330 – The Power of Persuasion with Dave Frees

Jul 5, 2024

This episode with Dave Frees underscores the significance of persuasive communication in achieving better patient compliance, improving team performance, and driving business profitability.

Additionally, Tyson and Dave dive into the importance of understanding the intent behind actions, effective communication, and incremental improvements in leadership skills. 

We also discussed:

  • Persuasion vs Influence
  • Manipulation in Communication
  • Humor and Manipulation
  • Practical Techniques for Persuasion
  • Empowering Patients Through Pain Management
  • Effective Communication with Patients
  • Applying Techniques Beyond Podiatry
  • The Power of Persuasion in Leadership
  • Enhancing Leadership and Profitability
  • Real-Life Examples of Persuasion
  • Incremental Improvements for Massive Gains
  • Practical Takeaways and Final Thoughts

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. 

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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.

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Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Okay, Dave, it is so good to have you back on the Podiatry Legends Podcast.

[00:00:06] It’s an extreme honor to be here, Tyson. I really appreciate it.

[00:00:10] And I know every time we talk, I always just walk away always feeling so much better for it, but I’ve got you on here today because we’re going to discuss the power of persuasion, the mindset strategies and tactics that enhance leadership, success and profitability.

[00:00:24] And this is a talk that you’re going to be doing live in Cairns, in August 24th of August. So it is going to be fantastic, but I thought there’s going to be people who were going to miss out on this, the poor buggers

[00:00:36] missed the whole one day event.

[00:00:37] So I thought, let’s just touch on some of these topics.

[00:00:39] So at least I’ll learn something and the people who are going to be coming along will be absolutely fired up and be bouncing off the walls and those who are thinking about it will listen to this and then they will want to book in straight away, but numbers are limited.

[00:00:52] Yeah. I’ve got lots of good stuff for today, but, since we have all day with the folks that are coming, we’re going to be able to go deeper. [00:01:00] I’m going to be able to teach better models. People are going to come away with more examples. What I find is if I teach 20 things and somebody really masters one or two that are easy for them and that they love, they just, their performance as a leader, as a negotiator.

[00:01:14] As a parent, as a spouse or partner or lover or whatever,, it just goes through the roof because they’re way better. Little incremental changes with these things that we’re going to be showing them that you and I will show them, make a big, big difference.

[00:01:27] Yeah, well, I remember the first event I ever attended, which was over in Arizona.

[00:01:32] At the end of the first day, just what we learned in one day, it just blew my mind. And you were here, we worked out, you were back, you were here in Cairns, 2017, was when you, I think it was 2017. And people still talk about that event today. And I mentioned it to a couple of people the other day, I said, Oh, Dave’s coming back.

[00:01:53] And then went, Oh, where, when? Sign me up. Oh,

[00:01:55] We had a great time at that. That was a bigger audience, I think. I just [00:02:00] thoroughly enjoyed it. And I felt like by the end of that day, people had stuff that they could go and make money with, go and make peace with, you know, there were people wrote me emails after that.

[00:02:10] It was just a beautiful experience.

[00:02:12] Yeah. And that’s the best thing about any of your events I’ve attended. It’s practical. Which means you can, as soon as you hear it, you can go, I can apply that tomorrow. But like you mentioned, it’s not just at work, it’s in life in general, you will become a better parent, a better, a better spouse or partner, a better team member, or a better employer.

[00:02:38] I, wrote a book applying these things that generally you and I teach in a business context to help people really explode their results, whatever they want that to be and to get more clarity. So people would always come up after these speeches all over the world. I was doing it in Mexico. I was doing the United States.

[00:02:54] I was doing them in England. I was doing them all over and people would always come up and go, Oh, that’s great, Dave. But what do you say to your [00:03:00] children? So I wrote a book. And then whenever I would go on radio or TV to promote this book, people would go, are you a terrible parent? Because everybody we ever meet that writes a book on parenting, it’s like a terrible parent.

[00:03:11] So I went home and asked my kids and they said none of them, all of them were sort of of the same opinion. Not so far.

[00:03:18] Not so far. Yes. Yeah. If you haven’t, if you’re not a bad parent already by now, you’re probably not going to be, but like I’ve met all your kids. And they are, they, they are awesome. They are absolutely fantastic.

[00:03:30] So they’ve all got the head screwed on, right? So the book that you wrote and what’s the name of that book?

[00:03:35] The Language of Parenting. So it’s how parents use language and speak to get like way better results. And that’s how the doctors listening to this will get better results with their teams. with patient compliance, with communicating with the patient so they have better clarity when they go home with their kids.

[00:03:52] But the language of parenting was still, it still sells. It’s a really good book because it takes the skills of spies, [00:04:00] interrogators, special forces operators, and other people who are really, really good at persuasion and influence. And it says, this is how you would use these with , kids or grandkids.

[00:04:09] Yeah. What was

[00:04:10] interesting when I read that book, after I read it, I went, this isn’t a parenting book. Like it’s a parenting book, but I’m going, this is not a parenting book. If you’ve got children who work for you, also sometimes called employees, this book applies to them. So what was it?

[00:04:26] Cause I heard you on another podcast mentioned, this was not the original title of the book that you wanted to call it.

[00:04:32] No, I wanted to call it how spies, interrogators, and special forces operators like raise their kids to be, , ferocious wolverines, but

[00:04:44] My yeah, that would have been great title though

[00:04:48] I think it would work

[00:04:49] better. These days you’d probably get away with it.

[00:04:53] Yes. This was the book was written in, I think 2014, something like that. Might’ve been earlier. Oh, 04 I’m sorry. 04. I [00:05:00] actually spoke to a conference of about 4, 000 people in Australia when it was coming out in 04.

