The Part of the Conference That Isn't on the Schedule

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations

on building

a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of the Podiatry Marketing Podcast. With me, as he is every week, my trusted co host, Big Jim Mack, aka Jim McDannald. How are doing today, Jim?

Tyson, I'm doing well. It's been a fun but busy summer here in Montreal, jet setting all around North America to conferences. So I thought it would make sense for us to have a conference centric podcast. It's been a little while.

So I like I like talking about conferences. It's it's one of those things that I think as a as a new and recent graduate, I never understood the power and benefit of attending conferences. I used to think, What what's the point of going? As I got older and probably more towards the later part of my career, I really understood the benefit of conferences. So I'm looking forward to getting through this especially, I I think I know what your topic is, so let's dive in.

Yeah. So the the title for this one is CME is the excuse, the hallway is the reason. So you know, these days

You changed the title on me. You changed the title.

I could change the title, sweet deal.

Okay. Yeah. I had a different title. The title I had was the part of the conference that isn't on the schedule.

I've gotta keep it interesting for you. Right? So like, yeah, I gotta Okay. Kinda mix it up here once in a while.

I'm gonna leave it in your hands then. I said this before we started because I'll let everybody know. We share our notes with each other. Give us a bit of a rundown on what it is we're going to be talking about. And Jim has a habit of changing his notes on me.

What can I say? Sometimes I change things up a little bit just to throw you off. Okay. Dive it. Yeah.

I would say that so you can get a CME online at home in sweatpants for a fraction of what a conference costs. So the credits are not the reason to go. If they were, none of us would ever leave the house, right? So you know, a month ago I was at the APMA National Conference, you know, I spoke about online visibility but talk wasn't really like the thing that was the biggest deal. Obviously it was nice to have people there and I got some good questions from it.

But you know, when I came home with was you know, two dozen conversations with practicing podiatrists about what's actually working for them. Getting ideas for you know, with them and for them about you know, ways they can increase that online visibility. So every one of those conversations happen outside of the session room. So it's not initially going to conference isn't about everything that you're gonna learn, but you know, maybe sometimes the people you meet and the type of conversations you have outside of the sessions.

I I think I think the outside sessions are the best part of a conference. Especially if even if there's been a topic that's been mentioned, then you come out and everybody is thinking about that particular topic when you walk out of the room, and they've got their own ideas. You see now how you can can read a book and you'll hear people say, I think the author was saying this. But when you hear a speech or a talk, you're taking away your own ideas from it, so are other people. So when you're in that hallway area, it's amazing what you can pick up.

Yeah. It's it's it's it's just great to have that camaraderie with your colleagues and you know, today we're we'll get into you know, what you actually get out of showing up in person. Like I said, a lot of people have questions like why should I want to pay a thousand or a couple thousand dollars to go to a conference. You know, why the reasons for skipping always win the argument and how to make the next trip worth it the next time you're you're going to a conference in the real world.

Yeah. And it's easy to make an excuse not to attend a conference. I've got I've got yeah. If I go to the conference, the people are thinking about what they lose, what they may lose by not seeing patients. What they don't realize is, no.

What you gain will far outweigh and you never lose those patients. They just get dispersed on other days.

And we do the math too. Right? Like the the reasons to skip always win beforehand because the cost of skipping is kind of invisible. Know, every reason you have for skipping the conference is a real one. You know, I've got I've got young kids at home, a schedule you'd have to close for three days, a staff member's already out.

Those aren't excuses. Those are actual your actual real life. Right? So but notice how the math is kind of rigged in that way. The cost of going lands on the credit card statement and where you can see it.

The cost of not going never shows up anywhere. Another year not knowing, you know, what your peers are charging. Another year, you know, solving a problem someday, you know, somebody already two states over has solved. That bill will come due later on. You just never get the invoice for it.

So it's that's sometimes these things you miss out on, you just don't know about.

It's very insightful, Jim.

Well, I'm glad you're impressed.

I know, but there truly is something that people do not think about. There might be a conference and someone might be talking about a particular specific problem. And I actually remember going to a conference, and someone was talking about this certain certain thing that you look at in someone's blood work, and that is an indicator of this this major problem problem happening. I just happened to be at this conference, heard it. I guarantee it was almost the second or third patient I saw from getting back.

