329 – Podiatrists Aren’t Boring; They’re Stable & Compliant with Deb Johnstone

Jul 1, 2024

In this episode of the Podiatry Legends Podcast, host Tyson E Franklin welcomes Deb Johnstone for her fourth appearance to discuss the perception of podiatrists. She highlights that stability and compliance are prevalent in the profession while debunking the myth that podiatrists are uninspired or ‘boring.’ 

The conversation covers the importance of questioning the status quo, balancing adherence to rules with innovative thinking, and stepping out of one’s comfort zone for personal and professional growth. 

Deb also shares insights into behaviour types and the necessity of continuous self-improvement. This episode contains anecdotes, examples, and advice to inspire podiatrists to embrace change and challenge themselves.

Deb Johnstone can be contacted at success@debjohnstone.com.au or at visit her website www.debjohnstone.com.au.

If you have any questions about this episode, you can contact me at tyson@podiatrylegends.com

Saturday, the 24th of August, 2024, CAIRNS. 

The Power of Persuasion: The Mindsets, Strategies, and Tactics that Enhance Leadership Success and Profitability with Dave Frees

This LIVE one-day event with Dave Frees will be life-changing. It is rare to have this calibre of speaker in Australia, let alone Cairns, so I suggest doing whatever you can to attend. There are only a limited number of seats available, so I would not sit on the fence too long. 

REGISTER

Schedule a FREE 30-minute Zoom Call with Me.

If you have questions about your podiatry business, team, personal goals and career direction, organise a time to talk with me. I’m here to help in any way I can. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  

I recommend following the link below to my calendar and scheduling a free 30-minute Zoom call. I guarantee that after we talk, you will have far more clarity on what is best for you, your business and your career.

My SCHEDULE – https://calendly.com/tysonfranklin/podmeeting30

FACEBOOK GROUP Podiatry Business Owners Club – https://www.facebook.com/groups/podiatrybusinessownersclub

MY BOOK is available on AMAZON

It’s No Secret…There’s Money in Podiatry – https://amzn.to/3JhO9cz

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, I’m Tyson Franklin and welcome to this week’s episode of the Podiatry Legends Podcast. The podcast designed to help you feel, see, and think differently about the podiatry profession. With me today is a good friend, it is Deb Johnson. This is her fourth appearance being on the podcast.

[00:00:15] She was back on episode 89 when I introduced Deb was my mindset coach and still is today. My Mindset Coach, which I think it’s coming up almost a decade, Deb, in case you’re wondering. Surprised you’ve worked with me that long. You’re also on episode 171 and 266. So Deb owns a business called Transformational Pathways Australia.

[00:00:39] What is your website address for that, Deb?

[00:00:42] It’s actually, www. debjohnston. com. au.

[00:00:47] Okay. So anyway, Deb, welcome back to Podiatry Legends. How are you doing?

[00:00:52] I’m good. Yeah, I’m really good. Thanks for having me back.

[00:00:56] Feels like we only spoke the other day. Yeah, for the fourth time. And it feels like we only [00:01:00] spoke yesterday, which I think we did only speak yesterday.

[00:01:05] So today we’re going to talk about something a little bit different. And this came about by a conversation that You and I had a couple of months ago and I said, I, a lot of podiatrists refer to other podiatrists sometimes as being a little bit uninspired.

[00:01:20] They sometimes seem like zombies that they just, everyone just keeps following the same path and they’re a little boring. And what we worked out when we were talking is that is not really the case.

[00:01:33] No,

[00:01:34] we have come up with a whole new theory on this.

[00:01:36] Let’s make this really clear as well. Is that, not. All podiatrists are the same because human behavior is really complex and there’s always exceptions to the general rule. So, not all podiatrists actually present that way. But some of them do, and a lot of them do, and it’s not true.

[00:01:58] It’s not true. [00:02:00]

[00:02:00] No, it’s not true.

[00:02:01] But we also figured out it’s the, in the healthcare profession in general, and we’d be talking podiatry, physiotherapy, optometry, dentistry, all the whole health industry would pretty much what we’re about to talk about would cover a lot of people in the profession and all those different professions.

[00:02:20] Yeah, absolutely. It absolutely would. This, what I call energetic type or behavior type is through a lot of the health industry. And that’s a good thing. We want them in the health industry, because they’re quite exact, you know, they’re quite precise. They really care about people and they make sure that they, as you were saying they do the same thing over and over again and they make sure that they follow the rules.

[00:02:49] It’s really important.

[00:02:51] Yeah, and that was part of, that was how the conversation between you and I came about

[00:02:55] Was because I said, yeah, there’s certain people, it wouldn’t matter. [00:03:00] Because you’ve got the registration board rules, AHPRA rules, and every country would have their own registration rules, but then you can have an association which you don’t have to be a member of, and they have rules.

[00:03:11] And there’s certain podiatrists that it wouldn’t matter what the association said. If they said, this is the rule, they will just follow it. They won’t even question it because that is the rule. That’s just the way it’s supposed to be done. Then you can have other people who we have the registration rules, which we know must follow, but when we sometimes see association rules, we go yeah.

[00:03:34] I’ve got to, I’ve got to question that, and we tend to associate with people that are similar to ourselves in our thinking. And I think that’s why we look at each other a little bit different.

[00:03:46] Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, not all podiatrists have this particular behavior type.

[00:03:53] You, for instance, don’t, right? And a few of my other [00:04:00] clients that I’ve worked with who podiatrists don’t, right? Yeah, but the majority do. Not just the rules, but the systems they really love following systems. And when you’re in, I’m not just talking about the rules of the industry, I’m also talking about the systems that you use to treat a patient in a certain way.

[00:04:22] You know, if they’ve got a particular complaint, there’s a certain system that you take them through to treat that particular complaint. And and. If that system isn’t followed, then it doesn’t always result that well for the patient. So it’s great that we’ve got this particular behavior type that likes being in podiatry because we want them to be there.

[00:04:47] Then they’re going to do a good job. They’re going to make sure they do it right. They’re going to make sure they’re really precise about it and they actually care about the person that they’re treating as well.

[00:04:57] But can you look at this in two different ways? Like I love [00:05:00] systems myself, I’m a mad systems person, I love following systems because I know you get a predictable outcome.

[00:05:08] But I also question systems if something doesn’t look right, but you can have other people that can just follow a system because there’s an outcome, but will also never question anything. So where’s the personality coming where you tend to question things a little bit more? That’s yours. That’s yours.

[00:05:25] That’s where your particular type comes in, right? Is you do question it. You do challenge the status quo and that is what creates. Great change, right? It’s what creates, that’s what helps you find different ideas and different ways of doing things that can actually help you treat patients in a different way that are going to give them even better results.

[00:05:47] And I’ve watched, I watched you do that when you were in your clinic and I watch it, I watch you do it in your coaching and mentoring business as well. You’ve got that real ideas thing happening which, and you’re quite [00:06:00] driven to actually create a change around it. You question things, you try to look for a different way of doing things that they’re actually going to work.

[00:06:08] And so this is where that traditional type that normally goes into podiatry, this is where they can get stuck because they’re not questioning the status quo. They’re not looking at better ways of doing things. They’re just following the system.

[00:06:26] Okay. So if somebody is taught something, a particular university, And it probably depends who the lecturers are at the time as well, to a certain extent, but then they get a job somewhere working for someone who also doesn’t like a lot of change, just follows the same way of doing things.

[00:06:42] And they do that for a number of years. Sometimes a profession could move on and there could be better ways of doing it. But because they’re so used to just following the status quo, they don’t, they don’t see the change.

[00:06:56] No. And this is the thing, because that particular [00:07:00] behavior type is quite happy to just stay with the blinkers on and just keep doing the same thing.

[00:07:06] I’m not saying there’s right or wrong in this. It’s just what is resourceful in helping you create better outcomes for patients in helping you create a better business. And what isn’t. There’s a certain amount of following systems, following different patterns of treating patients following different ways of running your business that are important, that those systems really work, but at some stage.

[00:07:32] They don’t work that well, and this is where the change makers make the difference. So like you said, there could be other podiatrists out there doing really different things and getting great results. But if you keep continuing doing the same thing over and over again, which comes naturally to you, because that’s the way you’re wired, you’re going to get left behind.

[00:07:54] Okay, but sometimes too, if you challenge the status quo too much, you’re , you [00:08:00] can get yourself in strife. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the, you’ve gotta stay within the boundaries

[00:08:06] yeah. Yeah. That’s right, that’s right. There has to be balance. This is a thing. So it’s about. Okay, so you challenge the status quo a lot. So someone with your particular personality and behaviour type, you’ve probably had to learn to pull the reins in sometimes.

[00:08:24] Sometimes, yeah.

