308 – Dr Jeffrey Jensen Dean of the Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine

Jan 4, 2024

Dr Jeffrey Jensen is the Dean of the Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine. In this episode, we discuss his remarkable career, including his wound care research at Barry University, product development and how he came to have 14 United States Patents related to innovations addressing diabetic foot ulcer offloading, post-surgical care, fracture care and antimicrobials.

He is also the host of the Deans Chat Podcast, where he discusses all things podiatric medicine.

On this episode, we also discuss:

Being a student at the California College of Podiatric Medicine.
Podiatric Education
Podiatric Research
Product Development and protecting your intellectual property.
THE 3% RULE – A rule every podiatrist needs to know if they want to get ahead in their career.

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

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Full Transcript

Tyson Franklin: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Podiatry Legends podcast. With me today is Dr. Jeffrey Jensen, and he is the Dean of the Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine at Glendale, Arizona, and he’s the host of the Dean’s Chat Podcast. Jeffrey, how you doing? Doing wonderful.

Jeff Jensen: I’ll just call you Tyson, thanks for having me on your

Tyson Franklin: show.

No, I’ll just call you Jeff, because I know you don’t mind being called Jeff.

Jeff Jensen: First names are the way to

Tyson Franklin: go, Tyson. Okay. So I want to say you’re the Dean of the Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine, , which I think is very cool.

And because I mentioned that I go to Arizona every year, so I just love that whole desert sort of environment. But I want to go back a little bit further you did your bachelor of science at university of Wisconsin, 1985. Why podiatry? What made you decide that podiatry, did you know you were going to do podiatry before you did the undergraduate degree? No,

Jeff Jensen: I did not Tyson. I didn’t decide to go into podiatric medicine until I was working on my master’s [00:01:00] degree at San Diego state and exercise physiology.

Okay. But I was well versed in podiatry because our family had a family podiatrist where I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and he had done my mom’s bunions and hammer toes and neuromas and he made orthotics for all the long distance runners. So I knew about podiatry. I just hadn’t connected myself becoming a podiatrist yet.

Tyson Franklin: So what made the switch go off then?

Jeff Jensen: So when I was working on my master’s degree, I was taking these upper level courses with all the pre med students, pre dental students, and I was really doing well in them. And then I was watching some of my colleagues in exercise physiology, struggling with the job market.

And one day, one week, I went back to Wisconsin to visit my parents. And then I called Dr. Hummel Ed Hummel was his name. And I asked him if I could come and visit and shadow him and see what he does on a day to day basis. And that was the deciding factor for me. [00:02:00] I knew I wanted to go into podiatric medicine.

Tyson Franklin: Okay. That’s cool. So you were studying in Wisconsin. Where were you originally from? Where was, where’s home? Home is Wisconsin

Jeff Jensen: for me, and then my wife and I wife to be, I should say, met in Madison and then we ended up transferring to Wisconsin Oshkosh, where we both got our undergraduate degrees.

And we wanted to continue our education. So we moved to California. I went to San Diego State and that’s when I decided I wanted to go back and take some of those required courses, organic chemistry, physics, things like that, that I hadn’t had. And then, I went up to San Francisco for an interview because the California College of Podiatric Medicine is in San Francisco and they accepted me.

And then we moved to San Francisco. I never in a million years would have thought I’d live in San Francisco, California. Yeah.

Tyson Franklin: I was in Wisconsin last year. First time went to my first baseball game. Oh, good. It was fun. Yeah. I’ve got my Brewers t shirt [00:03:00] and it so much fun, but yeah, Wisconsin, it was cold. Yeah.

Jeff Jensen: It was really cold. We love to go back to Wisconsin in the summertime, but in the wintertime, you can’t beat Arizona or Florida for sure.

Tyson Franklin: So anyway, so you’ve gone from Wisconsin, you’ve gone to, , San Francisco, California College of Podiatric Medicine. You’ve graduated from there in 1991. 91. Yep.

So once you graduate, where did you do your residency?

Jeff Jensen: So in our profession here in the States, Tyson, we have the opportunity to do some rotations. They call them audition rotations or clerkships. So you have an opportunity to go around the country and do rotations for a month at different hospitals.

And I, one of my rotations was in Detroit, Michigan, and I had an opportunity to go there for a month and I really liked it. And so I was hoping that they would choose me to be a resident down the road. And they did. And so next thing, my wife and I were loading up the rider moving truck and [00:04:00] going from San Francisco to Detroit, Michigan.

Tyson Franklin: So with that rotation, I haven’t heard anyone mention that before about the. So how many, how long do you have to do that for? Or do you just keep doing that until someone offers you a residency? No,

Jeff Jensen: it’s actually part of the curriculum. So what happens now, my students in the end of their third year can take two months and do rotations like that.

And then the first six months of their fourth year, and they also do rotations around the country because in January of their fourth year, right? They’re about what? Four months away from graduating, they do residency interviews, and then, they put it into a computer program, and then in March, they find out where they’re going to do their residency program.

Tyson Franklin: Okay. I want to go back one step. When you were at the California College of Podiatric Medicine, what were the famous names that were there when you were there?

Jeff Jensen: Oh my gosh. You’re going to love this. So in our surgery department, Dr. Josh Gerber was there. Josh wrote the bunion book. , also, , Joel Clark was there.