This young kid came in, and all the symptoms he the parents were describing was this problem. But he had to get a blood test to get it sorted out, and I couldn't order this blood test. So I sent him to the GP and said, I want this blood test done for this for this kidney. Went, oh, that's a bit of a wild one. I said, just can you do it?

He did it. I can't remember the exact problem at the time now, and he said, my god. That's exactly what he's got, and he's probably only got about three months to live. Wow. Because that's how fast he was actually that's how quick he was going down.

And he just said, great that you nailed this because now at least it gives the patient the parents a bit of yeah. Not closure, but an idea of what they're in for over the next few months. And they could stop just running around trying to find all these quirky treatments that they were trying beforehand.

Yeah. That's pretty intense.

That's why you go to conferences.

Yeah. And like we talked about these these life stages are real. Right? Like I I have a nine and 11 year old. I know what it's like to to miss part of the soccer tournament.

So it's not These are real real life kind of trade offs in a way. And this isn't an argument for going to like every single conference. It's more of an argument to do at least one a year, like, on purpose instead of kinda drifting into a decade of not going to any conferences. So I think it is one of those things where you have to make time for your interpersonal, you know, interprofessional connections and just, you know, reconnecting with people that you've known for a while, but also expanding your network into people that you can learn from and that they can learn from you. So the practices that struggle most with isolation are usually the ones where the owner hasn't been in one of these rooms with other owners in many years.

So keep that in mind if this is if you kind of see a little bit of yourself in this.

And I think now, I'm not sure about overseas, but even in Australia, the number of conferences were really small. So if you missed one, it was a long time before the next one came around. But now there's so many mini conferences and and private groups putting functions together. They may only have, like, 50 or 60 people there. They are still worth attending because you're still going through the process just with a a smaller number of people.

And I tell her, you know, little Johnny is not gonna remember that you missed the soccer game. Yeah. In fifteen years time, he's not gonna remember that, but he may remember a holiday that you go on because you learned something at a conference that you're able to apply and and help turn your practice or yourself you became more successful because of it. Yeah. There's a

real benefit of kind of being there in person for sure.

What's next?

Next is that you can't benchmark your practice against your own practice in a way. Obviously, you can see trends in your revenue and your profits, you know, year to year, but you know, different marketing conditions are gonna affect different clinics in different ways. So you really have no idea whether your numbers are good. You only know whether that they're better than last year and that tells you nothing about what's actually happening in the real world and to other people. You know, reimbursement is the clearest example.

You know, rates swing wildly by region and by carrier in The US, and there is no public source initially that you can always look it up. The only way you can find out what looks normal is to talk to another podiatrist, you know, maybe at another conference or over lunch and talking with them. The same goes for what your MA should be paid. Now which EHR people are fleeing or adopting these days. What's working on the plantar fasciitis that isn't responding.

A couple of dinners, a time at a conference with someone else can really help you benchmark what you're doing because it's great. You can ask people questions and you can really follow-up and get straight answers from other people that that you trust in your profession.

Yeah. And that that is the thing. When you go to these groups and you and you'll catch up with friends or you'll get introduced to other people. When you're in those smaller groups, that's when they the conversations do get more intimate. And yeah.

Like, if you if you just rock up to a conference, stay sort of on the outskirts, talk when there's groups of, like, twenty, thirty people around. The conversations, I think, are quite superficial. But once parts of these groups start to break away now if you find you're the only person standing there after all the groups have broken away and you're standing there by yourself, it means you probably need to go to more conferences. But if you get invited into one of those little dinners and there's four or five of you in a group, you do start to share a lot more about your practices, your wins, your failures, and then you can sit there and listen and share your own. And it does it let you know whether you're doing good or you could do better in certain areas?

No, absolutely. Like I said, when you're kind of comparing yourself year over year, like there's market conditions, there's reimbursement issues, there's a lot that can happen. So, you know, sometimes I see you with patients, you know, when it comes even like digital marketing things like, you know, why does my website not have the same traffic or it should be growing every year. Right? You know, so there's there's always these kind of things that Google's making changes, you know, talking to people to understand those things can really help you understand what kind of impact it's having maybe on your practice, whether your online visibility or just with your revenue.