[00:08:25] Yeah. Whereas someone who naturally follows the systems and just follows the rules, maybe needs to let the reins out a little bit.

[00:08:35] Does it make sense?

[00:08:36] Yeah, it does. And I’ve had somebody say to me once, I bet you wish the registration board didn’t even exist. And I went, no, I said exact opposite, actually. I said, what I like about having the registration board in there is someone that keeps us in check.

[00:08:50] I said, because if there was no registration board, it would just be, the profession would be crazy. People would be doing the crazy and there’s enough people already doing some [00:09:00] things that are questionable. And if you didn’t have somebody coming down and going, Hey, you’ve got to just check what you’re doing, then yeah, it would be out of hand.

[00:09:11] But I think the other set, like you said, there’s other people who just accept everything that they’re told, never questioned anything because they don’t want to, they don’t want to ruffle any feathers.

[00:09:21] Yeah, and so it’s learning. It’s just learning how to. I don’t know, step out of your normal behavior from time to time because that is what’s going to create change.

[00:09:34] Whether you are a change maker and you’re driven to challenge the status quo or whether you are, you naturally just follow the systems and follow the rules and then maybe it’s time for you to actually look up from what you’re doing and see what else is going on out there as well and start to question things as well.

[00:09:54] It really comes down to balance. And here’s the thing though. is whichever [00:10:00] behavior type you are and wherever it is that you’re challenged, whether you find it difficult to do something a little bit differently, or whether you find it difficult to pull in the reins because you’re challenging a little bit too much it takes more energy to do that too.

[00:10:18] I think when I was a younger podiatrist, I used to challenge everything and it was very tiring. As I got older, I started realising which battles were worth fighting and which ones were just not worth arguing with because you thought you’re probably not going to change it.

[00:10:33] But there were other things I thought, yeah, it may change over time.

[00:10:37] Yeah.

[00:10:38] So it can get tiring if you’re trying to challenge everything.

[00:10:41] Yeah. And also it’s, it can be a little bit draining to actually pull in the reins when you want to question something and just hold yourself back.

[00:10:50] That can be draining as well.

[00:10:53] Yeah, it’s, I find social media at the moment, like a bit of a pain in the bum. Because I [00:11:00] was listening to a podcast and I had the psychologist talking about the difference between face to face communication and how human beings need to interact with each other to communicate properly, but because of social media, we can all be these heroes.

[00:11:18] And there’s people that can beat their chest and can be keyboard warriors, but face to face they’re, it’s not them. And 90 percent of the communication now with other people is through keyboards. Yes. And we’re actually really losing a connection with each other.

[00:11:34] Yes, we are. But

[00:11:36] we’re not bonding as well as what we should.

[00:11:38] Yeah, that’s really true. That’s very true for the social media system who initially the idea was to create more connection because it was initially set up to as a communication system for university, wasn’t it? Yeah. So when you think about the initial intent was to actually create more connections, it’s [00:12:00] having the opposite effect.

[00:12:02] I’ve seen Facebook groups where certain people and they are like masters of the universe on there. And they get their chest puffs out, and they’re quite rude.

[00:12:11] They’ll say they’re honest. I actually find them quite rude on there. And every comment they make, there’s always just seems to be this little undertone, but I know. If they were face to face in a group of people, they wouldn’t utter half of what they say on social media. And that just concerns me for the profession long term that you’ve got a lot of younger people coming through and they’re scared to say things on social media because these people have been around 15, 20 years attack them.

[00:12:43] Yeah.

[00:12:44] And then when they go to events, I think a lot of them get to events and they don’t realise, don’t worry, you’re safer live because they won’t say anything to you. But then I’ve seen those same people at a live event and you’ll start talking to them and they sort of said, Oh, I don’t talk too much at conferences anymore [00:13:00] because I get attacked online and they think they’re actually going to get attacked live and go no, you’re safe live because they won’t say anything to you.

[00:13:06] Yeah, right. Gee, that’s interesting.

[00:13:10] Yeah, it is. It’s not just

[00:13:11] podiatry, it happens. I can talk to my brother in dentistry, he says same thing happens. Friends in optometry, they say the same thing happens.

[00:13:17] So they’re beating their chest. I know everything. You’re asking stupid questions, which is no such thing as a stupid question.

[00:13:24] To me, what’s stupid is when somebody is not sure about Answer.

[00:13:27] So they don’t ask the question.

[00:13:29] And I tell people that work with me. I go, if you’re not sure about something with a patient, I would rather you ask me.

[00:13:34] Yeah.

[00:13:35] And we resolve it than you just going off and doing something. Yeah. And then you do it wrong. And then we have to sort try and fix that up. So if you’re not sure the answer, ask .

[00:13:44] Yeah. But in some of the Facebook groups, someone will ask a question and then all these people are diving on there like, Oh, seriously, I can’t believe you don’t know this. And then they make reference to different articles and I’m going, it’s wasn’t really what they asked for, but [00:14:00] anyway.,

[00:14:01] That’s exactly the reason why people don’t ask questions because of that kind of response. It is. That is incredibly unresourceful behavior. And what you were saying is when you’re in clinic, I’d rather you ask me questions than do it incorrectly. And so the natural behavior type that generally goes into podiatry and a lot of other careers in health is that type that doesn’t like to ask a lot of questions.

[00:14:31] Okay,

[00:14:32] interesting, isn’t it? They like to be seen as the expert. So asking questions makes them look like they’re not the expert. Interesting.

[00:14:42] And it’s one of those things we’re in practice, it’s called practice for a reason, because we are constantly in practice mode. We were always learning and no one can know everything.

[00:14:51] And I know when I’ve been at five years, once I got at 10 years, I knew I was better than what I was after five. I knew after 20, I was better after 10. [00:15:00] Because it’s just the experience of seeing patients and communicating with them, and the more patients see, the better you’re going to get.

[00:15:07] It’s true. And again, that behavior type tend to feel more confident about their work and how good they are at their work after a period of time too.

[00:15:19] So the more they do it, the better they’re going to get, or the better they’re going to feel about it.

[00:15:22] Yeah, that’s right. It’s interesting that they need to ask questions, but they’re not asking them. The more they get shot down like that, the less likely they are to ask questions. Even in the clinic.

[00:15:34] Okay. So you’re saying in healthcare it’s known throughout healthcare that we’re not big question askers.

[00:15:41] We don’t ask a lot of questions. So many of your

[00:15:43] patients, you’d be asking questions of your patients , hopefully,

[00:15:48] but we don’t ask, we’re not naturally going to ask questions. externally. So when people are asking questions externally, like on Facebook, if they’re then shot down then they’re even less likely to ask [00:16:00] questions in the future.

[00:16:01] Yeah, that’s right. I’ve seen it happen heaps and heaps of times where people don’t ask questions. I’ve even felt that in, in the past myself, when I’ve asked a question and someone’s laughed, it just shuts you down. You don’t want to ask any more questions. And really, if someone is laughing or putting down your question or laughing at you because you don’t know, then you really got to ask yourself, is it really a reflection of me and my wisdom and my knowledge or is it a complete reflection of them and their unresourceful behavior? And maybe they’re the fact that they feel a need to prove themselves.

[00:16:44] Oh yeah.

[00:16:45] Yeah.

[00:16:46] And that’s, I was reading a book recently and it said a lot of people that have an inferiority complex pretend they’re more superior than everybody else.

[00:16:56] And they put, they try and make out the more superior by [00:17:00] their actions because they feel so inferior.

[00:17:02] That’s right. And

[00:17:04] when I read that, I went. Wow, that’s really strange that they actually pretend to be superior because they’re inferior, but the person who doesn’t feel inferior or superior will just be themselves.

[00:17:16] Yeah.

[00:17:18] And they never try to put people down. There’s just who they are.

[00:17:21] Yeah, exactly. Any kind of behaviour like that of, Oh, you mean you don’t know that? Or laughing at what you’re asking? Or, it’s generally a reflection of them needing to boost themselves up. That kind of behaviour , is generally a sign that person doesn’t feel that great about themselves.

[00:17:41] And the way they feel better about themselves is by putting somebody else down. That’s how they do it.

[00:17:47] Okay. So do people also do this to try and hold a certain position within a profession or at a university that they’ll always. Make sure everybody knows that they’re a professor of this [00:18:00] or associate professor or a lecture that they will always have to bring that up in conversation.

[00:18:06] So everybody knows, look, I hold actually hold a position of authority.

[00:18:10] Yeah.

[00:18:11] And that’s their way of actually building themselves up.

[00:18:13] Yes, absolutely. Not

[00:18:14] always too, because I know some people at the universities that hold high positions who are awesome people.

[00:18:20] Yeah.

