You're Not Behind — The Uncertainty Is the Hard Part

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 Podiatry Marketing. With me, as usual, is my good friend who lives on the other side of the world. It is big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?

Tyson, I'm doing well. I'm as we were talking before the podcast started, we're looking forward to an opportunity maybe to meet each other in the flesh, which would be something really, really exciting, know, make sure we both exist, I guess.

I know it's not too yeah. We will. We will. We're gonna meet in the flesh. And I was talking to Big John and Lucinda at the Foot and Ankle Show.

And, yeah, they were surprised that we had never actually met each other. And I started to say with him, well, I'm actually wondering if you're just an AI generated person I've been talking to for the last five years, but I will find out soon.

Yep. Sooner than later.

So what are we talking about today?

Yeah. So today's topic is, you know, you're not behind, the uncertainty is the hard part. So the question I get asked more than anything isn't about Google Ads or SEO. Usually it's where do I start? And that question isn't really about tactics.

It's really about uncertainty. So, you know, I practiced podiatry for seven years. You know, I know what it feels like to have everything kind of mapped out for you, whether it be school, residency, and practice, and still feel like something isn't working. So that uncertainty can really be taking, you know, it can be taking the next step, whether it's fixing your marketing or rethinking your practice entirely. You know, it kinda keeps podiatry stuck more than kind of any lack of information well.

That that is actually a really good point because it is when you're going through university or your whole education from tell me you're a little tacker all the way through to graduating. Everything has been is mapped out for you. This is what you do here. This what you do the next year, the year after that. Everything is planned out, then all of sudden you graduate or you set up your own business, and that structure isn't there.

I can see how it can be scary for some people.

Yeah. And like, know, some people just, you know, they're kind of professional students in a way. Right? They they learn the the technique to study and how to pass exams and do those things and feel like, you know, that that's not really how the real world works though. Right?

So it could be a bit of a an eye opener once you get into the real world and try to figure out, okay, so what I wanna actually accomplish because it's kind of a choose your own adventure game at that point. It's not there's not a for what you what you have to do. Right?

So Yeah. And I do recall there were some students that were, when it came to exams, were excellent at studying and passing exams. You could ask them two days after the exam a question that was based around probably what we'd learned, what was in the exam, but if they had to actually think outside of the box, couldn't do it. It really it had to be textbook and planned out for them.

Yeah. It can be a different skill set. So you know, today's episode is a little bit different. Know, it's kind of about more about why you know most most podiatrists kind of stay stuck. Know, how to shrink but it's also about how to shrink this fear down to like a regular size.

And the one thing you can do this week is you know, try to help you move forward if people are feeling a little bit stuck.

Okay. So where do we start?

We're gonna start with the certain misery and you know I'd send it to stuck. I know it's it's bad but it's it's some people feel feel that way. Right? You know? Yeah.

You know, people stay stuck and they really don't know what needs to change. So know you a dull schedule doesn't mean a healthy practice, right? I talked to podiatrists who tell me you know they're slammed in the same conversation they say, they're not making what they expected. So you know full schedule and thin margins leads to professional unhappiness. Nobody in school taught you you know, that a day packed with routine nail care is a very different business than a day with surgical consults, maybe shockwave, custom orthotics.

You know your website's outdated. You know patients are googling you and maybe choosing the competitor. But the uncertainty of changing anything kinda keep some people stuck. And doing nothing isn't safe. It just slows you down and kinda moves you further away from your goal.

So now your people are paying for an an action either way. People sometimes just prefer delay than than take that first step.

Yeah. It's true though. I know people, but they'll say they are absolutely flat out. But then you'll hear another conversation, and they're talking about trying to get money together for school fees for the for the kids. Or and you're sitting there shaking your head going, hang on.

How can you be that busy and and saying that you're you're flat you booked out three months ahead, yet you can't you're you're struggling to pay your bills? So that must be a it must be a terrible place to be in in your career.

No. It's tricky. Right? Because like we talked about, you know, that it's four years of podiatry school in The US, three years of residency, and then you just jump into practice. Know, and maybe some people are lucky enough to have to spend time in either private practices or kind of feel really drawn to a certain part of the profession that that gives them fulfillment and they feel like they know what they're doing.