So, like I said, the same thing for clinical protocols. You know, what are people actually doing for, you know, plantar fasciitis that isn't responding? You know, who's having success with maybe a therapy that wasn't fully developed five or ten years ago at your last conference but has kind of become the industry norm or much more mainstream. I would say that Shockwave to me is one of those ones that has kind of really gained popularity over the last five or ten years now that the technology is small enough to be able to, you know, do it in the treatment room and not into the OR like they used to have to do it back in the day when I was in, you know, in school. So, you know, if you're not keeping up with these things as far as what people are doing, you know, having a dinner, having some conversations in the hallway between sessions, you're really really missing out.

On that note of Shockwave, I remember we got our first Shockwave unit in 2011. And I remember going to a conference after getting it, I mentioned something about Shockwave, everyone's going, oh, what's that? No one no one had one. And then you go to the next conference, a few more people had one. And then you'd be talking about how you're using it and have you tried using it on this?

And they've got, never thought about that. And they go, oh, it works really well. And this would be just just gain so much. You're getting all their knowledge from their experience, not just what what you learn yourself.

Absolutely. Like you can learn so much from your peers and it kinda like I said, kinda get a tip on where things are heading in a timely fashion instead of like being so reactive that you know, it's five or ten years past the this thing coming out or this thing kind of becoming the you know, like the standard of care for for example.

Especially if you even if you're in a you're talking to a group and there's five other people. You might be reading certain articles or you get certain emails or things that you're looking through. You've got four other people out there who are doing the same thing but maybe in completely different areas. It's like even this morning, I got an email that came through it said, if you wanna get monetized on, say, YouTube, for example, it used to be you have to have 4,000 download hours per month for three months, whatever it is. Then now, as of the February 1 or something, it's gonna be eight thousand hours.

Now, that's probably not gonna affect many people listening to this at all. But that's the type of thing that I read it this morning. Who else read that this morning? And if it was say it was actually a podiatry thing that was actually more related to podiatry, just by me reading that today and I see you at a conference next month and I mention it to you, it might be something you don't come across for twelve months. But knowing it now could get you ahead of the curve, ahead of what everybody else is doing.

No. Exactly. Just keeping your ear to the ground and and having these conversations can lead to pretty tremendous things happening.

Yeah. Know a friend of mine used to probably still does it. He'd wake up at 05:00 every morning and for the first hour of every day, he would type in something and just read what the latest things were about podiatry in the world. That's all he'd read for the first hour of the day. Yeah.

Sick individual. But I but that was just just felt that that really just put him ahead of what everybody else is doing because I don't think anybody else at 05:00 in the morning is doing that, but I do it every single day. And the amount of things I pick up on that I then hear about twelve months later, it's printed in a magazine or mentioned at a conference, and I knew about it way ahead way ahead of everybody else.

That's always good to you know, information is power, right?

Good to have a nerdy friend that gets up at five and does that. So what's next, Jim?

So next it kinda comes down to hiring an associate starts long before you post an ad. Most practices start looking for an associate in the practice the month they're desperate for one. That's kind of the worst possible scenario, and a job posting is really the weakest possible tool. The good hires don't come from listings. They come from a resident who you met at a meeting three years ago or remembered how you talked about your practice.

It runs the other way too. If you're the one looking for a job, the practice is worth joining are the ones that you stood next to in line to grab a lunch at a conference, not the ones who have the most well written ad. Being known in the profession compounds quietly It only compounds if you show up. So if you're showing up at these conferences either as an employer or a potential associate for a clinic, it really behooves you to network and there's always these young professional kind of happy hours and things. A lot of these different types of meetings where you could potentially meet a great associate for your practice or if you're in residency maybe a great potential place to get your practice started.

Yeah. I know this one particular person that I've known him now fourteen years. I've seen them change jobs three times in fourteen years. And I know every job that they got and it changed to all came about by meetings that they had at podiatry conferences. And I remember we were at one conference, and I recall them talking to somebody at another conference, and it had been six months later, they then working at that clinic.