[00:18:21] So I’m just using that as just a generalised example.

[00:18:25] Yeah. Yeah. It can be like you say, not always. And like I said, we’re talking generally here because there’s always exceptions, but often with, especially with the need to prove themselves and to repeat over and over again who they are and what they’ve done. It’s or in using that to put someone else down.

[00:18:45] It’s generally unresourceful significance, like they’re significance seekers, and they’re doing it unresourcefully. And what I want to say here is this, it’s not a judgment on that person either, because they may have been through some awful things in [00:19:00] their life that have led them to behave that way.

[00:19:03] Yeah, no, I understand that. Like I know, even when I went through university, because I went to a state school, not a private school, I copped a lot of shit from people that went to private schools at the time. So when I got out, I used that as my energy to work hard. Yeah. But sometimes I probably used it too much.

[00:19:27] So something that was being a positive in my life, at some stage, but probably a negative in my life, because I was letting it, affect my health and just my overall wellbeing until I sort of got my head around it.

[00:19:39] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Working hard. These are all signs working too hard. Feeling like you’ve got to achieve more than everybody else.

[00:19:47] Yeah. All of those behavior patterns are indications that there’s something else going on. Maybe something that’s happened in your past where you’ve been where you’ve chosen to believe that you’re not good enough, [00:20:00] or you’re not as good as that person, or you’re not worthy, or whatever it is, can lead someone.

[00:20:07] To carry out those behavior patterns continually, like you say, until you come a cropper and it affects your health.

[00:20:15] Yeah. Yeah. No, but I remember going through and there were certain people that would say certain things to you. And then they, you go to their house and they’d make out that they were doing a lot better than what they were.

[00:20:27] And it’s not until you get older that you reflect back and you go, actually, they’re that great. That’s right. And the job that their parents had, yes, they went to a great school. Because the parents worked hard to put them there. So I think as your brain matures, you start realizing the truth of some of these things, which is great, but it’s also when you’ll get, you’ll hear some podiatrists and I’ve done videos on this.

[00:20:51] I don’t know if I’ve done a video on this one, but they’ll say, Oh, I don’t care about money. I care more about my patients than making money. [00:21:00] And I’m going, okay, why don’t you just say you’re very good at business.

[00:21:07] Just because someone makes money doesn’t mean they care less about their patients. So I think sometimes we can lie to ourselves that, yeah, I may not be good at business and I’m not making very good money, but I’m, so I’m going to say that I care more about my patients. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of maybe there’s more to it.

[00:21:27] And there’s also another way of looking at it too. It’s like, if you really care about your patients that much, isn’t it important that you make money so that you’re still there to look after them?

[00:21:37] Definitely. And then you can buy the equipment and whatever the latest thing is, and you can go to the conferences.

[00:21:41] That’s right. I’ve seen people wear it like a badge on the chest that, look, I’m a broke podiatrist driving a Datsun 180B, from 1978. And they’re wearing it like a badge of honor. And I’m thinking, I don’t think it does anything for the profession.

[00:21:57] When you’ve got

[00:21:58] students or you’ve got young kids [00:22:00] looking at, oh, I’m thinking about being a podiatrist.

[00:22:01] And then the podiatrist they meet is broke, been doing it 20 years, driving in an old car and they say, Oh, no, I don’t make any money because I care about my patients. And they’re like, Oh crap. I’m a caring person. Does that mean I’m never going to make any money?

[00:22:14] Yeah, that’s right. And you know, we see this a lot in the healing world, in the spiritual world as well, and in the coaching world.

[00:22:22] It’s exactly the same thing is if you’re helping people, you shouldn’t be charging a lot of money for it. We hear that story a lot in the coaching world, the healer world. And that’s not true. It’s because You need to be supported. If you really care about your patients and the people that you’re helping, if you really care about them, then it’s important that you’re sustained, that your business is sustained, so that you can continue to provide better care for your patients.

[00:22:53] Otherwise, what’s the alternative?

[00:22:55] Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. I remember when when Jonathan Small was over here [00:23:00] in July last year, wow, almost a year ago. And I remember we had all the podiatrists in the room and we, I drew a map of Australia, then everyone had to say what town they’re from and I had to mark it on the map, but then we had to write what their initial consultation was for a specific service. So wrote it down.

[00:23:16] And the difference between what one person was charging another. I think one of the things it was almost like a $60-$70 difference for this one particular service. And prior to that, we had done it online once before. And we had an online whiteboard, and you had to mark where you were.

[00:23:35] You didn’t say the fees, whether you were, whether you thought you were too cheap or too expensive.

[00:23:41] Yeah.

[00:23:42] And then marked where you thought you were . It was surprising as some people marked themselves as being too expensive and another person marked themselves too cheap and the person who was too cheap was charging 30 more than the one who said they were too expensive.

[00:23:54] It’s

[00:23:54] really interesting isn’t it? It’s perception.

[00:23:58] Yeah. And when everybody saw [00:24:00] that, nearly everybody’s just saying the ones who were charging like a good man who said they were too cheap, started to feel better about themselves, thinking, Oh, okay, I’m not too cheap. And sometimes you thought they were too expensive, realise I need to put my fees up.

[00:24:13] Yeah. I’m not too expensive at all.

[00:24:15] This is why it’s important to do those kinds of classes. Those types of workshops. I know you’ve got an event coming up as well. That’s why it’s important to do those types of things.

[00:24:27] Which is sold out. It’s

[00:24:30] sold

[00:24:31] out! The next one will be in 2025. Keep an eye out for that one.

[00:24:37] But also got Dave Frees event coming up on the 24th of August, Saturday, 24th can be at Cairns Crystalbrook Bailey is where we’re going to be holding it. And by the time people are listening to this, the details should be on my website, www.tysonfranklin.com click on events. And I’ll tell you right now, if you really understood who Dave Frees is, you would.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Walk over broken glass to be at that one day event because it will change your life. And you came the last time you came to Cairns back in 2018, Deb.

[00:25:07] And that was 2018. That was six years ago. So he doesn’t come very often. And that event was incredible. My partner went with me as well. And absolutely incredible.

[00:25:19] I mean, I’ve been a coach now for all working in the coaching industry. For almost 12 years now, I think, and I learned heaps of stuff from him that I didn’t know. So, you know, even if you’ve done personal development, personal and professional development courses, workshops before you’re going to learn a lot more from Dave, he’s got he’s got a totally different way of doing things.

[00:25:44] He’s yeah, it’s fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I was taking heaps and heaps of notes the whole time I was there.

[00:25:51] I was listening to a podcast only today of his, I was driving the car and an old podcast came up, one of my original ones. That I must have done [00:26:00] 2017, and one of the things we said on that podcast, well, I said on the podcast, after you listen to this podcast, you should go back and listen to this episode every three to six months because you’ll pick up something new every time.

[00:26:13] Yeah.

[00:26:14] The amount of stuff I picked up, I haven’t listened to it for a little while. the amount of stuff I picked up from my phone. I need to listen to this podcast every three to six months because we were talking about it just there. What your mindset is. And I gave an example where I had read the e myth book and thought it was the biggest load of crap I’d ever read in my life.

[00:26:33] I hated it. I hate the book.

[00:26:36] I was like, crap. It’s all about systems, isn’t it? Yeah. I

[00:26:39] just didn’t like it because it kept using a pie shop as an example. Didn’t like the book. Anyway, I was getting on a plane one day going to Sydney. It was actually a podiatry conference. And I let the book gods decide what book I was going to read.

[00:26:52] So I went through the bookshelf, closed my eyes, wiped my hands about, put it in, pulled out a book and it was a bloody e myth.[00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Obviously

[00:27:00] something you missed.

[00:27:02] If the book gods want me to read this, I’m going to read it. So I did, and I read it on the plane. One of the best books I’d ever read. and probably four years had passed from the first time I’m reading it to the second time.

[00:27:14] Yeah,

[00:27:14] so it was funny and what that just reminded me of is when I listened to Dave 2017, now I’ve known Dave now for , another seven or so years since then, I go to his event in Arizona every single year.

[00:27:30] And I can’t wait for him to come to Cairns to hear what

[00:27:33] he has to say. Because I

[00:27:35] hear him talk all the time and every time he talks, I hear something different. Something new that just changes my life in some way.

[00:27:42] Yeah. Yeah. It will be a brilliant event. And I know that I remember you had a full house when he came last time.

[00:27:50] And I think you booked up really quickly for that event as well. And Everybody absolutely loved it. I do [00:28:00] remember that. I remember everybody saying how much they loved it.

[00:28:02] It’s one of the few times you go to an event and you see the person who’s doing the filming and the camera work bouncing off the walls.