Steve [00:05:00] Palladino was there. Bill Jenkins was there. That’s the surgery department. And then in the medicine department, Dr. Jim Stavosky was there. Also, I think Dr. Palladino, Steve Palladino worked there. And then of course, in biomechanics realm, you’ll recognize some of these names. Dr. Val Massey taught our courses.

, Dr. Jack Morris taught . That’s alright for me. Came down Of course. Yeah. Yeah, it was just a, if you go through the history of podiatric biomechanics, San Francisco’s kind of a hotbed, right? It’s like the founding area.

And so when you, oh, Dr. How can I forget this? Dr. John Weed taught my first biomechanics course. Yes. And and then we had to, then we had to decipher that and figure out what everything meant.

Tyson Franklin: So was Richard Blake around your era as

Jeff Jensen: well? Dr. Blake during that time, he wasn’t teaching at the school, but he was still local.

Yeah, he’s still in San Francisco. So I got to see him lecture a couple of times but he was partners with Ron Velmasi in their practice also. Okay. I got to know Rich Blake [00:06:00] over the years though, and he was on one of my podcasts maybe

Tyson Franklin: six months ago. He’s been on this one as well earlier on and super nice guy, just a super nice guy.

Way

Jeff Jensen: ahead of his time, before you and I were doing podcasts, rich Blake was on YouTube getting 5, 000 views on things like how to stretch your Achilles or how to deal with, he was way ahead of his time.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah. And that’s what I’ve really enjoyed doing this podcast too, is some of the people have had on the podcast.

These have been people that I’ve read their papers, their books, I’ve watched their videos. Yeah, over my career and then to actually have them on the podcast is yeah it’s a

Jeff Jensen: lot of fun. And the funny thing is you learn things that you never would have found out reading their books or chapters or their articles.

So yeah, this is a personal element of podcasting. That’s a lot of fun, I think.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah. And you you dig into things that, like you said, that they would never write in a book because it’s irrelevant, but it just comes out in a conversation. Absolutely. Okay. That’s great. I’d love to.

Okay, you’ve zipped over [00:07:00] to Detroit. You’re doing your residency there. How long did you stay in Detroit for?

Jeff Jensen: At the time, two year surgical residencies were standard. Now they’re three years for everybody, right? Yeah. I got, I had the opportunity to do a two year surgical program and it was really neat because when I went there, I got to also work with people that were absolute leaders in our profession.

Dr. Bill Todd, Dr. Guy Pup Dr. Gary Kaplan, Earl Kaplan’s son, Earl was the father of podiatric surgery. And current hospital. Before it was named Kern, it was Civic Hospital and Civic Hospital is the birthplace of podiatric surgery. So if you go through all of, all the tree, if you will, of surgeons in the United States of America.

All the way back into the late 50s, early 60s, most everybody came through Curran Hospital.

Tyson Franklin: You didn’t know a Dr. Leonard Winston by any chance, did you? No, I don’t know Leonard Winston. Okay, no, he was from around that area. He was the [00:08:00] first, when I graduated, the year I graduated was 88, in 1989. I’m on the Gold Coast, I’m at a bar, waiting for a friend.

All of a sudden I’m talking to this young American guy there. We’re chatting away and he said, what do you do? I said, I’m a podiatrist. He said, my dad’s a podiatrist. And I said I’ll be buggered. So he, then his dad comes in and his dad was Leonard Winston and he was the association that brought him over combination with Rockport at the time.

Rockport had just been released and they were doing tours all around the country. And so him and I got on like a house on a fire. So I hung around these guys for about four days on the Gold Coast. And that was my first exposure to an American podiatrist. Oh, very good. And it was an absolute eye opener and he left me all these different magazines that you guys had in the States that we did not have here.

He got me got subscriptions for me for different magazines as well. So it was yeah, right place at the right time.

Jeff Jensen: I was talking with Luke Ciccanelli. Do you know Luke? No. [00:09:00] So Luke went over to Australia and did some teaching maybe in the last 15 years or so, but I think it’s great that we all have these common grounds.

Podiatric medicine deals with the anatomy and, surgical and non surgical management of foot and ankle issues. That kind of brings all of us together, you

Tyson Franklin: know? Yeah. And that’s why I have the quote on my back wall. Yeah. The next connection you make could be the one that changes your life. There you go.

And I honestly believe that’s why you can do things online. It’s fine. But you need to attend live events, attending live events, the people you meet and the people you have a drink with around the bar afterwards. I know those connections can last a lifetime.

Jeff Jensen: It’s uncanny and you never know when it’s going to happen, do

Tyson Franklin: you?

Yeah, I know. Okay, so let’s get back onto your story. So you’re in Detroit. You did your two year residency there. Did you stay longer or did you? Go back for warmer weather. No.

Jeff Jensen: In about the last six months of my residency program, I was looking for jobs, right? And I had a couple offers. I had one [00:10:00] offer in Philadelphia, one to stay in Detroit, one in San Diego, California, and then one in Denver, Colorado.

And when it was all said and done, we decided to move to Denver where I joined a doctor whose practice was essentially clinical research. Yeah. I don’t know if Dr. Garrett Mulder. Garrett really was a leader in the early days of wound care before wound care was mainstream in podiatric medicine.

He was working with all the big companies at the time, Smith and Nephew, Johnson and Johnson, Convitec, all the companies that were looking at putting wound care dressings on the market and then doing lots of different clinical trials for new drugs and things, synthetic skin. I, we did some of the original studies on.