And then so many years later, I saw them talk to another group of people, and six or eight months later, they're then working at that clinic. And they've only just changed jobs again about six months ago, and I remember them talking to someone at another conference probably about ten years prior to that. So every one of their job changes has all come about by meeting business owners at conferences.

Absolutely. I mean, being known has a kind of a compounding effect. You know, Podiatry, the colleague who you met that three years ago is the one who sends you a patient who maybe relocated from a different state. Maybe they call you about an outside a case outside their scope or something that they don't do. And they know that you are that expert in that.

So I mean, it was kind of funny even when I was at the AP May National Conference about a month ago. You know, had people walk up to me and be like, hey, I know who you are. Like, I love your stuff. And I'm just like, I had no idea who these people were.

Did anyone call you big No

big Jims, but definitely a lot of like, I definitely listen to the Podiatry Marketing podcast and you know, we I love what, you know, what you and Tyson are doing on the podcast. So no straight up big gyms. That's usually the the folks from The UK and the and the and the from Australia that really dig that, but definitely people mentioned in the podcast. But it's these little things. Right?

It's about showing up. It's, know, building a reputation whether it's us doing this podcast or maybe it's you giving talks at different conferences. There's gonna be people that know you whether they come up to you or not, but it helps you build that reputation. So if you're looking for a solid associate, if you're well known in a specific niche and a resident knows they want to go into rear foot surgery or sports medicine, they're gonna be much more attracted to your practice knowing that you are actively out there, you know, kind of helping educate your peers about, you know, what's going on in that specific niche. The next point is the real conversation happens at dinner, not in the session room or maybe it happens in the hallway as well.

But nobody comes home from a conference changed by lecture probably. They come home changed by a conversation they had. These sessions are structured and kind of one directional most of the time. Most of them kind of all can exist on online in some form, but the dinner doesn't exist anywhere else. That's where people tell you the truth about what's working, what's not working, what they do differently, what they're worried about.

Nobody says that from the podium. And if you're an owner, you're the only person in your building who has to make these hard calls. A table full of people or maybe just one colleague making the same calls is the closest thing you're gonna have to fix that exists. So don't eat alone, you know, whether it's conversations over lunch or grabbing people to go have dinner with. It's definitely worth it because you're gonna learn a lot about not only the people you're having dinner with, but also a lot about yourself.

And I think if you are at a conference by yourself, you may not know any people. Like I know when I went to Nashville for a conference, I knew nobody there. I was the only Australian that turned up there. And I just watched the group and picked a group of people that I thought looked normal and looked relatively friendly. And I just walked up, started talking to them, and I said, hey.

I'm not here with anybody else. Could I join you guys for dinner? And they are now some of my closest friends in The States that I catch up with every year just just from actually going out of my way and doing it. I must admit, I was not comfortable doing that either.

I think the accent helps. When they hear the Aussie accent, like, oh, sure. Why not? We'll let this guy come hang out.

We know he's gonna be a funny bugger. Oh, one of the things too when you say that too. I've a friend here in Cairns. He always says at the beginning of his workshops, workshops and conferences don't work. You do.

It's up to you to put the work in afterwards to whether you applied in your clinic or whether you then talk about it with other people. And like you said, having dinner afterwards, I think is the best thing you can do.

Absolutely. That unstructured time beyond the conferences where you're gonna find a lot of, you know, people telling you the truth. Right? So that, you know, like, it's really, really important to whether these are strangers like you had that opportunity in Nashville to see you know, hang out with some strangers, maybe someone you've communicated with a little bit on LinkedIn, maybe it's an old residency mate, maybe it's a classmate, you know, reconnecting or making these new connections is super, super valuable and you're gonna learn a lot.

Yeah. And the part that's interesting when you do have these connections, the conversations that you have that night will be really memorable. Like, I can even remember that I had shrimp and bacon grits that particular night for dinner. Because one, was a unique conference to go to, but the people I spoke to that night were absolutely fantastic. I remember the whole night right down to to what I ate.

That's why people need to do this.

Absolutely. And like you talked about, you know, being an owner of a practice is isolating in a way that most people, you know, don't understand unless they're in a similar situation as you are. You're the one in the you know, in the building that has to make the hard calls. If you can surround yourself by two or three or a table full of people making similar calls, can really learn a lot from folks like that.