[00:28:09] Normally they’re so busy working, they’re not really paying attention, but Paul first half was just going, bloody hell, he was brilliant. That was just absolutely fantastic. And he was being paid to be there to actually do some work.

[00:28:22] He was doing work and he wanted to make notes and he couldn’t.

[00:28:26] He had the recording, he’d go back and listen to it later.

[00:28:30] But yeah, it is one of the things. So anyone listening to this, go to my website, www.tysonfranklin.Com, click on events. There will be some details there. Last time, I think we had 42 people come along to it, but this time I’m looking at a smaller room. I’m thinking of only having about 20.

[00:28:45] Yeah.

[00:28:46] Because I want to actually target podiatrists to get podiatrists there.

[00:28:49] So I’m going to give them a bit of a week’s head start, week or two’s head start. And if they haven’t booked in, then I’ll just open up the Cairns and I know it’ll just sell out. So if you’re thinking about, if you’ve heard me talk about [00:29:00] Dave, just, Book it, book the room out and therefore then if I need a second room I can go and get one.

[00:29:05] Yeah, you need to book quick before he opens it up to Cairns because as soon as that happens it’ll book straight away. I know, I’m

[00:29:12] not telling you about that. So back onto our subject of When we’re talking about podiatrists aren’t really boring and I’d written something because whenever you and I talk, yeah, every couple of weeks I write it down in my brain book and I actually have it.

[00:29:27] And when we were talking about this, it was the 29th of April this year and you said that most podiatrists love stability and compliance because that’s their comfort zone.

[00:29:39] Yes, yeah, that’s their comfort zone. And this is the thing, it’s like, yeah, that’ll get you so far.

[00:29:45] And it’s great because it’s got you to where you are now by being stable with what you’re doing, by being compliant, by By following the rules. All of those things, it’s got you to where you are now, but if you want to grow, if you want [00:30:00] your business to expand, then you’ve gotta step out of that comfort area. Because that’s the only way to do it, because it’s personally for me, I’ve had to really step outta my comfort area to build my business. And you cannot achieve. What someone else is achieving outside of your comfort zone unless you join them, unless you jump outside of it.

[00:30:26] Yeah.

[00:30:26] And I have heard some people say, I don’t believe in comfort zones, .

[00:30:30] And

[00:30:30] I’m like, oh, like my comfort zone. Like, to be honest, my comfort zone is not getting up and talking in front of people. To actually get up in front of a group of people, I don’t care if it’s even five people, I’m not really comfortable doing it.

[00:30:44] I would much rather just be sitting here and let somebody else do it.

[00:30:46] Yeah.

[00:30:47] However, I know that every time I get up and I do it, and you finish, you feel so good for doing it because it pushed you out of your comfort zone. And [00:31:00] every time I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone, even if I’ve failed, I still feel good that I gave it a shot.

[00:31:08] Yeah.

[00:31:09] So it was only like two months ago, whatever it was. I remember I said, yeah, I went and jumped in the Muay Thai ring for the first time.

[00:31:15] Yeah.

[00:31:16] 57 years of age. I thought I was going to jump in there and in the ring and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen? Well, a lot, so you can find out.

[00:31:25] But I went in there, we did the fight, the other guy threw the towel in, thank God, and we walked out of there, but we both walked out of there just going, that was so good. I mean, and that was so much out of my comfort zone to do that. And last weekend they had more fights and I convinced the guy, no, go in there.

[00:31:42] You’ll love it. You can’t get hurt. He got his nose broken in the

[00:31:47] first

[00:31:47] 15 seconds.

[00:31:49] And this is the reason people don’t like stepping out of their comfort zone, right? It’s a fear of getting hurt. Not just physical though.

[00:31:57] Yeah. But he was still glad that he [00:32:00] did it. Because we said the term again, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose when you get in there, the thing is just, it’s doing something that makes you feel so uncomfortable, to the point of almost being sick.

[00:32:11] But when you do it, win, lose or draw, you feel better. Better. Better for, that’s how you know you jump good outta your comfort zone. Just that high you get afterwards,

[00:32:21] you get a real high. You get a real high and , like some of us like to take big leaps out of our comfort zone and yet some of us don’t like the big leap, but that doesn’t mean you.

[00:32:33] You can’t do something that’s unfamiliar. It just might mean that the steps need to be smaller and that and as the energetic type that we were talking about that generally attracts the podiatry generally attracts is. that type that prefers the smaller steps. So you can take the smaller steps and still step out of your comfort zone.

[00:32:55] I can’t believe someone said that. I don’t believe in the comfort zone.

[00:32:58] I know. [00:33:00]

[00:33:00] That’s incredible.

[00:33:02] I’ll tell you off air who it was too, when I tell you, you’ll go, seriously?

[00:33:05] That’s interesting because anything that we do that we feel unfamiliar around is outside of our comfort zone. So anything that we are gonna do that’s new, we’ve never done it before or we haven’t done anything like it before, it’s unfamiliar, it’s outside of the comfort zone. And quite often when We are looking at doing something like that.

[00:33:29] We get, we feel doubtful. It’s normal. You and I, we’ve been stepping out of our comfort zone for God knows how many years, but you still feel doubtful. You still feel some of that fear, don’t you?

[00:33:42] Well, it’s funny, but even exercise, if you are comfortable sitting on your couch in the afternoon, you get home from work, Oh, I’m too tired to exercise.

[00:33:50] So instead you’ll have a. If, and more food than you need, you have a snack before you have dinner, then a snack afterwards, you slowly put weight on, [00:34:00] but at some point you know that you’ve got to exercise, but just doing that to me is actually outside your comfort zone. And then it’s trying to pick what exercise you’re going to do.

[00:34:08] If you’re going to go to the gym for the first time, you’re stepping out of your comfort zone. If you’re gonna join a running group or go to a Muay Thai gym or anything, it’s, I think the more you do it though, you start actually having a bit of fun being, you get comfortable being uncomfortable.

[00:34:25] Yeah, you do.

[00:34:26] Yeah, you do. And that’s the thing, , you still feel a bit nervous, you still feel a bit doubtful, but the way you handle that changes because you’re that, that actually begins to feel familiar, that feeling of doubt and fear. It’s just like, Oh yeah, here it is again. Obviously. , I’m just about to do something new.

[00:34:44] So it’s like you take it in your stride more so than let it hold you back. Yeah, because you’re so used to doing new things. I know that’s definitely the case for me. And it was so challenging for me [00:35:00] 12 years ago, before I started my coaching business, really challenging for me to do it.

[00:35:06] things outside of my comfort zone, not so much on a personal sense, but more on a professional sense. I found that really challenging and very nerve wracking. I remember the first time I ran my very first workshop, it was so nerve wracking.

[00:35:22] Oh, it is. It still is. I still find the beginning part of a workshop just because you don’t know who’s going to be there.

[00:35:29] Like, you know, the names, you know, half the group, but you don’t know the other half.

[00:35:32] Yeah.

[00:35:33] And in your head, you go, what if I get someone who is crazy, how do I handle a crazy person for two days? And you get all these really silly thoughts that go in your head that can always get you to the point of thinking, you know what, maybe I shouldn’t even do the workshop.

[00:35:51] And then every time you do it, whether it’s online or live. When it’s finished, you go, how good was that group? Yeah. That was so much fun.

[00:35:58] Yeah. That’s [00:36:00] right.

[00:36:01] So I’ve got this perfect example of another thing where like I shoot a lot of short videos. Yeah, it might go for two minutes, some might go six or seven minutes. I’ve worked out that I’ve probably done between the YouTube channel I have now, when I did the 365 hour challenge and some other videos I’ve done, I’ve probably shot over a thousand short videos between two and six minutes.

[00:36:27] And I still feel uncomfortable doing it.

[00:36:28] Yep.

[00:36:30] You’d think after a thousand, doing it a thousand times. And I went back not so long ago. So if anyone wants a good laugh, go to my YouTube channel, Tyson E Franklin, go way back to some of my earlier videos. The content I think is good, but the lighting is atrocious.

[00:36:47] Sound isn’t that great. I actually had hair too.

[00:36:53] My hair really didn’t look good either. And, but even now after a thousand [00:37:00] videos, when I have to do the video that I do once a week, When I look at that camera and I’m looking at it, I’m like, this is not comfortable. But when I finish it and I do the editing, I go, I’m glad that, so I feel good that I actually did it.

[00:37:17] Yeah, I’m the same. I had a client a couple of years ago, she was launching her coaching business and one of the things that she was tasked to do was to was to record a video, a short video and she was really not confident about it at all. So I did something that I don’t do very often, and I would never do it in public, is I would never release this video To the public now ’cause it’s hidden in my YouTube channel.

[00:37:46] But I showed her my very first video that I ever recorded 12 years ago.