Dermagraph and Apligraph. So I was vaulted into this world of, yes, I wanted to practice podiatric medicine. Yes, I wanted to grow a practice, of course. But I had the opportunity to do clinical trials with Dr. Mulder.

Tyson Franklin: And that makes sense now because there’s a few other things that I dug up about you.

So that makes sense to how you [00:11:00] ended up down that path. So I’ll let you continue. This is interesting.

Jeff Jensen: Yes. So the reason the way I met Dr. Mulder was I did a rotation. Remember I was telling you about those clerkship rotations. I spent a month in Denver and I met Dr. Mulder and I wrote him a letter near the end of my residency and I said, I hope you remember me and all that kind of goes.

And he said, yeah, I would love, I need an associate. Come on out. We’ll do research together. It was fascinating and he introduced me into an incredible world of clinical trials and research that really. paid off a lot and kind of like the quote on your wall, you just never know when something’s gonna change your life.

Yeah. How many

Tyson Franklin: rotations did you end up doing? I think we did

Jeff Jensen: four that year. We had four, but now we’ve got the opportunity to do eight. But see some of our rotations when I was in San Francisco were in the Bay area. So they worked in a similar fashion, but it’s amazing. You.

You’ve got to reach out and meet really successful people and some of it rubs off on you [00:12:00] sometimes,

Tyson Franklin: I know obviously it did because I read that you’ve got ten , United States patents.

Jeff Jensen: Yeah, it’s actually 14 now.

Tyson Franklin: Oh, we’ve got to update the information that I dug up then. Yeah,

Jeff Jensen: no, that’s okay.

You know what I found Tyson I was practicing and seeing patients and following, what I thought were great clinical protocols and things. And then I was realizing that some of the clinical trials that I was participating on as an investigator, they weren’t really delivering to the patient what we were hoping they were going to deliver.

And. So I found an avenue where I could do National Institute of Health grants, where if I were to develop this idea, it could be a potentially patentable right? An innovative idea that does a few things, right? Something that, that will improve quality of care. Decreased cost of care. If you look at those and you can invent them I, I was very fortunate.

And it’s like anything, when you, the hardest patent that gets your first patent, right? Once [00:13:00] you’ve got, once you have the template down and you’re inventing things and you’re coming up with great ideas that you think are great. Anyway the marketplace might not think they’re great, but It’s a process of, putting the patents together and the provisional patents and non provisional patents.

So yeah, I’ve got 14 right now and I’ve got two more pending and I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve got any great innovative ideas left in me, to be honest with you Tyson.

Tyson Franklin: Like you said, the first one’s a hard one because the thing is we all have ideas.

Everybody has ideas. It’s then taking some action on that And moving forward with it. But little, did you realize that when you took that, when you went from Detroit to Colorado, which is also a very nice area, is you didn’t know that down the track from that job, you would end up having 14 patents.

No,

Jeff Jensen: I never did. I don’t know. We don’t know what opportunities lie before us

Tyson Franklin: really. Yeah. And to give people an idea, your patents are based around medical innovations, addressing diabetic foot ulcers, [00:14:00] offloading, post surgical care, fracture care,

Jeff Jensen: yeah. And then I got one recently.

I was working with Dr. Jason Hamm. And we were working on a kind of insole materials that we use for shoes and it was with Adam Lansman also out of Boston and my son, Danny, who was a soccer player we took some insole materials and we modified them to go into a headband and we patented a.

a protector for soccer players that would minimize the potential for concussions and head. So anyways, that was a fun thing too, but that wasn’t really in my scope. That’s proof Tyson that once you know how to get patents, it’s easy to pull, flip the switch and apply for another one.

Very.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah. I remember when I was at a university, I designed the sole of a football boot because when I was playing football, Under my first MPJ used to just get destroyed from the metal tags that used to come up. So I redesigned the sole and

after I did that, [00:15:00] and then I had no idea what I was doing. So I then sent some things off to a couple of different shoe companies about, Hey, have a look at this design. Now, none of them ever got back to me, but it wasn’t long after that, that some shoe designs came out a little bit different.

I wonder if.

Jeff Jensen: You know what? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you, right? Yeah, I

Tyson Franklin: know. That’s what they always say. Remember that? That was all MASH. Remember when Hawkeye Pierce said that to Major Burns, he says, stop being paranoid. Well, I wouldn’t be paranoid if everyone wasn’t out to get me right, exactly.

Jeff Jensen: So the story you’re sharing is a story that I’ve had friends experience also. They’ve brought technologies, they’ve actually sold their patented technology to shoe companies and then the shoe company, they will put that technology. On the back burner and bring it out later for a future date, yeah, you gotta be careful.

You gotta protect your intellectual property. And

Tyson Franklin: that was something I learned from that. And throughout my career, there were two other times I was [00:16:00] burnt by other companies where I had an idea about something, approach them without protecting it first. And all three times going back to the one as a student and two times when I should have known better, it got burnt each time.

So it is one of those things. If you, I think if you’ve got an idea, go and talk to an attorney who specializes in that area, get yourself protected and then start sharing it with people. Don’t do it beforehand.

Jeff Jensen: Well, fOr anybody listening, you can do a non provisional patent fairly quickly and for very little money.

And it gives you a placeholder for your idea. And then once you’ve got that placeholder with a non provision with a provisional patent, it gives you a year to improve upon it. And then you can apply formally for the patent. So that way you can get out and talk to people and you can advance your technology without fear of losing it.