Maybe they had a relative, or a parent, or someone in the profession that could give them a little bit of guidance. But I think there's a real lack of mentorship sometimes. And you know it can lead to that kind of busy but broke paradox where people have busy schedules, they're not seeing the type of patients they want to. The margins are relatively thin, the case mix, you know, is more volume than kind of the high value stuff that they wanna see. So it's a really really important thing to like, you know, be deliberate about the types of patient you're seeing, and the kind of signals you're sending out there to kinda build the practice you wanna build.

Yeah. Well, I think of hearing that busy broke sort of paradox too. It it all just starts with, I think, realizing that's where you are at, and then just start making those small changes. You can't just make dramatic changes overnight. You just gotta do it over a gradual period of time.

No consistency is key. And and like we talked about, you know, the cost of it in action compounds, you know, three or more years of the wrong patient mix. There's three more years of losing surgical cases to the practice across town, and you kinda diminishing some of your skills. You know, three more years of a, you know, a 2014 website representing, you know, you to every person who searches your name. Like it is it has damaging effects on your reputation.

It is it's funny to think about that, but there's more of those out there than you could really expect. So you know, what feels like you're playing it safe is actually almost a guarantee that you're gonna get an outcome you don't want. So you gotta arrive, you know, you gotta build up consistently and slowly, but you need to make sure you're taking steps in the right direction. Otherwise, you're going to be three to five years down the road and heading in the wrong direction.

Yeah. I'm always surprised when someone has the website, and they have not spent the money. And these people sometimes have clinics where they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I mean, they're a profitable business, and they still do their own website or the kids do the website or the friend down the road in the garage does the website. They do not have a professional person doing the website for them.

And I can never understand that.

Yeah. It's pretty shocking, but, you know, especially as we become more and more digital every year. Right? So just those lost that kinda opportunity costs associated with not, you know, staying staying with the the trends and and kind of being visible online. Yeah.

It it's can definitely bite you. If not now, down the road.

Yeah. Well, a friend of mine, Nikki Judd, who, like yourself, does websites. And she said to me, you know what? I could also dig out my own ingrown toenail. She said, but it'd be funny if I said that to a podiatrist.

She said, am I better just to treat my own ingrown toenail at home, or should I see a professional who does it? And they would all say, you should see a professional who does it every day because it will be done right. And then you say, oh, so you have a professional do your website? Oh, no. No.

I I do it myself because it's it's cheaper and easier.

Right.

So it's sort of I I don't if people can actually see the the the double standards in that.

For sure.

So yeah. Anyway, what's next, Jim?

So next is fear fear lives in the vague. And so when you make something specific, you can actually kind of go after that scary thing. Right? When things are a little bit more specific, it's a lot less scary. So you know, I'm going to invest in marketing and what if it doesn't work?

Mhmm. That's kind of very terrifying because it's very vague in nature. You know, your brain fills your head with kind of the worst potential outcome. But getting specific kind of helps shrinks that down. So say you spend $1,500 a month on Google Ads for heel pain, you you run it for ninety days, that's forty five hundred dollars.

It's not generating appointments, you just pause it. You spend $4,500 and you learn exactly what doesn't work in your practice. So you still have your practice, you still have your patients, you still have your license, you know they're not taking that away from you. Now you compare you know one empty appointment slot at you know $300 on average. That's you know, 6 figures a year in lost revenue.

So that $4,500 risk, you know, looks like a different number when you can kind of quantify it with some some real numbers in your practice.

And sometimes, so you're investing $4,500. How many patients do you really need to get in to at least just get your money back? And if you're doing that over a ninety day period, I reckon you could be running the one of the worst ads in the world. You would probably still at least get your money back. But you said, if you're doing it and you're not getting anything, you still learn what didn't work.

And you can either pause it, you can tweak it, you can make changes to it, and and you'll find you you will get your money back, if not more.