[00:37:56] Yeah. I encourage people to go back and look at my old ones. .

[00:37:58] Yeah. [00:38:00]

[00:38:00] And I think if you look at my old ones and you look at my new ones and you’ll see the difference in them.

[00:38:06] Yeah.

[00:38:06] That you’re probably not, if you’re really good at video, you’ll probably still look at my new ones and go.

[00:38:10] Actually, my new ones are exactly like watching this video now, like if you’re watching this podcast on YouTube, that I’m in the same room, but I am planning on doing some videos external. I’m going to get outside of the office and do some, which is going to be outside my comfort zone again, because I’m going to be dealing with the environment.

[00:38:32] There’s going to be people walking past and.

[00:38:35] Yep.

[00:38:36] But it’s all fun.

[00:38:37] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, taking that back to the podiatrist in the clinic, it’s, different coming, coming into contact with different modalities, all of that sort of thing, things you’ve probably not considered doing before, but you’ve seen other podiatrists using that particular method that is out of comfort zones.

[00:38:56] It’s really easy to keep doing the same thing over and over again. . [00:39:00] But why would you when there’s something else out there that’s going to give better results?

[00:39:05] That’s a really good example where I know podiatrists go, Oh, I want to be better at this, but they’re too scared to just go and do it.

[00:39:12] Do that first thing to go and learn it or to pick up that new piece of equipment. Fear is holding it back because it’s outside the comfort zone.

[00:39:20] Yeah. And then you can go and do a course, say like do a needling course, but then bring back that information and never use it. It’s the same thing. It’s like moving it from what you’ve learned in the course to actually performing it on a patient.

[00:39:33] Again, it’s out of comfort zone because you’ve never actually done it on a paying patient before. It’s different.

[00:39:40] Yeah. And I remember when we first, the first time I had a needle and I had to put it into human flesh, that was outside of my comfort zone because I was not a drug addict or anything before I started podiatry.

[00:39:55] I’m not a drug addict now. So sticking a needle into human flesh was not [00:40:00] something that you just naturally did. So every podiatrist listening to this has stuck a needle in someone and it wasn’t something that you normally did, but you did it.

[00:40:10] Yeah.

[00:40:11] So I think if you can do that, you can do anything.

[00:40:15] I don’t think I’ll become a podiatrist.

[00:40:17] No, because there’d be

[00:40:19] certain people that under no circumstances could they get a needle and stick it into human flesh.

[00:40:27] No, I can’t even look at when someone does it to me. So, yeah, so I

[00:40:34] think any podiatrist actually done that means you stepped out of your comfort

[00:40:39] zone.

[00:40:40] It means you can do it with, you can do it in so many other aspects of podiatry.

[00:40:43] That’s right. You can do it in business, just any part of your career, anything you want to do, you can just do it. And if you have questions in the profession, step out of your comfort zone and just post it.

[00:40:55] Yeah.

[00:40:55] Into the group. And if you want to join the best Facebook group [00:41:00] for podiatrists, it is the Podiatry Business Owners Club.

[00:41:03] And you don’t have to be a business owner to be part of that group. Join that group. What you do is answer three simple questions and I’ll let you in. And if you post a question that anybody is negative to you in any way whatsoever, I will throw them out of the group straight away. You don’t have to worry about it because it is not a toxic group. I’ve actually had people say to me, they can’t believe, they go, it’s the safest group on Facebook.

[00:41:29] Yeah. That’s so good Tyson, you’ve created that community.

[00:41:32] Because there’s just, there’s no, oh, there’s still a few silly people in there. But we post a lot of funny stuff too.

[00:41:38] Yeah, fun as well.

[00:41:42] So Deb, how would you like to wrap this up? I know, oh, one thing too, you do the eDisc profiling and team training.

[00:41:50] I do. And a lot of what we’ve been talking about is relative to E Disc as well. So the type that we were talking about that’s generally attracted to podiatry, with some [00:42:00] exceptions, is a particular type on the E Disc quadrant.

[00:42:03] So, yeah, I do one on ones with E Disc, so a two hour session with a 20 page report, and we actually really dig deep into your energetic type, the things that you’re comfortable with, the things you’re uncomfortable with, and how to create change so you can create more balance in that and start doing some of the things that you need to grow your business a little bit more or a lot more.

[00:42:28] And I also do team trainings as well, which are really helpful for teams in businesses to understand each other better so that they can communicate with each other and really work well together as a team.

[00:42:40] Okay. So if people would reach out to you, what’s the best way of doing it?

[00:42:44] Probably the best way is through my website.

[00:42:47] So my website is www.debjohnstone.com.Au or through email [00:43:00] success@debjohnston.com.Au.

[00:43:01] Okay. And I can also find you on LinkedIn at @DebJohnstone

[00:43:05] they can. Yeah.

[00:43:07] Okay. Deb, anything else you want to say before we wrap up?

[00:43:10] Yeah, I think maybe just a little bit about comfort zone.

[00:43:14] I think, , we all need to be, no matter what profession we’re in, no matter What industry we’re in, it is important for us all to step out of our comfort zone both personally and professionally, because that’s what helps us to continue to grow. And our business is only going to grow when we grow.

[00:43:33] I

[00:43:33] think that’s a good point. And I

[00:43:35] want to

[00:43:36] reiterate podiatrists aren’t really boring.

[00:43:40] They’re not. They’re not.

[00:43:43] Even though you might find a few that you sort of go, Oh, but what about them? Oh, there’s probably an exception to the rule. There might be one or two. But I think in general, I don’t think they are like you said, I think they are stable and compliant.

[00:43:56] And generally introverts too. Yeah. So, yeah. And so that’s [00:44:00] probably why someone would look on and think, oh, they’re boring, but they don’t actually really know that person.

[00:44:05] I’m an introvert, really?

[00:44:06] I’m an introvert. I’m an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert, .

[00:44:11] And we also have different sides to our personality as well.

[00:44:14] Yeah. So, okay, Deb, I want to thank you for coming back on the Podiatry Legends Podcast for the fourth time, which I’m sure it won’t be the last time either. And I look forward to talking again soon.

[00:44:26] Thanks Tyson. Thanks for having me on.

[00:44:28] Okay. Thank you. Bye.

[00:44:30] Bye.

TRANSCRIPT (UNEDITED) 

[00:00:00] Hi, I’m Tyson Franklin and welcome to this week’s episode of the Podiatry Legends Podcast. Podcasts designed to help you feel see and think differently about the podiatry profession.

[00:00:09] Today is a solo episode and the reason I’m doing a solo episode because there’s a topic that I think is overlooked by a lot of business owners, not just podiatry business owners, I think business owners in all industries. And that is creating a disaster folder. I think every business needs to have a disaster folder.

[00:00:33] And if you’re thinking, what is a disaster folder? It is a folder where you record potential disasters that could happen in your business and what you do to not mitigate that from happening, but what you do once it has happened. So, yes, you should have things in place that you should always try and lower your risk of disasters happening, but there’s things that will happen in your business that are out of your control, and when it does [00:01:00] happen, everybody on your team needs to know exactly what to do next. If, if every problem becomes really business owner dependent, you never get a break from your business. Your team needs to be able to make decisions.

[00:01:17] And they need to know they have your support when they make these decisions. And it’s based on what is in your disaster folder. And if it’s all documented and they follow the disaster folder step by step all the way through, then they have nothing to be concerned about. Cause they followed all the steps and you know that everything has happened properly.

[00:01:36] So here’s a scenario that I want you to stop and think about. What would you do if you arrived at work tomorrow morning and your premises was not there? What would you do? And when I mean not there, I mean it’s been burnt to the ground, or you’ve had a cyclone, it’s just, it’s, it’s just not there, it’s disappeared.

[00:01:54] What would you do?

[00:01:56] Do you actually have it mapped out, what you would do? [00:02:00] Does your team know what the game plan is? Do they know what to do next? And could they implement that game plan, If you were not around, if you’re away on holidays, could they straight away implement it? Now I know the building burning down is an extreme example, but sometimes I think you’ve got to talk in extremes so that the point is really driven home.

[00:02:20] Or if you are away, does your team know at least the first few steps to get things underway until you actually return?

[00:02:28] So I’ll give you an example. In Cairns, we get a lot of cyclones. And most years we’re always preparing for it. That’s just what we do. We’re in a cyclone area.

[00:02:38] And I had actually prepared for that, knowing that potentially We could turn up to work after a cyclone and the roof be blown off the clinic or the clinic has been damaged in some way that we could not work there. I did have a game plan in place and some of the things I wrote down here, I had other locations mapped out, medical [00:03:00] centers, Physiotherapy clinics that I knew.