So there is a method to the madness, we’re not trained that in school. No. Is there to teach you about patent

Tyson Franklin: law or anything? Yeah. And sometimes too the ideas you have may [00:17:00] not even be within podiatry. It might be something that you just see that you go, wow, I can improve upon that. Or I have an idea about that.

But anyway, so when you were doing all this, did you have any contact with David Armstrong through the process since, yeah, the diabetes high risk feet?

Jeff Jensen: Oh, yeah. So when I was, when I graduated from the California College of Podiatric Medicine David Armstrong was about to start his third year there. Yeah. And then when I was at Kern hospital in Michigan, when I was leaving the residency program, David Armstrong was coming in. So David and I have, David and I know each other really well and we’ve worked together over the years.

And in fact, his daughter just graduated from my college in the Arizona college this.

Tyson Franklin: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. . He was back on episode 34. Oh, yeah. Yeah, way back. Yeah. And he’s done a few things in his career as well, hasn’t he?

Jeff Jensen: I always tell a great story about David. When he was a student, he was rotating at our residency program. Yeah. And he was going to come there. And we used to do an [00:18:00] NBA fantasy league, fantasy draft for basketball. And we used to write all the picks on the chalkboard and David shows up and he opens up his backpack and he pulls out a computer.

Now, mind you, this is 1992, right? Yeah. It pulls out a computer, creates an Excel spreadsheet of the day, puts all the picks in, goes over, plugs it into the printer and prints out the end results. For us. And so David’s always been ahead of his time. David’s brilliant. Absolutely.

Tyson Franklin: It was funny because when he was on the podcast, one of the first things he said to me was, yeah, don’t tell anyone, but I’m not really that smart.

And I’m thinking yeah. Right.

Jeff Jensen: Yeah. He’s self deprecating. There’s no doubt. Oh

Tyson Franklin: yeah. And that’s, that’s what was it was probably, it was one of the earlier guests that actually held on the podcast that when he was coming on, I was a little bit nervous. Cause you’re thinking this guy’s got a big name.

Yeah. Everybody in the profession knows who he is. Don’t stuff this one up, Tyson. Don’t do the interview and then say something really [00:19:00] inappropriate that he goes, do not air that. But he ended up just being a really down to earth. Nice guy. Yeah. All you

Jeff Jensen: have to do is ask David a question and then step back and he’ll fill all this space.

Yeah. It was good. He’s a great he’s, he comes from a family of podiatrists also. So David’s a second generation. And Alexandria is third generation. So David’s done just tremendous things for our profession. We’re certainly all indebted to him for sure. Okay.

Tyson Franklin: So with your research you did in the patents, the 14 patents you had, then you were the senior director of research at Barry University.

So how did you, what was the process of going from Colorado to Barry University?

Jeff Jensen: Yeah, this is one of those moments like you have in the back of that quote up there. Yeah. So we had a residency program in Colorado and I was one of the faculty in the residency program and we would meet the, all of the doctors that were in the residency would meet once a month to talk about our program.

And what the residency director said, Hey Jeff, did you know that [00:20:00] there’s a Dean position open in Miami at Barry university? And I didn’t. But I went home and I looked it up and I thought, wow, that really sounds like a neat opportunity. So I wrote a quick little cover letter and my CV and I sent it off to Miami because I had no intention of becoming the Dean, right?

I was in practice. And be careful what you ask for Tyson. You never know, right? You get a phone call and there’s an interview. And next thing you know, my wife and I were sitting in the living room with our four kids saying, dad’s got an opportunity potentially to be the Dean.

Everybody, we gave everybody a veto vote, Tyson, because we lived in Evergreen, Colorado. It was beautiful. But we all decided to make the move to Miami, and I was the Dean there for four years. And I became the senior director of research after that for the entire university. And that’s, everything’s a little bit complicated, right?

My parents were getting older. My mom had dementia. My father was having some vascular dementia. Berry University was so good to me, Tyson. Even though I stepped down as the dean, [00:21:00] they made me the senior director of research. And then I could take care of my parents. and come back to Miami one week a month to fulfill my obligations in person.

But it was, I was working remotely before it was cool, they were good to me. So that’s how I became the senior director of research, but I learned a lot. In fact, some of the research we were doing was on. dementia. So it was very pertinent to my life. Even though I’m a foot and ankle doctor, right?

Okay. So

Tyson Franklin: the research wasn’t all just podiatry related.

Jeff Jensen: No, but we did some really cool research down there, Tyson. Within the school of podiatric medicine, I was also involved with the PA program and we developed a extending extender program for the PA. school, physician assistant school, where we were training like via zoom, like we’re doing virgin islands to become doctors.

And then we also had a big grant from the military. It was to look at multi drug resistant organisms which are pertinent, not only in, in Wounds in the field in war times, but they’re also pertinent to our patients, right? With diabetic foot [00:22:00] infections. So it was a topical application of nitric oxide, which is a universal antimicrobial.

And it’s a very small molecule. So if you put it under a little bit of pressure, it penetrates tissues and gets to the leading edge of infection. So that was a really cool study. We got a couple of million dollars to do that.

Tyson Franklin: So was that how you developed one of those patents?

Yeah,

Jeff Jensen: I’ve got a couple of patents around that, and we were really looking to build out the company and get investment money right about the time COVID hit. And then a lot of funding, whether it was, private equity or angel funding or venture capital, a lot of that funding stalled during COVID of course.