Yeah. I would say the moment you kind of attach real numbers to specific decisions, then it's almost, you know, that that profit gets much much smaller, and the fear gets smaller. Like I talked about the scenario with the Google Ads, you know, the worst thing you can do, you know, if you you're out $4,500, it's not the best thing in the world, but it's not also kinda catastrophic. Mhmm. It's something that you can really take, you know, take a lesson from.

Move on. Try something different. You know, life is all about learning, you know, taking a certain amount of calculated risk. And if you're just always playing it safe, and you're not kinda going after these opportunities, some of them are gonna work out, some of them aren't, but like, you don't know until you try.

Yeah. And how much risk did people put on the line when they decided that we're gonna become a podiatrist? How much money was invested and was on the line with no guarantees you were ever going to pass or you're ever gonna be qualified? But they go, oh, yeah. But that's just that's just a natural thing that you do.

It's it's part of the the stage of life that you gotta go through. I think, well, this is exactly the same with your business. You've got to put money out there. You've got to invest it in in marketing in one way or another. That's just part of the natural progression of a business.

Yeah. That that's true. And as much as would put numbers on things too, sometimes it's not actually the financial thing that people are most fearful of. It's looking foolish. Yeah.

You know, it's worrying about what colleagues or a spouse or like a partner in the practice will think. It's admitting you need help with something, you know, you feel like you should already know. You know, you're you're a doctor, you know, a foot doctor, a podiatrist, you you know, you went to four years of school and residency, and you should know all these things. Right? But we have to also know what we don't know, and you're not supposed to have all the answers.

So admitting you don't know how to mark your practice can feel like a weakness to some of the some some clinics or to some people I work with.

Yeah. I think you just gotta accept you don't have the skills in every area. There was a a dentist I was talking to recently, and then I heard him on this podcast say the same thing. And he said he already knew when he started as a dentist and was working that he was never going to be in the top echelon of dentists. His skill set just wasn't negative.

He just wasn't that good. He was good, but he wasn't that good. He was never gonna be a stand at. But he really loved business, so he knew that it was something he was naturally good at, so therefore, he put a lot more time and attention to it and end up building an exceptional business. But he had more of an interest in that.

It did it didn't come naturally to him, but he knew that if he put the work in and decide and made that decision that I'm going to be good at business, he said, then things just fell into place for him. I think everybody else can do the same thing.

No. That's a great point. You know, the some of the podiatrists that I know that are growing the fastest got comfortable saying, you know, I don't know how to do this. I'm gonna find somebody who does. Opposed to like, I'm gonna take on another burden.

I'm gonna take on another thing and have to learn and spend time with, you know. So it's it's a pretty common thing.

Yeah. There's a lot of things that I've done in the past where I wish I had outsourced it to somebody else and just had them do it, and just focused on where my time and attention was was better spent, which is why I never have designed my own website. Wouldn't even know where to start. I've I've no idea. I have no idea on how to to do a website, but I do know how to once it's built for me, and to get in the back end, I can change as many things as I want.

But the actual doing it, no. And I'm not interested. I don't wanna learn how to do it. For sure. That's your job.

Do have a good one? Yep. Okay. What's next?

Yeah. So next is just realizing that you're not the only one. I've got an example here of like three podiatrists, three paths with the same uncertainty. You know, three podiatrists I'm gonna tell you about. You know, one left practice entirely to build something new.

One transitioned from clinical work into become an editor at a podiatry publication.

Yeah.

You know, one stayed in practice and built, you know, systems in a practice they love. Three really completely different paths, but the common thread is that, you know, all three hit a point at some point in time where there was no playbook and kind of no guaranteed outcome. So the people that will tell you that they've got it all figured out, they're full of shit. I mean, like, everyone's still trying to figure out what you wanna do. Maybe you have good systems or a good team.

Maybe they're not completely full of shit, but like but at the same time, everyone started doing kind of their own thing, maybe some help along the way, some mentorship. But you know, the worst case, these kind of three people I talked about, the worst case scenarios, you know, none of them none of those things happened. You know, like the actual hard parts were the things they never thought to worry about. If you're waiting for certainty to take action, you're gonna be waiting forever. So it's a really important thing to like be okay with the uncertainty.