[00:03:03] I went around to other places and I actually said to them, Hey, if for some reason my clinic became damaged and I needed somewhere to work from very quickly, could I use one of the rooms in your center? And they said, yes, and went great. So I mapped that down. These are the places you call first that we can actually find a room.

[00:03:21] And the other reason I chose a medical centre and physiotherapy clinics was because they also had examination benches, which meant we could use them straight away with our patients.

[00:03:31] We also had a list of other vital equipment that we needed, a list of stock that we needed straight away, and where you can actually get them from. I’d also reached out to a number of other podiatrists I knew, not just locally, but around Australia and Queensland that I said to them, if something ever happened, could I rely on you to supply me with certain stock items by this time?

[00:03:55] And they said, yes. So I had them all listed down as well. So straight away, [00:04:00] if I was away on holidays and my team turned up and there was damage to the building, for whatever reason, Forget about cyclones. If it was a cyclone, I’m probably in town. But if it was fire damage, something like that, and I’m away.

[00:04:11] They knew what to do in the next steps. They had a list of people they could call. Straight away, they knew what stock items we needed, what equipment we needed, and there was a list of people that we could actually call upon to get them, and suppliers. I had a list of suppliers on who supplied what, where they were, how fast they could actually get it to us.

[00:04:27] So straight away, they could, Take advantage of this list that I’ve done, get the ball rolling, and if I was able to get back and help out, I got back. But if not, at least they could get things started. They weren’t all just sitting around going, Oh, well, it looks like we’ve got a couple of days off until Tyson gets back.

[00:04:43] No, I wanted them to get the ball rolling, so when I came in, there was some momentum already started. Advantage we also had though, when there were cyclones, especially like in Cairns, is we get a few days warning. So when there’s a cyclone off the coast, it doesn’t just hit over night and we’re, Oh, wow, [00:05:00] that was a surprise.

[00:05:01] We know it’s coming. And we’re, we’re prepared for it as a team. We would normally have a conversation about it as well. So I think in your area where you are most places, there’s some form of natural disasters that will happen. Make sure you have a game plan in place and what you do step by step when that happens.

[00:05:19] Now look, we’re hoping for this is like insurance having your disaster plan. Disaster folder is almost like having insurance. You don’t want any of this to ever happen, but when I go some through some of these other things that I’m going to list, you’ll go, okay, yeah, these have happened or yes, potentially they could happen.

[00:05:38] The whole idea of the disaster folder is to create an extensive list of things that can go wrong. And having a team on board, knowing what to do next. I’m going to run through a few other things, oh, now there’s a quote that I want to share with you as well by Dennis Waitley and it was, plan for the worst, expect the best and be prepared to be surprised. [00:06:00] Now, I’ve lived by this quote and some people have said to me, Oh, don’t you think, , planning for the worst is negative?

[00:06:07] And I disagree because I think it’s a smart move. I think planning for the worst that could happen, which is exactly why we take out insurance. But think about it seriously. The reason you take home insurance, It’s because you’re, you’re betting the insurance company, something’s going to go wrong, but they’re betting you something won’t.

[00:06:27] So pretty much you’re, it’s not negative to take out insurance. It’s, I think it’s stupid not to take insurance. I don’t think planning for the worst is a negative thing. I think planning for the worst is a smart thing to do, but if it never happens, you can go.

[00:06:43] Thank God that didn’t happen. That is a bonus.

[00:06:45] And I’ll tell you a funny story. A friend of mine, Dave Frees, that you’ve probably heard me mention. Well, he’s been on the podcast and I talk about him every now and then. And I go to his event every October in Arizona. And I was with Dave Frees one day. [00:07:00] And he, he wasn’t feeling too well. He wasn’t sure if he had a flu, a bug, or what was going on, but he was, he was feeling quite ill that he felt like he was going to be sick.

[00:07:09] So we went out for lunch and while we’re out, while we’re having lunch, I was cutting my food quite small and I was chewing it a lot. And Dave said to me, you seem to be chewing your food a lot more than normal. I said, well, Dave, it’s because you’re sick and you don’t know exactly what it is. I have this fear that whatever you have, I might get and I might be sick and you already said that you have thrown up. Now, I’m chewing my food really, really well. Just in case I do throw up, I want it to come out a lot easier than having chunky bits of food because I’ve scoffed it down too fast.

[00:07:45] And he actually said, that’s really, really smart thinking. Now, it never happened. I was fine, but at least I was prepared for the worst. But I expected the best and, I wasn’t surprised about anything. I didn’t get [00:08:00] sick, which was absolutely fantastic.

[00:08:01] Now the, the other part too, there’s always going to be new things that are going to crop up that will be added to your disaster folder that you might think you have everything in there. And just when you think you have everything in there, Something else might happen.

[00:08:13] You never thought about that. Like I said, I’ve got a list we’re going to run through and hopefully I cover a lot of items, but yeah, going back four years ago, who would have thought a simple little, uh, virus. would have thrown us all into turmoil. Yeah, when COVID hit, nobody planned for that.

[00:08:29] When I had my disaster follow, there’s no mention of COVID in there at all. So something like that was very unplanned. I think was something none of us could have planned for. But what did you learn from it? And I think If you haven’t done it already, you should sit down and think, what did I learn from that experience?

[00:08:48] What could I have done differently? Could I have handled things a little bit better? But document things. If something like that ever happened again, which hopefully it’s unlikely, but if something like that did happen again, have you got stepped out? Does [00:09:00] everybody on your team know what you’re going to?

[00:09:02] Once again, that’s like building, burning down. That was, that was a major sort of event. So it’s unlikely that something like that is going to happen again.

[00:09:11] And they always say that adversity is a great opportunity to, to learn.

[00:09:16] Now, the best part about adversity, no matter what type of adversity is, it is an opportunity to learn. And I think it’s really important to realise whatever’s happened in the past, you can’t change the past, so you should not focus on it. And that’s in all aspects of life. What you can control is what’s happening right.

[00:09:34] now, which will have a direct effect on what happens in the future. So if you’re listening to this podcast now and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, should we have a disaster folder or not? Should we start one? I think you should, because what you do today could pay dividends in the future because it’s something that you’ve got to understand.

[00:09:53] And no matter how you want to dress this up, shit happens. It is just one of those things. It’s part of life [00:10:00] that things happen unexpectedly and when it does, those that are prepared, win. Now, going back to the COVID example. I know when COVID happened, if I still had my podiatry clinic at the time, I don’t think I would have been too concerned financially because I always prepared.

[00:10:23] I had my clinic set up in a way and had bank accounts set up and I used to move money in there over a number of years, that I had enough money in there that my business could run for probably about 12 months. With no income coming in, and that was just a backup plan that I always had. So no matter what would’ve happened with Covid, I would’ve financially been prepared for that.

[00:10:41] I would’ve kept my whole team on. Nothing would’ve changed for them, which meant they could have afforded their lifestyle on that as well. I wouldn’t have had to let anybody go. That is all preparing for shit happening and you just can be prepared that when it happens, those that are prepared will win.

[00:10:58] Those who are not prepared, and I know [00:11:00] people, not just, I mean, in podiatry podiatry, that had businesses that they lived week by week or month by month. And when COVID hit, they, I know a few of them that closed down. I know a few that really struggled and I know some that are still trying to recover because they spent all the money when the good times were happening and they didn’t prepare for a downturn.

[00:11:22] So I always say cash is king and it’s one of those things that you need to have a good cash reserve behind you. And if you do have a good cash reserve behind you, you’ll always make really smart decisions. When money is tight and you’re under pressure, you know that you can sometimes make bad decisions or poor decisions.

[00:11:39] And it’s like, you take your dog for a walk. This is what I mean about preparation. You take your dog for a walk. When you take your dog for a walk, you take poo bags. Why do you take poo bags? It’s because you know. Your dog is probably going to poo. Now I see people walk in their dogs and they don’t have a poo bag.

[00:11:56] I’m thinking, did you not prepare or do you just not care? [00:12:00] When it comes to your business, it’s the same thing. You know that certain things in your business are going to take a poop. So be prepared with your poo bags. This is what the disaster folder is all about.

[00:12:11] And you also got to prepare for.

[00:12:13] adversity. Now, depending on what country you’re in, if you’re in a country that plays rugby union, you will know of the All Blacks. Now the thing with the All Blacks, they are the most successful sporting team in the history. When you look at their win loss rate, they are just far and above anybody else.

[00:12:34] And It’s just, they’re always an amazing team to watch play no matter who they’re playing. And yes, they do lose occasionally, which surprises everybody. And if there’s any Kiwis listening to this, uh, podcast, they’ll be going, yeah, All Blacks. They know how good they are. But the thing with the All Blacks.