Tyson Franklin: Okay. Oh, go back a step. When you were back in Colorado. Is that where you met Jim McDannald?

Jeff Jensen: Yes. Yeah. I was the clerkship director. So I would bring students in from all the different schools and colleges of podiatric medicine for that month rotation, right? So I was in in charge of the students when they spent a month with us.

And that’s how I met Jim.

Tyson Franklin: Okay. And if anyone’s listened to the podiatry marketing [00:23:00] podcast that I do with Big Jim Mack, that’s who we’re talking about.

Jeff Jensen: It’s small world, Tyson.

Tyson Franklin: It is. It is a small world. And I love the way it all sort of, weaves together. So how did you, so after doing that research, Did you go from there to Arizona, or were there a couple of things in between?

No,

Jeff Jensen: I was in Miami for seven years. Yeah. And I was quite happy. I loved Florida. Doing a lot of deep sea fishing and a lot of fun things.

Tyson Franklin: Miami to Arizona, completely different. Because the beaches in Arizona are not very good. Just to point that out to people that haven’t been to Arizona before.

Jeff Jensen: No, very rarely do people ask me about what I do, but they do ask me all the time. Which do you like more, Florida or Arizona? Because that’s a big question, where are people going to try it?

Tyson Franklin: Totally different. Because exactly the same thing I’ve said to my wife that, if I ever lived in America for any reason for an extended period of time, which I want to do, I want to do for a 12 month period, I said the two places I would live would either be[00:24:00] Nevada or Arizona.

They’re the two places that I’d choose. Now I live in the tropics. Palm trees and yeah, and tropical islands and coconuts . I love that arid desert environment. It’s

Jeff Jensen: so beautiful. You can hike, you can run trails, you can go fishing. You want to go skiing. You can go up to the mountains a couple hours away up in Flagstaff.

It’s an ideal area, Tyson. And when we moved here I was thinking it was just going to be warm all the time and what I didn’t realize that my daughter summed it up best. She said, dad. Arizona is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. And and there’s those extremes, right? Because it’s the desert.

Sometimes in the summer, I think this year we had 30 some days in a row over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It was

Tyson Franklin: hot when I was there this year too.

Jeff Jensen: Yep. And then in the winter like this time of year it’s in the forties when we wake up in the morning. And then it gets up to around 75 degrees.

It’s absolutely beautiful. I would recommend when you come here at September [00:25:00] 15th and then leave June 15th. That’s the way to go.

Tyson Franklin: Like I said to you, I go every year and it’s usually in October. That’s beautiful. That’ll be turned up and it’s during the day it can still be quite hot, but in the mornings it’s really pleasant.

Jeff Jensen: For anybody that wants to come to Arizona, the sun shines about 330 days a year and there’s no earthquakes, there’s no hurricanes it’s just an outstanding area.

It’s a great place to live. And it’s,

Tyson Franklin: yeah, and interesting wildlife. I came across a rattlesnake and bobcat having a fight. So we’re on this path and I saw the rattlesnake, so I’m going to go and have a look. So I ran up there. My friend Dave Frees was following me and he kept yelling out uh, telling me don’t get too close to the rattlesnake.

He said they can jump. And all of a sudden I stopped. I said, why’d you stop? I said, there’s a big cat looking at me. He said. It’s not a mountain lion, is it? No. It’s just a bobcat. He goes, oh , don’t pat the cat. Anyway, next thing, they’re starting to have a fight. And I’m watching this.

And I said, how often does this happen? He said only in [00:26:00] National Geographic. There you go. There you go. And

Jeff Jensen: yeah. Tyson, we’ve been here seven years now. It’s our seventh year and we’ve seen a bunch of snakes. We’ve seen javelinas. But it’s just, it’s so beautiful, if you don’t harm them or if you’re not aggressive with them, they’re not going to be aggressive with

Tyson Franklin: you.

And road runners. I didn’t realize how small the road runner was.

Jeff Jensen: Yeah, because we all think of the Roadrunner on the cartoon.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah, but they’re only about, oh, nine inches high, if that.

Anyway, we should get back on to this. So. You’re now the Dean of Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine in Glendale, Arizona, which we will catch up in 2024 when I come over. Yes, indeed. And you also have the podcast Dean’s Chat Podcast. How did that come about?

What made you decide to do, to actually do that particular

Jeff Jensen: podcast? So I had one of those experiences where I was invited to do the podcast. At the studio in Scottsdale and my son was starting a podcast and I was going to be his guinea pig. So I said, [00:27:00] sure. Yeah, I’ll come down. And as I was finishing the podcast, I thought to myself, Oh my gosh, this is really cool.

Cause my job as a podcaster, my job is to bring in great guests and then the studio does all the editing and they put all my, everything together for me. So I quickly took a piece of paper, Tyson, and I thought, you can do a year’s program. They’ll help you with 52. Podcasts. And I thought I wonder if I know 52 people.

And on the back of a piece of paper in about two minutes, I wrote over 50 names of people in our profession that would be leaders, whether it’s the American Podiatric Medical Association or different associations like the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons or the American Board of Podiatric Medicine.

And then I thought to myself, then I could do deans of all the schools. I could do faculty. I could interview young practitioners. Yeah. Interview presidents. Tyson, as you know, better than anybody there’s an unlimited supply of wonderful people to interview.