Okay. What's the next point I'm looking I'm enjoying this episode. This is a this is a fun episode.

I'm glad you're liking it. So the last point is go When you're go to a conference, go with a plan and decide the trip in the week after. So a vague trip produces kind of vague results or a vague experience. Before you fly out, write down maybe three questions you want answered and three types of people you want to meet during the trip. That one step kinda changes the whole, you know, value of the trip for you.

And then sit with strangers, maybe skip a session if the conversation you're in is better than the session that you're headed to. The schedule is kind of just a suggestion. Obviously, there's maybe some things you wanna hit, but, the part that almost everyone skips, is the week after. I would say, you know, reach out to people worth knowing, within seven days, and reference something specific you guys talked about. When you do that, the trip kinda pays for itself.

You can kind of cement that relationship. I think if you skip it and you brought home just a bag of business cards or flyers, you're really missing out on. I think the relationships you can build by like I said, we can get CMEs everywhere, but you only have so many opportunities to connect with other people and build these types of professional relationships. So that should be first and foremost on your mind.

So have the quote on my back wall, the next connection will be the one that changes your life. It could be the

one that changes your life.

And I do before I go to a conference, I plan before I look at who all the speakers are, who do I wanna meet. Yep. I work out which talks I'm probably not gonna go to. So if I'm not gonna go to those, the plan is I'm gonna probably catch up with someone and have a coffee or an extended lunch or maybe an early dinner. But afterwards, after the conference, I always take the next day.

I keep that free. I don't jump in a plane that afternoon and zip home. I stay the extra night. I chill out the next day. I think about all the people I've met, the business cards I've collected, the different ideas I've had go through my head, and I plan out what am I gonna do with all this information over the next week, month, or or couple of months.

And I plan it all out in my schedule. So when I then get home, I yeah. Because life then just takes over. If you've got everything scheduled in or who you're gonna call, when you're gonna call them, it, well, you get the most. Like you said, you can just collect your CME points.

You can do that anywhere. You can do that online if you want to. Yeah. But to actually make real connections, you've got to put a little bit of effort and planning and thought into it.

Yeah, exactly. And it all starts with picking the conference you want to go to on purpose. Right? And just knowing kind of what you're going get out of different types of conferences. Maybe it's a you know, conference in your niche.

Maybe it's a national meeting which are sometimes better for kind of like the overall range of topics or meeting people from outside your immediate area or your bubble. You know, state and regional meetings are maybe better for, you know, comparisons about reimbursement or, you know, different types of insurances or trying to in The US at least trying to understand what's working in an area and what's not and to kind of building some relationships closer to home. So each each meeting is gonna gonna have a different job, you know, and just being aware of that before you just, you know, sign up for whatever meeting, you know, you you show up this shows up in your Google Ads or if you're just searching for, you know, something. I say be very deliberate about the the meeting you choose first and foremost.

Yeah. Like I know they'll have like the Australian Podiatry Association Conference. And I know there's certain people, It's just they they only go to it because they go they've been going to it for the last ten, twenty years. I don't know if they put a lot of thought into what they're going. I don't know if they look at the speakers or the content and go, wow.

There's gonna be something I'm really gonna take away from this. But I do know there's another group of people that go to that because they want to catch up with colleagues. They wanna check out the trade display. They they have a bit more of an action plan involved in what it is that they're gonna do. But like I said, there's so many smaller ones around these days.

I think you can you can really get a bit more picky and choosy on the information you really wanna take away.

No. I totally agree. And it can be beneficial sometimes to bring, you know, maybe it's a a fellow staff member, maybe it's another podiatrist, maybe it's a that some of these some of these conferences have programs for medical assistance. So, you know, maybe it's a little closer to home. You can bring, you know, a portion or the whole team with you to these.

But really the the key, like I said, is once you get back home, the follow-up week is what separates a good trip from a forgotten one. You know, within seven days, like I said, reach out to people worth staying in touch with and specific you know, make a specific reference about something you talked about when you contact them again. And then, you know, think about what's the next one gonna be. Maybe it's in six months or a year, but just try to figure out, you know, which direction you wanna head with these conferences because I think it can be hugely beneficial. Right?

