different businesses.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>15:56</time>
<p>When we clicked on those three businesses, the exact question that we asked was within their website but on a certain page. It it wasn't part of a a a page with a whole pile of questions on there. And I said, that's why you can't be found because when you look at the domain name up there, it's got your clinic slash FAQ. It doesn't make that doesn't mean that your answer doesn't mean anything to Google. So slowly in them to start setting up separate pages for each one of those questions.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>16:24</time>
<p>Absolutely. It's gotta be relevant to that topic of that page. Right? So if you're just having you know 50 FAQs about just random things, maybe even you categorize it on an FAQ page, that's still not enough. You're better off just putting those questions and answers on the actual pages about bunion surgery, then make sure that the questions and answer about bunion surgery or recovery or pre op post op is all on that one page.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>16:46</time>
<p>Really, really important. Like I talked about, these areas you serve pages can be helpful to draw patients in from nearby communities. And you wanna make sure that you're, you know, building websites that are kind of the the kind of the best page to answer patients' questions. Right? Not not they don't have to be like, necessarily questions and answers like FAQ sections, but, you know, if you were going to a podiatrist, what would you wanna see?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>17:07</time>
<p>What would you wanna know about how they treat plantar fasciitis? About how they do custom orthotics? And having content that is in a in the voice and at a level that a patient would understand Mhmm. Is hugely hugely important because these Google bots they they crawl it, but they're also checking to see signals from real people. And if people spend 5 seconds on your page and go back to the the results, Google sees that as like a no go.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>17:31</time>
<p>But if someone is, you know, if they call this dwell time, If they're on your page for a minute and a half, they watch a video, they click a couple things, they spend some time there, that's a really positive signal to Google that you are have built a great page. So, you know, think about building a page from the perspective of someone who's searching for these services and wants to learn more.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>17:51</time>
<p>Yeah. It's a good tip because I was looking at somebody else's page, not coaching client, but we're looking at another podiatrist page. And I said, have a look at this one and tell you you think. And as soon as I looked at it, they went, I know exactly what you're gonna say. Everything they had written on there was as though it was a lecturer giving a talk to a group of students.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>18:09</time>
<p>It had it had all all the problems, but in the the true medical terms that are being used, and just the way you wrote it, I was wondering, if you were a patient, you would not you wouldn't have got past the second line because you would've went, this is just too complicated. Yeah. And you would've zip you would've gone straight back to the search page.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>18:26</time>
<p>That happens more often you you would think. Right? It's it's having that, you know, understanding what level like normal people are at and trying to speak at that level is where it should be with your website. And if you're not writing yourself, you should be working with someone that that can do at that level. Speaking of which, know, if you're in residency or you're an associate for someone you're thinking about starting your own practice, you know, go look at different websites and learn about what you like and what you don't like.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>18:49</time>
<p>Imagine that you're in the shoes of that patient. Right? So you don't necessarily need to go out like this resident that I know that this, you know, basically built out his website. You don't necessarily need to do that, but you need to get a general understanding of like go in the patient's shoes. Maybe even go to like, you know, a dental page or something and see like if you were looking for a dentist, like what kind of information would you be looking for and translate some of that let those learnings and knowledge over to a Podiatry website.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>19:15</time>
<p>So when you're starting to build your own online presence out, you'll have a much better understanding of like the types of sections you need and the way to phrase things in ways that'll appeal to prospective patients.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>19:25</time>
<p>No that's great advice. So after they've done all that, then what?</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>19:28</time>
<p>Yeah after that you need to set up systems, get some systems in place. Right? So you know you need have things like review software, call tracking, your intake workflow, your process for handling the you know do you take my insurance phone call, the system that gets patients to leave a Google review after the visit, none of this requires a physical location. All it needs is it to be ready for your first patient. You know, not figured you know out six months, know, when you have 40 patients and zero reviews, the practices that struggle in year one aren't missing clinical skills.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>20:01</time>
<p>They're the ones who have kind of opened their doors and then try to figure out the business side of things later on or the marketing side of things later on. They're trying to play kind of catch up in a way. So if you can kind of get a little bit of those learnings while you're an associate with somebody or while you're in residency, the the better off you'll be.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>20:19</time>