[00:12:50] It’s partly due with their team culture. They have a fantastic team culture, and I’ve got a separate talk all about the All Blacks team culture that I’ve done, not on this podcast, I’ve just done previously. [00:13:00] And, but like most successful sporting teams, they prepare for adversity. They prepare for bad weather.

[00:13:08] They don’t just play the game and train in perfect weather conditions all the time. They prepare that one day it might be really hot, it might be really cold, it could be raining, and they modify their game based on what is actually happening around them. They have to prepare and plan for a player being sent off unexpectedly and being down one man.

[00:13:31] So instead of having 15 people on the field, they might have 14 or sometimes 13. And when that happens, they know that they’ve got to adapt the game. Oh, wow. We’ve had two players turn off. What do we do now? They would have planned for this in training. If they had a key team member injured during the game and they come off, okay, they still got 15 people, but everybody has had to shuffle to a different position, especially if that person was [00:14:00] a key player.

[00:14:01] They don’t sit and go, Oh, geez, we’ve just lost our, our captain and a number one player. Oh, well, it looks like we’ve lost the game now. No, straight away they shifted. And the reason they do that is because they do it in training. And this is why your team needs to understand what your game plan is. How the disaster folder works.

[00:14:20] What you have lined up for different things. If everybody is on the, is in, in your team knows the plan, they’re preparing for adversity, when something happens, everybody knows how to shift and shuffle. No different to if a podiatrist rang up suddenly and said, I’ve had a car accident on the way into work.

[00:14:37] Now what? What does everyone do? Do they just drop their lolly bag or are the things in place that you’re actually going to run through? And I’ll go through this in a sec.

[00:14:44] And the other part about the All Blacks that I think is really important, and this is something that I read about them. They practice and they drill for the worst situations. Which is player being sent off in injury, bad weather. They practice it. They might have it all happening in one game, bad weather, [00:15:00] key players injured and people sent off, but they expect the best outcome and by doing that they sometimes surprise themselves.

[00:15:09] I’ve watched some games this year in the NRL, in the rugby league. And there’s been teams that have had two or three players sin binned or sent off during the game, yet they have still ended up winning the game. And the reason they’ve done that is because they’ve got to practice and drill. This is what happens when in this scenario, we will do this.

[00:15:29] This is where we’ll move players around. And when they’ve done that, they’ve ended up winning in the end through planning for adversity or preparing for adversity. planning for the worst, expecting the best, and then being surprised with the outcome.

[00:15:42] So I’ll run through what was in my disaster folder, just so you’re aware. And the first thing I had in there was I had goals and objectives of my podiatry clinic. I wanted the team to know what the goals and objectives were of my podiatry business. I [00:16:00] had an explanation of what the purpose. of the disaster file was all about.

[00:16:03] I wanted them to understand why this folder existed. I had the responsibilities of every team member and the reporting process. Who reported to who? I think that’s really important. There needs to be, there needs to be a hierarchy on what’s going to actually happen. , I had end of day preparation and what needed to be done before the next working day and why each of these things was actually necessary.

[00:16:28] I had a patient appointment ranking system. So I don’t believe that all appointments are equal. Depending on how you have your clinic set up. But for the way that my business ran, we saw a lot of biomechanical sports people and we still saw routine foot care, but certain types of routine foot care could wait another couple of days if needed.

[00:16:51] Whereas someone who needed nail surgery, to me, that was more of a priority. Or somebody had a sports injury, that was more of a priority. So we had our [00:17:00] patients all ranked. So if something happened, if somebody called in sick, we would look at who was booked in and we would maneuver things around based on that.

[00:17:07] And we would talk about it on a regular basis in our team meetings. We also made sure that we had the business owners contact details there. I think it’s really important that every team member knows how to get hold of the business owner. We had all the emergency contact details,

[00:17:25] in our folder we also had the details of all our supplies and every year that was updated. And I had this other thing that we used to call the annual, nut and screw review. So one day a year, and I did this myself actually, but I still had it in the schedule to do one day a year I would go into the clinic and my job was to go around with my spanners and tighten every single thing that had a nut or a screw attached to it.

[00:17:53] And you’d be surprised how many things loosen up over a year, whether it’s the bottom of chairs, [00:18:00] the back of some benches. It could be table setups. It’ll amaze you. And we used to have this, uh, little bowl that sat in, that sat in our kitchen. And it said, if you ever find a nut or screw or bolt anywhere, do not thrown away.

[00:18:15] Pick it up, put it in that bowl. I guarantee I’ll know where it goes, or when I’m going around doing my review of my nut and screw review, I will find where that actually needs to go.

[00:18:26] The next thing, the next section we actually had in the folder was our electrical section, which what happens when, uh, there’s no power when you arrive at the business. So your team member arrives, they open up the door, they go to flick switch and there’s no power. What do you do? Or the power goes off during your normal hours of operation.

[00:18:45] What do you do then? Or there’s just an electrical fault, whether it’s lights, light switches, power sockets. If something looks a bit dangerous, you don’t want anyone playing around with it. You need to call someone straight away. And who is your preferred electrician? And do you have a backup electrician if the [00:19:00] first one is actually unavailable?

[00:19:01] And even if you have illuminated signs or lighting outside of your business, it might be security lighting. If something’s faulty there, you the sooner you get onto it, the better. I think there’s nothing looks worse than when I see a sign that a business. Like a podiatry clinic that has illuminated signage and one letter is out and you look at it and you go okay, maybe it’s just gone out, but a week later it’s still out, a month later it’s still out, two months later you see a second light out, six months later those two lights are still out and you go, to me that doesn’t reflect very well on that business. You’ve gone all the effort having an illuminated sign, yet nobody is actually keeping an eye on it. And so that’s something that everyone should keep an eye and who do they call when that actually happens? You probably find that business, the business owner may not be around and all the team members, they all see it, but they go, we don’t know who we’re supposed to call.

[00:19:53] So they just don’t do anything about it at all, and it reflects poorly in the business. The next section we had was on plumbing [00:20:00] and that related to your toilets and bathrooms, the sinks and basins. Any outside issues or leaks and who is your preferred plumber? And our plumber was also our roofing guy.

[00:20:13] So if we had any leaks in the roof, our plumbing person and roofer was also in that particular section of the folder.

[00:20:20] So the next section we had was what we called, , technology. And this was , we actually had an IT guy who, our consultant, and we had them come into our clinic and actually do a presentation for our team. And it was surprising, one, how much everyone actually enjoyed that, but he ran through scenarios with them on when this happens with a computer or you got this fault, what do you do?

[00:20:46] And, and I remember once one of the receptionists calling me saying, Oh, internet’s not working. I’m like, Oh, okay. And so then I’ve gone into work and then you found out, okay, the internet wasn’t working on their machine. It was [00:21:00] working everywhere else. It just wasn’t working on their machine. Or they’re saying there’s a problem with the network, but then, or there’s a problem with the computer, but then it wasn’t plugged in.

[00:21:10] Now don’t laugh at that because you probably, we’ve all had that happen. But there’s some of the things we had in the technology section where what happens if you do have a computer crash or there is a breakdown, what does the team do? If there’s a fault with the modem that you, there is no internet.

[00:21:25] What do you do? Now these days it’s great because you can easily hotspot in so many different ways, but if there’s a modem fault, if there is no internet, if there’s a Wi Fi problem, what do you do? If you have iPads set up, what if they’re not working? Where do you get them fixed? If there’s website errors, I used to look at the website as part of your technology.

[00:21:44] I used to look after our website. So most of those things I would actually always be looking at. And maybe your team doesn’t look at your website, but they need to, if you don’t look after the website yourself, Somebody on your team needs to be looking at it because it’s not uncommon for [00:22:00] links just to break or pages just not to work.

[00:22:02] Don’t know how the gremlins get in there, but they actually do.

[00:22:06] If you have a telephone system and there’s faults there, who do you call or who do you contact? Printers and scanner faults. Any If you do have an IT consultant, make sure their contact details are there, that your team can jump straight on board and actually call them if there’s a problem.

[00:22:24] And if you have a security system in your business, if you’ve got security cameras, the way that that’s set up, if there’s a problem, if there’s a fault, who do you call to make sure everything is actually on track?

[00:22:35] Oh, just a side note too, when it comes to technology, I think it’s really important that to never rely just on one person. When it comes to the IT technology and websites of your business, you need to have multiple contacts because if you’ve got somebody who’s designed your website for you, and it’s like a one man or one person operation, and all of a sudden they [00:23:00] decide, I don’t want to do this anymore.

[00:23:01] I’m going to become a barista. What do you do? So you need to have a backup plan. If you were, if the website person goes, who do you go to now? You could go to podiatryclinicwebsites.com. That’s always a good place, but just be prepared.