Yeah. I think the amazing part now is there is so many podiatry who have done so many cool things, that whatever you're thinking about doing, I think that path there's there's already been trailblazers there that have already done it, that have have Yeah. Done things similar to what you wanna do. Now if you're coming up with something completely different, yep. You've gotta set you know, create a whole new path.

But there's a lot of information out there in a lot of different areas. You just gotta tap into the people. Like even yourself, move with what you're doing with online ads, you go back ten years ago, there was no podiatrist that I knew of that was actually doing

No. I didn't. And at that time, I didn't. There's yeah. For sure.

Yeah. When I started my first podcast, I couldn't I didn't know any other podiatrist that was doing podcasting. But now, there's, like, 35 of them or something. Every week. There's podcasts all over the place.

Yeah. There's quite a bit out But it's kinda like talked about those as different paths. Like there's you and I who kinda like, you know, we both practice for a while. Now we're doing something different. Like I mentioned, the example of the the person who's an editor at a publication is her name is Jennifer Spector.

You know, she's a board certified DPM. She spent like twelve years in practice, and then she really got involved with leadership, and she's always had a passion for writing and editing. And she found her way out of clinical practice into doing something like that. And then, you know, someone you the only guest we've had so far on the show

Yeah.

You know, Don Peltos

Oh, you Don.

Know, along with kinda like, you know, having a successful practice of his own. He loves marketing. He loves, you know, sharing kind of educational ways to help his patients get better. So I mean, everyone kind of forges their own path a little bit differently. There's no cookie cutter way of going about doing it, you know.

You can find your own path, and there's gonna be some uncertainty along that way, but that's kind of what makes it fun in some ways.

Well, is, but yeah. I like it. Like I said, I I enjoy the uncertainty, because it makes life exciting. If anything was just really planned out, and I knew I did this at when I was at the Foot and Ankle Show, we went to a dinner for Plan three sixty five. And one of the questions and asked if I could do a little talk.

The first question I asked them was if you knew you could do anything you wanted and could not fail, that it was 100% guaranteed it was gonna work, what would you do? What risk would you take? And you can see everyone looking around actually thinking about it. And but then what I was there to talk about was about how you set your fees. And I said, if you knew that you could set your fees at whatever level you wanted and no patient would complain that it was a guarantee you were gonna win, would you do it?

Every single person put their hand up. I said, just do it because you won't know until you do it whether that will be the case. You could be fearing something. That's never going to happen.

No. Absolutely. That's that's a great point.

So what's next?

So next is that just realizing there's no secret formula, and people should stop looking at someone else's playbook. I think you definitely learn lessons from others, but like we talked about it's gonna be different for you than it is somebody else. You're gonna be in a different location, you're coming up at a different time. Note the variables, you can't just take someone else's playbook and just automatically kind of copy paste it into your situation. So I can't tell you the number of times a podiatrist asked me, just tell me what to do, you know, doctor so and so does, and do the exact same thing for me.

In most way most cases, it doesn't work like that. Their market is different, their patient demographics are different, their competition is different. You know, what does work is understanding the fundamentals, you know, applying them to your specific situation. So, know, you patients search for Google when they, you know, they have a foot problem, we know that. They look at reviews, they check your website, they check you know, they decide in minutes if you're the right person for them.

So those truths don't change. You know, how you apply them, you know, a rural practice versus a downtown practice, a surgeon versus someone who likes to do orthotics. Your competitors are running kind of a generic player playbook. Mhmm. You can beat them by being more specific.

Yeah. I think it's I always get amazed when somebody will see what somebody else is doing, and they think, oh, I have to do that because it must be working for them because they've seen their ads. And it it doesn't mean that it's been successful. There's a particular company at the moment in Australia, the Australian company, who's blurting out every time I go on Instagram, Facebook, they've got ads running. Sometimes I'll be scrolling through it and it's like every third or fourth ad is theirs.

Just talking about their proven Facebook strategy on how to do something. And but I remember twelve months ago, they were saying, Facebook is dead. Don't use it. We've got this other strategy. I'm thinking, hang on.