<p>Yeah. And the earlier you start these types of systems, it then just becomes a habit. Once the patients start flowing through, it becomes a habit for you or and your front receptionist. Everybody just knows what to do. This is just how we do it.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>20:32</time>
<p>If you try and introduce it six months after having your clinic running, and you go, oh, now we're gonna try doing this. Trying to break people out of habits that they've already got is much harder than just introducing them to something right from the start.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>20:44</time>
<p>No. I've had that you know, working with different clinics at different sizes and different kind of ages of the clinic, know, definitely trying to incorporate things like a review workflow system. You know, it doesn't seem like that much, and obviously me being remote, I can't really facilitate more than a lot of encouragement long distance. But, you know, if you can get good at into good habits early on, you you, your clinic, and the community you serve will be much better for it.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>21:08</time>
<p>Yeah. And I know when it comes to reviews, some people just feel awkward asking patients for reviews. But to me, it's just ask. The worst that I can say is no. So you just just gotta figure out how to actually do that.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>21:23</time>
<p>No. Absolutely. It's anything like your intake process, you know, how do you deal with new patients? How do you do like, kinda how do they complete paperwork? It's also just, you know, it's getting comfortable being uncomfortable.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>21:34</time>
<p>Right? There's something uncomfortable about kinda striking on your own. It's exciting, but at the same time, it feels like there's pressure, there's stuff going on there. So asking someone to, you know, share the great care that they you provided them or the great result they had and just sharing with the community so you can get more of those patients in the door. Like the more you practice, the better you can get at it.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>21:52</time>
<p>It's like the first couple of podcasts you and I did together. Right? If I look back at those podcasts, the number of I still say some ums and ahs and those things, but the number I said back then was pretty crazy. So</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>22:04</time>
<p>I used to get editing them out.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>22:08</time>
<p>Yeah. You got so tired that we just kinda started leaving them in there. So it's it's like anything else. You just gotta, you know, practice makes perfect. So it's okay to be a little uncomfortable asking for those things, but it it's something that's gonna really benefit you and your practice down the line.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>22:23</time>
<p>It's gonna benefit your community because they'll see you as an expert. You'll get more of those patients in the door. You can provide greater care. So don't be shy. These systems are, you know, easier to build when you are just getting started than you're, like, trying to juggle a full schedule, onboard one or two employees, you know, go to the OR a day and a half each week.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>22:41</time>
<p>Things are gonna get hopefully hectic in your practice. So developing good habits and good systems early is really, really important.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>22:48</time>
<p>I could not agree more. And if anybody needs any assistance with any of this stuff, just reach out to us. This is what we do. That's why we we do the podcast to educate people, but we're also yeah. Like I do business coaching with podiatry.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>23:02</time>
<p>You help with all their marketing, Jim. It's just if you're having trouble in these areas, just reach out to us. It's a no brainer.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>23:11</time>
<p>Absolutely. And just to recap today you know like I think it's really really important people know their market before they pick a location for the practice. Decide on what kind of practice you want before you build anything. You know let your brand reflect your overall strategy and the direction you want to take that practice. You know, build a website around kind of conditions in the communities, not just kind of the name, and make sure you have systems kind of ready to go on day one.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>23:36</time>
<p>So like I said, if you're in residency or you're thinking about you're an associate, you're thinking about opening your own practice, you know, kinda take these five steps. Look through, like, things like census data, look through the ZIP codes, search around on the Internet for the places where you think you would like to practice, and just try to get to know it, and then reach out to people that are practicing there. And if you need any help along the way with either marketing execution, I'm here for it. And if you needed some help with some podiatry business coaching, Tyson is the man. So we'll just leave it there for tonight.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>24:04</time>
<p>That is fantastic, Jim. That was a good topic, and I look forward to talking to next week.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>24:08</time>
<p>Sounds great, Tyson.</p>
<cite>Tyson E. Franklin:</cite>
<time>24:09</time>
<p>Okay. See you. Bye now.</p>
<cite>Jim McDannald, DPM:</cite>
<time>24:11</time>
<p>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.</p>