You know, the reasons to skip, like I said, always win because the cost of skipping never shows up on paper. You can't tell if your practice is doing well without seeing other practices though. You know, associates and partners come from relationships that started years earlier. It's like, you know, it's like kind of when's the best time to to plant a tree? You know, that was like, you know, fifty years ago.

When's the second best time today? So if you're building those relationships, it's super, super important to do that. Like I said, the dinner matters more than most sessions and and the trip only pays off if you go in with a plan and you follow-up once you get back home.

Okay. So what what should what's a call of action? What's something everyone should make an effort? They've listened to this episode. They've taken this all forward and gone, yeah, this is fantastic.

Jim's right. I should be going to a conference. Tell me what to do, Jim.

I would say, you know, figure out what you want. Right? Do you want to like make some you know, try to reconnect maybe with some residency classmates or some podiatry school classmates or do you just wanna go somewhere where people everyone's a stranger. Feel like what or do you wanna do something maybe in your like I love sports medicine, I always went to the American Academy of Podiatry Sports Medicine. Figure out the conference you wanna go to the next twelve months and register this week.

Then write down three people. Maybe it's like if you look at the website, you know, who are some past speakers, who's on their executive boards, who are three people that you wanna meet there and and get to know. And I think, you know, if you want to know, you know, how to improve what you're doing or just just meet some people and just be helpful to others, that can be a very strong way to move things forward and go to a conference that's gonna have an impact not only on you and your practice, but also that's gonna benefit your patients down the road because you are more in line with what's going on and and knowing what's going on within your niche within your practice. So I think, yeah, like I said, pick a conference in the next twelve months and register this week.

And you may find if registration isn't open right now, at least you probably know, like, when you went to the APMA Conference, you said it's always in August.

Yeah. It's always in August. So you can put that make a calendar reminder to, you know

Yeah.

Give you an alert when it when it's time. Maybe it's three months or six months before. But just know when it is gonna be and just be ready to sign up.

Yeah. It's like for myself, I always go to Business Black Ops October, Arizona. Been doing it since 2015. And I always know it's in October. So I know throughout the year, no matter what I'm doing or what I'm organizing, I make sure we don't organize anything in October because I know I want to go to that event.

Everyone's just gonna do exactly the same thing. If you know there's an event you go to and the registration's not open yet, just block out a timer so that you know that you can actually attend it. I had a few podiatrists reach out to me and ask you, oh, when are you doing the next one in Cairns? Because they love coming up here. And I said, oh, I'm gonna do one in 2027.

They said, well, as soon as you've picked the month, just tell us when and we'll get that weekend blocked out so we can actually come up for it. If you ever want to come to Cairns, Jim.

That's what I was gonna say. Was like, at some point in time, I need to to fly over to Australia. I need to do something together there in Cairns. Definitely bring the whole family over as well. So that's definitely something in the works in the future.

And if you come to Cairns, you can stay with me. Doors always open. I need the people I like.

You haven't met my wife or my kids yet, so

Oh, I know. How many kids you got? Two. Oh, yeah. Motel's always good.

No. I'm only joking. We squeeze them in somewhere. But anyway, we'll worry about that when it happens.

Sounds good, Tyson.

Okay. Anything else you want to cover on that before we finish up?

No. I think it's a good wrap as far as like I said, I'm a big fan of in person conferences. Obviously, we've all got busy lives and busy practices to run to the same time. You know, making the most out of these in person events is is more beneficial than, you know, you'll you'll you know, you can get CMEs anywhere, but building these relationships is kind of invaluable.

Okay. And if anyone wants to the practice visibility scorecard, go to podiatry.marketing. Just follow the links on there, and you can get that sorted out.

Yep. Sounds like a plan.

Okay, Big Jim. I look forward to talking to you next week. And everyone in America, if you're listening to this episode, when you see Jim next time, you must call him Big Jim.

Well, everybody that's waited to the very end of this podcast will will I'm sure I'll get some some shouts out of the next one. So

Yeah. Just send me a message. Just send send me a message on Facebook. Big Jim, just listen to the episode. Okay.

I will talk to you again next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay. See you. Bye now.

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