This contradicts exactly what you said before. And and they're just jumping for one thing or the next. And, obviously, they must be doing it tougher because I've never seen so much advertising from the January right through until now. Just constantly pushing it. Because they know people see that, and they just eat it up.

So they just keep doing it.

Yeah. That must be either working or we we don't know behind the scenes though. Right? So you know, these kind of template whether it be websites or big vendors, they just they just do what everyone else does. Right?

And the the opportunity to be unique, to show value in ways that are not being seen, you know that but like like I said, the fundamentals stay consistent. So you know patient search via Google, sometimes even these new things like ChatGPT or Claude, they read reviews, they visit websites, they're trying to find ways to find trust signals to to make sure that you're the right clinic for them. So those things, the way you apply it to a rural clinic in Wisconsin versus a Downtown Chicago practice, they're gonna be a bit different, but you know the fundamentals are the same.

Do you just gonna stop watching what everybody else is doing? Just focus it on what you wanna do, and what's gonna serve your community the best.

That's that's that's perfect advice.

Okay. Continue.

Yeah. So the last point is really just there's no better time to get started than today. You know, the the the best time to get started was, you know, what, two years ago, and the second best time to get started is today. So Isn't that a Chinese

proverb about cleaning a tree?

Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I didn't it's not it's not original for me. It's somewhere I've I picked that up somewhere before.

Okay. Sorry.

That's okay. But you gotta pick your lane, you kinda based on where you are right now. So, you know, if you have more we've talked about this in the past, you know, If you have more time than money right now, you know, go you know, go claim or update your Google business profile. It's free. It takes an hour.

Probably the single highest leverage thing you can do for your local visibility. You know, if you have budget and you're nervous, you know, maybe pick a procedure you want to do more of, not five, just want to build you know a great page either yourself or working with someone like a marketer that could do that for you. That's your beachhead, right? You know, everything else comes later. And if you're you know meaning to do something about your marketing you know for over a year, stop researching, stop comparing options.

The perfect moment, like I said, the perfect time to do that was last year, and second time best time to do it is today. So, you know, be more, you know, taking action is gonna lead to results, and just sitting back and doing nothing is gonna, you know, not only be like kind of status quo, but long term that's a negative. You're gonna be heading down the wrong path by not taking action. Because by not deciding, you're still making decision.

That's a that's a yeah. That's a great quote that I have heard somewhere else before as well. But, yeah, it's true. If you don't decide, you've actually made decision. So we will say, I don't wanna make a decision.

But if you don't do anything, you've already decided.

It's a song. I'm trying to remember what song it's you know, if you you you still cannot decide you still have made a choice, and if it's like yeah. Maybe it's I was Pink Floyd or who it is.

See, we need to do a bit more research before we press record so we can actually throw it out there. But these some of these comments just come about because we're we're talking. But I think I mentioned on the podcast that there was someone I was talking to in Cairns, and their parents were looking at a unit on the Gold Coast. And at the time, it was 1,100,000.0. And they're retiring and thinking, should we or shouldn't we?

Should we or shouldn't we? Now they had the money to do it, but we'll just wait. They waited two years, and now the department's, like, 2 and a half million. They can't afford it. Just by waiting two years.

I think when it's your business and there's certain things you know you should be doing and you keep putting it off I think Tim Ferriss had a quote because I used it at a recent workshop. I can't remember it word for word, but he's basically saying, busyness is a sign of laziness because you use being something along the lines, you use being busy as an excuse not to do the things that you know you really should be doing. Was was said a little bit better than that. That was the guts of it. So people will say, oh, I'm too busy to do this.

I'm too busy to I know I should be doing this, but I'm too busy. But those things they're putting off are so important. It's like your health. If you know there's something wrong with you, and you keep putting it off because you think it's gonna go away because you're too busy with your patients, who will my patients see? They'll see somebody else when you're in a box.

Yeah. We only have a limited amount of time here on this this blue dot, so you gotta take you gotta make the most of it. Right?

I know. Okay. Where do we move on from here?

Yeah. Would just add a little bit to that that you like talked about. You know, if you've been if people have been installing for a period of time, you know, it it's time to take action. You know, even little you know, taking little steps is better than just kind of maintaining the status quo. So, you know, every imperfect thing you do, unless it's really, really bad.