Tyson Franklin: Oh I’m well in the three hundreds now.

[00:28:00] So Unbelievable. And there’s never, I’ve had some people come on multiple times, but there’s never a shortage of, of guests. And everybody, I say to everybody, everybody has a story if they’re willing to just talk. And if they don’t think they have a story, I’ll dig it out of them. There you go. That’s

Jeff Jensen: the key.

What’s interesting about all of it, Tyson, and sitting back and reflecting on the year. We’re in this little niche, right? It’s podiatric medicine, but within that niche, there are students, residents, practitioners, leaders, surgeons, it just never ends. So there’s all these little groups that you you do a show and you reach out to them and the people that watch one episode, aren’t the same people that watch the next one.

So that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh I’m learning all of this and I’m again, my learning curve is vertical, right? I’m just loving it. I’m having so much fun. I have no, I just, I’m glad I stumbled onto podcasting. It’s really been a great year for me and I’m looking forward to doing more.[00:29:00]

Tyson Franklin: So you, you go into the actual studio itself and then from the studio, most of your guests are remote. They’re not live in the studio with you, are

Jeff Jensen: they? They’re live if they’re in town for some reason, or whether if it’s somebody like my students or faculty then of course they come into the studio, but most of them are zoom meetings, and I do most of them in almost all of them in the studio.

I’m not down in the studio today with you I’m in my house but yeah I’ve. I Found that if I’m in charge of the technology, there’s a tremendous chance that something’s going to go wrong. And so if I’m in charge of asking questions and inviting great guests, I can handle that. But I, my skill set hasn’t evolved to the point where I can like edit and things

Tyson Franklin: yet.

As long as you don’t have to push the buttons and and you know what, and this is the part I enjoy, like I. Organize the guests, we get everything all planned in. I do the recording, I do the edit, I get it out there. And I actually, I love the editing process and on my old [00:30:00] podcast, episodes. This one’s been over 300.

So I’ve done well over 500. Episodes that I’ve edited myself and people say, why don’t you outsource it to somebody else, but they don’t realize how much I learned from every guest when I’m doing the editing. So we’re talking now, which is great. And I’m learning a lot talking to you today. But then when I sit down and do the edit and I go through it slowly, I hear so many things I didn’t hear the first time.

And sometimes I sit there going. Should have asked a question there, but anyway, I didn’t and, but then when it’s all finished, sometimes I’ll go, if I’m doing a walk, taking the dog for a walk, I’ll put the episode on and listen to it again just to see what everybody else is hearing. And yeah, so I will just keep doing the editing process.

Jeff Jensen: I Like that. That’s interesting. You say that two comments, one, you’re the legend really, you know, The second comment is it’s always interesting because when I finish a podcast, [00:31:00] I’m always critical of myself. I could have done better. And then I’m like, Oh God, I should have done this.

But every time I go back and listen to it, I was like, Oh, that’s better than I thought it was going to be. Because just like you said, you miss things when you’re doing it live that you catch on the second or third review. Yeah. I’ve never posted anything up on YouTube or on the podcast channels without listening to a completely first, even after the edits and things.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah, it’s funny cause sometimes I’ll listen back and I’ll have a question in my head. Did I ask it? Cause I can’t remember. And then as you’re listening back to it, then all of a sudden I do ask the question, I go, Oh my God, thank you.

Cause I’m thinking someone could be driving the car at the moment thinking, come on Tyson, make sure you ask this question. So probably I would say 95 percent of the time I do ask the question, even when I’m listening back to it the second time that I did, but occasionally you miss the odd thing.

Jeff Jensen: I have to admit when I go back and listen to some of my earliest ones, I was super nervous, Tyson. I’m used to lecturing and, traveling around, giving talks and things, but for some reason, the day of my [00:32:00] first podcast, I was super nervous and I was interviewing the Dean.

The same day I interviewed two people, I interviewed the Dean, Dr. Stephanie Wu from the Scholl College in Chicago, and then the Dean from Miami. Dr. Rob Snyder. And I was like, I had an upset stomach. I’m like, Oh my gosh, why is this? And I was rather scripted to be honest with you. I didn’t want to make mistakes.

I want everybody to look good. I still do of course. But I’m just a little more comfortable in my own skin. It’s like anything, the more you do, perhaps the

Tyson Franklin: better you get. See, that’s really, I think it’s really good for people to hear that here you are, a podiatrist, this amazing career, you’ve had 14 patents and you go to start a podcast and you are nervous.

I was. And you get up and lecture in front of all these students and here you are going to do a podcast and you are nervous. That’s great to hear because I was exactly the same. Were you really? Oh, I remember the first in my old podcast, I remember episode number five, which no one [00:33:00] can get anymore because I pushed the wrong button somewhere and I lost, I I’ve got them all, but I.

They’re not actually online anywhere. It was the first guest I had that wasn’t someone who was a friend. And I remember doing the introduction and my voice was just crashing and burning as I’m doing the intro. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said they could even hear it, but I could actually hear the tension in my voice.

And I did, I used to actually have a couple of questions down in case I got lost to keep me on track now. Yeah, I know who the guest is. I know what they’ve done. I have, I do not have one question planned because I just want to see where the conversation goes.

Jeff Jensen: I I’m learning from you, Tyson.