[00:23:16] we had an it guy who was fantastic, never let us down. And that was all great, but I did have a backup plan if for some reason they got hit by a truck and I needed to get somebody else in.

[00:23:27] So always be prepared for that.

[00:23:28] So, and the next thing that we actually had in our section or in our sections was just about equipment. And you might be thinking, Oh, okay, well, what did you have in the equipment? And this was like, well, because it’s not just our podiatry benches, our televisions that we had set up, there were faults there.

[00:23:45] What do you do? These days, if there’s a problem with your TV, you’d probably throw them away and buy a new one. They’re cheap enough. But our autoclave, who looked after that? Everybody needed to know. Your hydraulic chairs and benches, dust extraction units and grinders. If you have a [00:24:00] treadmill, who comes to fix your treadmill if something goes wrong? And other just miscellaneous items in your clinic, if that breaks or something goes wrong, where do you actually get it fixed?

[00:24:13] Now, this is a big one. This was. Uh, the section that we just call their ProArch team, and this is what do you do if the receptionist calls in sick and cannot work? And is it a short term problem or is it a long term problem? Does everybody know what to do? What happens if the receptionist just resigns suddenly or you’ve let them go suddenly?

[00:24:35] What happens if a podiatrist is sick? What happens if a podiatrist resigns suddenly? Oh, I’m leaving at the end of the week or I’m finishing up in two weeks. Are you prepared for this? What if there’s an injury to a team member? I had podiatrists who had been fixing up a window or doing something at the window, broke, sliced the hand and they were off for a [00:25:00] couple of weeks.

[00:25:01] You couldn’t plan for that, but we had, did have that in the disaster folder, so we knew basically what to do. And this comes back to some of the earlier sections about ranking your patients. Because these things, they’re not all in silos, each of these sections. They all do actually relate to each other. The last thing I’m going to mention in this part is just about, if there’s complaints to the podiatry board, or some other health organisation.

[00:25:30] What do you do when a complaint from a patient comes into the clinic or is sent to the registration board and the registration board then contacts the podiatrist? What do you do? And I’d had team members who this had happened to and they just went to water. They didn’t know what to do. They, they were in panic mode.

[00:25:52] I’m saying to just settle down. You’re innocent until proven guilty. And looking at what you’ve done here with the patient, you’ve done nothing wrong. [00:26:00] So there’s nothing to be concerned about, but you still need to have a plan in place because what if they did do something wrong? Are you prepared for that?

[00:26:09] So these are things that you need to think about and the things that you need to consider and then plan putting things in place in case something like this actually goes wrong.

[00:26:20] Now some of the other sections that we, , had is legal issues. So, there was a section in there for that. We had another section for window and glass breakages. There’s urgent and non urgent. So if glass gets broken, especially if it’s an outside glass panel that come into your clinic, that’s pretty urgent.

[00:26:39] So who are you going to call when that actually happens? And, uh, how much are you prepared to spend to get something like that fixed? Now, I know if it’s a security issue, you want it fixed fast. You need to have a list of people that you can contact pretty quickly. And also your car parking. What if there’s a car, if there’s a car park for your patients and there’s a car [00:27:00] actually blocking the entrance?

[00:27:01] What do you do? You’re going to get the thing towed away. There’s unauthorised parking, but even cleaning and maintaining your car park, I think should be in that disaster folder because things can happen. I remember a neighbour’s tree falling down into our particular car park, not only did it damage the fence, but also blocked part of the car parking.

[00:27:23] Straight away, what do you do? And it might be funny, you might be thinking, well, how do you prepare for that? How would I even think of some of the things that are going to happen? This is what I was talking about, where your disaster folder is developed over a period of time.

[00:27:37] I’ve given you a list of things here that you could listen to this, take some notes and go, okay, I’m going to start putting some things in place. Some of the more important ones, a tree falling over from a neighbour’s house into your car park may never happen. But there will be other things that will happen that you will, you just won’t even think about.

[00:27:55] But when they do happen, as soon as they happen and the dust has settled, start [00:28:00] documenting. If this happened again, how would we actually handle this process? Would we do it the same way or would we handle it differently? We’d had cars in our car park get broken into, staff car park, and sometimes patients.

[00:28:11] Over the years, it didn’t happen all the time. But when it happened, what was the process that we actually went through with contacting the police? These are things that when they happen. That’s when you start adding it to the disaster folder we had been broken into. So when your clinic gets broken into, what’s the steps that you go through?

[00:28:31] Should you be touching anything or should you be leaving it until you call the police, but you still got to run a business. What’s your protocol on doing all that? What are you checking on to see what’s been taken and what has not been taken? These are things you need to discuss as a team. So everybody is basically on board.

[00:28:45] And some of the last things that we actually had in our disaster folder. Were just general items like handyman. We, we had a couple of handyman that we could get hold of just to do odd jobs around. Sometimes. We had some water damage once in the ceiling, [00:29:00] damaged some of the plaster, so we got something in just to fix up that plaster work.

[00:29:05] I’ll tell you, having a couple of hand handyman available are a godsend. We have council details in our disaster folder, where if you have a landlord or there’s a body corp, you want to have all those details readily available. Because if something goes wrong, you need your team to be able to contact the landlord or contact the body corp if it’s applicable to them.

[00:29:25] Unless you’re the landlord of your own building. And other documents. We had our insurance documents in our disaster folder. So when something happened, we knew exactly we’d look. And every year when things were updated, that’s where we’d go to. And the last thing we actually had in our disaster folder, which I think everybody should have, because I know everybody runs around looking for these things, is equipment warranties.

[00:29:49] We’d have all our warranties for all our equipment, everything. In that same folder, because if something broke, we straight away, we’d go to there, we could look up the warrant. We knew if [00:30:00] it was still under warranty and it would get replaced or, you know, it’s out of warranty. Is it worth fixing? Or do we dump it and get something new?

[00:30:09] So I know there was a lot in that. And I was talking to a podiatrist the other day and I was telling him about this disaster folder. And I told them that I was going to do this podcast. And they told me a couple of things. They said, Oh, have you thought about including this? Which I hadn’t. One was they had to.

[00:30:24] Let go of an unsafe podiatrist. A podiatrist was doing something in the clinic that was very unsafe for the patients and had to let them go. Suddenly I went, that’s a good one. Didn’t have that one. They had another team member who had some major psychosis, just had a mental breakdown in the clinic. And thinking, nah, never had that one happen either.

[00:30:44] So that’s something else you can actually add. They did mention burglary and the other part, this was actually a really interesting one that they mentioned. They had the business set up in a particular, in, inside another business. So it could be, you could be renting a room. Say for example, let’s say [00:31:00] from a physiotherapy clinic, you had a room rented there.

[00:31:02] Everything’s going fantastic. But then all of a sudden that physiotherapist, Well, that business has gone into bankruptcy and that front door has been locked and you are not allowed access to it because the receivers have taken it all over and this actually happened to them. It wasn’t a physio clinic, it was another sort of business and they could not get in there to get their equipment out and all of a sudden all the patients couldn’t be treated, they couldn’t get hold of their equipment and it, I think she said, took something like a week before they could get in there and finally get this stuff out.

[00:31:32] Now, if you’re set up in that way, if you have clinics set up in multiple places, this is something you should probably think about. That if something like that happened, do you have a backup plan that almost goes back to my original thing, when I said that if you turned up and the building had burnt down?

[00:31:46] If there was a cyclone and part of the roof had been blown off, what happens if you turn up and there’s locks on the door and you’re not allowed in there? You need to find another location, you need to do it fast, because you need to be treating your patients, because that’s the only way that you make money, and just keep [00:32:00] the ball rolling.

[00:32:02] So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, please Please send me an email, tyson@podiatrylegends.Com, or you can send it tf@tysonfranklin.Com. So I’ve got the Podiatry Legends website and there’s also the Tyson Franklin website. And just let people know in the UK, if you happen to be listening to this, I will be doing a one day podiatry Marketing 2025 Workshop in Liverpool on Monday, the 3rd of February. It’s going to be the day before the foot and ankle show that runs for two days on the 4th and 5th. If you want to know more about it, please send me an email tf@tysonfranklin.com. I’ll put you on my priority list. As more information comes up, everyone that’s on my priority list or the people who are subscribed to my newsletter will get all the information first.

[00:32:55] There’s only going to be 20 spots available. So [00:33:00] if you’re on my priority list, you’re going to find out all the details first and be able to register first. Then it’ll be people who are on my newsletter. If you don’t currently get my newsletter, go to my website, tysonfranklin. com. You can subscribe through it from there.

[00:33:13] I think you can from the podiatry legends website as well. Anyway, that’s it for me this week. I want you to look after yourself, look after your family and I will talk to you next week. Bye for now.