Like, I maybe I should put a little bit of a qualifier there. It's like, you know, making sure that, you know, every little step you do is gonna move you to where you want to go. So, you know, the only real failure is never really starting. So I think that's a really really important thing to kind of kind of wrap up there. And I would say, you know, staying stuck, you know, carries its own costs, know, to kind of provide kind of an overview of what we're talking about tonight.

You know, it's just a really really slow one. You know, fear shrinks when you make it specific and you run actual numbers, you know, talking about those three different kind of podiatry paths, maybe you don't know what you wanna do, and that's okay. But that's uncertainty can lead to some pretty great results. So there's no secret formula, just kind of fundamentals that are applied in in your specific situation, and the best thing you can do this year is get started. Don't don't wait for someone to give you permission.

You know what you wanna build. I'm sure if you, you know, spend some time reflecting like Tyson and I, you know, mentioned in previous podcasts, spend some time about who's your ideal patient, what do you wanna see more of, what do you not wanna see. Once you kind of just answer those questions for yourself, you'll have a better sense of the direction you went ahead. So I really encourage people to to embrace that uncertainty, and to know that everybody, you know, everybody kinda feels like an impostor, either sometime or all the time, and that's It's not okay to be paralyzed and and not take action.

Yeah. The whole impostor syndrome, the amount of in the Podiatry Legends podcast, over 400 episodes, the amount of guests I've had on there, there's so many people off air when we and we're just talking. And these are some of the big names from the the states that if people heard them say this, would not believe believe me. And I've told and I said to them, just out of curiosity, did you ever have impostor syndrome? And these people are heads of universities and all that.

They go, still do. I get I still concern one day people figure out I'm not as good as what they think. So so we all suffer that. So if you've only been out one or two years, or you've only had your business a couple of years, and you're thinking, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. People find out, I'm gonna look really silly.

Everybody is thinking exactly the same thing.

No. Absolutely. And I think, like we talked about previously, that it's important to take action. Right? So I'd I'd really recommend people this week, you pick one thing.

Maybe it's the type of procedure you want to do more of. Maybe it's take a look at your Google Business profile. Maybe it's talking to a business coach like Tyson, or talking to someone who does marketing like myself, and just, you know, commit to that decision that you've been delaying. And, you know, and kinda measure, you know, see how you're doing over the next ninety days. Mhmm.

You know, measure, you know, take some daily reflection or weekly reflection to see, are you making progress towards that goal? Because you've gotta get started in order to make the progress you want. So, you know, if anyone's, you know, gotten value from today's podcast and feel like there's things that could benefit others, you know, share this with them. You know, send your friend a a text message with a link to the podcast or send a colleague an email. The more people that hear about our podcast and they can really kinda take action, not only with their marketing, but their practice in general, I think the more successful and the more kind of uplift we can provide to to the profession.

So we really appreciate everyone that listens so far, but it'd be great if we get some additional listeners to to help us spread this message message.

Don't keep this information to yourself. If you found this episode helpful, I'm sure you have podiatry friends that would find it useful. So just say to them next time you bump into them, by the way, are you a fan of the Podiatry Marketing Podcast with Tyson Franklin and Big Jim Mac? And see what they say. And if they say, I've never heard of it, you you have done them a favor by letting them know about the podcast.

And then after you've done that, of course, you've raved about it, perfect time to do a rating and review while you're talking about it. Because you probably showed them on your phone, hey, this is what the podcast is all about.

And, yeah, if if people gotten value from it, it's only it's only the right thing to do by to share with other people. So so Oh, yeah.

If you keep it to yourself, you're a total bastard. You're you're an awful person. Yeah. You're sort of yeah. Yeah.

You're a terrible person if you don't share it. Okay, Big Jim.

Fantastic. I think we'll We'll leave it

on that note. We've just we've just offended everybody who's been listening to the show for a while. But don't worry. We'll be back next week to offend those and more.

It's not like a plan, Tyson.

Okay. I look forward to it. See you later, Jim.

Bye now. 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.