I’ve been getting like CVs and I make scribble little notes. Don’t forget to ask about this. Cause you know how sometimes you go on tangents and you get into the discussion. And so I try to make sure I circle around, but I don’t know. I think I’m getting a little bit better at it. I’m certainly enjoying it.

And I think that’s half the battle. If you love what you’re doing, you’re going to get better at it.

In order to get everything right, it takes practice and time. And in [00:34:00] fact, when I was giving my, doing my first couple of podcasts, I was up like at five o’clock in the morning, walking around doing my intro. Like I tried to do as many times as I could, because it didn’t feel natural to me. As soon as the camera was on me, I was, I didn’t.

I just felt different, if you’re given a lecture at a meeting, nobody’s filming it. Nobody’s going to be calling you on it. You can give me very free with what you’re saying. The second that people are documenting it, like we are it’s out for the public consumption. And that, that, that brings in a certain element of stress.

I don’t feel it anymore, but I did early on like you.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah. I think one of the things that really helped me overcome any sort of public speaking every now. 2019, was it in Liverpool at a foot and ankle show over there, thousand people in the crowd. I had just had to get them to do this 15 minute. And I remember sitting down, you know, standing there, ready to go up on stage, getting introduced, looking at a thousand people and just thinking to myself, I wish I’d worn [00:35:00] brown pants.

Because I was like, my God, but I got up there and I thought, you cannot be good preparation and practice. It’s just rehearsing. You rehearse enough. It will just come to you. And it’s get through the first 60 seconds. If you can make the crowd laugh or just do something that relaxes you, as soon as you get through that 60, the rest just flows that, and that’s what I keep telling myself, no matter where I speak now, I know I’m going to be nervous.

60 seconds. I’m just going to get through the first 60 seconds.

Jeff Jensen: Yeah I’ve been asked to give presentations on topics I didn’t feel like I was really knowledgeable or expert on. And I usually turn those down, cause that requires a lot of research and a lot of, a ton of preparation and all of us can talk about things.

Oftentimes you could ask, are there a few subjects that you could talk about where you wouldn’t for 15 minutes where you don’t have to take any notes or any slides and you could be an authority on that. And [00:36:00] I try to stick with a net narrow area

Tyson Franklin: for me. That’s really good advice.

That’s great advice. Because when I’ve heard people say that they don’t want to do public speaking, they go, Oh yeah, they’re scared about what they’re going to say. Like I wouldn’t get up in front of a podiatry group and talk about anything scientific. Because I would feel I’m out of my element and there’s people that know that subject far better than what I do.

Put me in front of a rotary group and talk about heel pain. I’ll kill it because I know more about that than that particular group. So it’s picking your topic for the audience, but put me in front of a thousand people and say, Hey, show them some demonstration, how to use semi compressed felt to make different padding.

I’ll kill it because I know I’m really

Jeff Jensen: good at that. It was like when you asked me about the patent process earlier, I could talk about that for an hour, it’d be really fun. But if you ask me some, something that I don’t, it’s not in my wheelhouse, it’s not there. So you’re only good at what you’re knowing what you’re passionate about.

And then the other thing I was going to mention Tyson is and this is an old adage, I think, but the two [00:37:00] hardest things to do and the things that people are most afraid of are speaking in public and raising money.

Tyson Franklin: I remember seeing this thing once and it said this is one of the talks I did once.

And it was two biggest fears. First one is public speaking. The second one is death by fire. So people would rather die in a fire than do public speaking.

Jeff Jensen: Yeah. Yeah. That’s crazy. Although I’ll tell you I’ve met so many people that, you start, you meet them, whether it’s in a meeting or at work, or if it was a patient, you get them talking about something they’re passionate about.

They could give a lecture on it. No problem.

Tyson Franklin: Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think, and that’s why I like, I love getting people on the podcast who say to me, Oh, I’m not a legend. I’ve got nothing to say, but I know enough about them, or I’ve done a little bit of digging that I go, yeah, you’ve got a story in there, which I think people will learn something from, and nearly every person when they come on here and they finish, when I press stop, they go, Oh, that was so fast.[00:38:00]

And that was so much better than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. And they say it’s fun too. Which is great. Oh, it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. That’s why I keep doing it. It’s just, it’s fun.

Jeff Jensen: iF it’s not fun, you probably should find something else to do. Nobody, nobody works as a part of a life sentence.

It’s something right. I love being the Dean. I love doing the podcast. I love being with students. I love educating. So it’s not hard work. It’s not work actually.

Tyson Franklin: Yeah. So where you are now in Arizona, you think this is where your career will finish here or do you think you’ll just keep going until you drop?

Jeff Jensen: That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that if I’m intrigued and I’ve, I’m curious by nature I like to do things. My job’s fabulous right now. I get to interview great students that are undergrads and bring them into our college. Our college is phenomenal in terms of board scores and things.

And I would have fabulous faculty and lots of support from the university. So I’m not in any way, shape or form [00:39:00] looking for something, I’ve learned a long time ago to never say never Tyson to potential opportunity.

Tyson Franklin: No, I think that’s good advice. Hey, question about the university though.

So if somebody in America wanted to do podiatry. They’ve done that undergraduate degree. Do they apply to like four or five different schools and then the school looks at their marks and everything else and then chooses them or do they choose the school? How’s that actually work?

Jeff Jensen: So many of the professions in the United States has a, have a central application service.

Yeah. So Tyson, let’s say you, you went back and took all your prerequisites or your son or somebody or daughter, and then they say, I want to be a podiatrist. There’s a centralized application service where they upload all of their transcripts and their medical college admission test scores, the MCAT it’s called.

And then from that central application service, they can designate which colleges that they want to apply to. Okay. So, So for example, when I was coming through, I don’t know that we really had that [00:40:00] back in the 90s, but for today students can go on and apply to all 11 colleges of podiatric medicine. I should, let me temper that a little bit.

They can apply to 10 of them. Because the college in Texas has its own application service. They don’t participate in with everybody else, but that said, it’s really easy then for a student, right? If you want to be a podiatrist, you just click the buttons and then all of your information will go to those colleges and then it’s incumbent upon the colleges to reach out to the student and set up interviews and, you know, whether they come to the campus or we do it on zoom, like we’re doing here.

We’re always looking for fit. You know, Tyson, what I typically say to students is, look, if you’re passionate about podiatry and you’re smart, we give you an interview because you’ve done well, and then you have a few distractions, right? You, if you come to our school, you got to be all in, you know, it’s not like you’re going to be working a part time job or something.

If you put those three things together, you’re well on your way. And then you have a tremendous opportunity to get a great [00:41:00] residency program. And it, you can’t really take it lightly. It’s an honor and a privilege. To do surgery on fellow human beings. So it’s a process.

It’s a seven year process. But um, I from what I’ve seen, I’m so proud of my students. I’m going to meetings now and students that I had in, 10, 12 years ago are giving lectures at the big meetings and I’m super proud of them. And, they’re advancing our profession. You got to pass on the, pass the torch, right?

Tyson Franklin: Yeah, I think that’s great because it’s like, I always say that I know that I’ll never find the cure for cancer. I’ve said this multiple times on the podcast. I said, but I hope one day I do something or I do something that inspires somebody else. And it could be this particular episode.

Someone could be listening to this episode of you and I talking today in a couple of years time, they listen to this episode and from that just set something off in their head and they go on and change the world or they go on and do something great. And then their children go on and change the world and find the cure for cancer.

Jeff Jensen: Absolutely. [00:42:00] Yeah. Yeah. Human beings have

Tyson Franklin: potential. Yeah. And like my focus now, like I do business coaching, with podiatrists and some of the people that I’ve helped and seen what they’ve done with their businesses over the last few years, I sit back and just go, Oh God, you’re like.

Early 30s, I said, where your business is now is like miles ahead of where I was at the same age. What are you going to do with this in years to come? And it makes me feel really good knowing that they’re doing far better than I ever did. Yeah. But you sort, but you’ve helped them along that journey, which is great.

Jeff Jensen: No, there’s a lot of gratification there. And and a lot of the students are, they’re really special. They’ll come back and I’ll see them at meetings and they’ll bring up something that may have been said at a meeting when they were students. And I always tell students there’s the 5 percent rule or 3 percent rule can be five.

I tell them, look, here’s the 3 percent rule. You’re going to be working for 10 hours a day out on rotations. That’s 600 minutes, right? [00:43:00] 3 percent of that is 18, 18 minutes. If you come in early 18 minutes or stay late 18 minutes or you do a little bit more than everybody else, they’re going to remember you and you’re going to get that residency program.

So I’ll be at a meeting, Tyson, and I’ll have a student come up and say, Oh my gosh, Dr. Jensen, I haven’t seen you in 10 years. You’re right. The 3 percent rule still works.

Tyson Franklin: Ah, that is so true. I was going to ask you for a final tip, but I think that is a perfect final tip. The 3 percent rule, because I always say that to people, if you want to have a better business than the person down the road, you don’t need to do 100 percent more.

You just need to do, we’ll say 3%, but 10 percent more than what everybody else is doing. And you will stand out and you will grow whether it’s your business or whether it’s your career.

Jeff Jensen: And then the funny part about that is if you stay 20 minutes more and then the doc has you over at the hospital working up a patient, you may be there for three more hours.

It’s so awesome and you’re loving it, so yeah I’d like that rule. Any rule [00:44:00] that I feel like I can give my kids, I feel real comfortable giving to my students. Yeah,

Tyson Franklin: there was a public speaker he was a professional speaker, and he said to me, the one tip he gave me that I thought was really good, he said, if you’re ever speaking at an event, he said, turn up early.

Ask if you can help. He said, stay behind afterwards, ask if you can help and be there to answer questions. Don’t just rock in exactly when you’re supposed to speak, do the talk and then bugger off. He said, if you’re there and they can see that you’re helpful and you’re there afterwards, and they can see that you really want to participate in whatever this group was, he said, you’ll get invited back.

Jeff Jensen: Absolutely. It’s a version of the 3 percent rule. Sounds

Tyson Franklin: the same. It is the 3 percent rule. So, Jeff, I want to thank you for coming on the Podiatry Legends podcast. This has been fun. Uh, I Recommend people go and check out the Dean’s Chat Podcast, go and have a listen and it will help build your numbers up.

But remember, come back here and still listen to the Podiatry Legends podcast, don’t leave us all [00:45:00] alone.

Jeff Jensen: Absolutely. We’ll get on and we’ll pump the podcast for sure. And I talked to Jim McDannald about that too, so I look forward to that. Tyson, I’m so thankful that you invited me on the show and I’m so glad we got to spend some time together.

No, this

Tyson Franklin: has been fantastic. So thank you very much. All right. Cheers. Okay. Bye.

Jeff Jensen: 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.