[00:05:06] Okay. Well, I guess it’s 20 years old.

[00:05:10] And I

[00:05:10] only looked at it again cause I have it sitting in a particular room of our house and I picked it up the other day and I just opened up a page of somewhere where I’d highlighted and I read it again and I just went, this is not a parenting book.

[00:05:25] It really isn’t.

[00:05:26] It really is how spies, interrogators, and special forces operators would trigger. I’m also always been a civilian, by the way, for anybody listening, but how they would trigger anybody working with them to just be. A much better version of who they are, much more powerful, much more able, and when you can help other people to become more powerful and able and more of who they really want to be, you have God like powers yourself because people will trust with you and they look to you and you’re influential. I, I heard in your title, two words, I think about being persuasive and being influential. And do you mind if I just, cause I have a [00:06:00] weird Yeah, no, no,

[00:06:00] dive in.

[00:06:02] So my take on that is this, Persuasion. We’re going to teach you ways to do it easily, but in general, it’s hard work.

[00:06:09] You’re trying to train someone to look at an issue in a different way and to make a different decision or to change their mind or to do something they might not otherwise have been inclined to do. And in the world of covert operators, that’s a very powerful skill and talent to get people to do something that you want and you need them to do desperately for national security or for whatever reason that they might not otherwise do and you have to have the tools to help them to come to that decision to that conclusion on their own but it is hard work especially if you’re doing over and over and over again in lots of contexts.

[00:06:46] So what you and I, I think will be helping people to do is to become influential, which is how do you take your ability to persuade and do it often enough and in ways that really impress people.

[00:06:59] So [00:07:00] in their unconscious mind, they go, well, when I asked Tyson advice about this or that, he helps me to work through it, and we almost always come to a great conclusion. That is , persuasion, but we start to link the persuasion together, and so that they go, darn, I’ve asked Tyson four things, and three of those four times he gave me something that just was through the roof good; it was just fantastic.

[00:07:27] Here’s the good news is when you do this, if you make a mistake, as we all do, then people are like, Oh, I love Dave. I love Tyson. They just made a mistake in this case. No big deal. They will dismiss it. Whereas if we don’t do that, they might go, well, Tyson or Dave are, nasty untrustworthy buggers.

[00:07:44] So the thing is that if they have, and there’s a methodology to this, there’s a way to make this even better, which is that if you get them to recognize that you are a trusted source of information and that you help them over and over again in [00:08:00] consistent ways, maybe different how you help them to get something that they want, then you become influential to them, meaning , when a problem comes up where you have a skill set and you’ve proven yourself to be trustworthy, they just look to you.

[00:08:12] They no longer have to be persuaded. They go, I’m going to do what Tyson or Dave is helping me to figure out here because they’ve helped me so many times with that so that the persuasion is no longer labor. It’s yeah, it’s really easy, but all of this Tyson assumes that you have the great communication skills to really help people figure out what they want, because if you help them to get things that aren’t good for them, or that cause trouble for them, ultimately, or you misunderstand where they’re going, and you help them to get the wrong result, then you’re not going to be influential and you’ll cease to be persuasive.

[00:08:49] So, this whole thing points out like kind of a fundamental, which is that once we get these incredible powers, we should use them first to find out and [00:09:00] to help people in most cases come to understand what is it they really want in this situation.

[00:09:05] And why? Because a lot of times people tell us that they want something, but they haven’t thought it out enough. And it’s out of alignment with who they are or what they really want. And so being good at getting people to share that with you and to share that information with you, being good to, at getting to really understand what’s going on in someone’s mind and recognising that, look, I’m fond of saying the first thing people tell you is almost always a lie and understanding that they’re still lying to themselves.

[00:09:35] Like if I ask a personal question, what do you want? The first answer they give me. It’s never the thing. I always go, Hmm, that makes sense. And why? And then they tell me a little bit. I go, and what else? And then they tell me more and I go and, and I just stop and leave that out there because that is a technique that works to get them to fill in the blank.

[00:09:53] And they’ll tell me more and more. And the thing is, the further away I get from that first answer where they lying to themselves and me, maybe not [00:10:00] intentionally, the more likely they are to be giving us bits and pieces of more accurate information that we could put together and we could also help them.

[00:10:10] to become more self aware and to come to understand that they might want things that they didn’t even realise at the start.

[00:10:19] But this relates a lot to your patients as well. When you’re talking about becoming influential with your patients is if you give advice and like you said, three out of four times that the advice is spot on.

[00:10:31] And at one time you give some advice and it doesn’t quite work, but if you’re influential, it’s okay. We’re human. We all make mistakes. They’re not going to go as soon as you make a mistake. Oh, I’m going straight to the registration board to put a complainant about you. They won’t do that if they feel you’re an influential podiatrist in their life.

[00:10:51] And that you’re genuinely interested in them and all of these techniques that we can talk about tonight and at the program in much more depth.

[00:10:57] All of those techniques help them to [00:11:00] understand that you really do want to understand them. And so podiatrists that use these techniques with patients are going to improve the results because they’re going to have a greater rapport. They’re going to have more clarity of how they communicate what needs to be done.

[00:11:14] They’re going to have more patient compliance. There are ways to communicate with the patient that make compliance seem forced and then they’re less likely to do it so the outcomes less likely to be fantastic. And then there are ways to communicate with the client about the treatment and compliance with what needs to be done that make them excited and crave it.

[00:11:35] And when they’re in that mindset, they’re much more likely to do exactly what you’ve told them and to get that phenomenal outcome that produces that trust and that influence.

[00:11:44] Yeah, and that’s what you want. But I know there’s some people out there who would hear this and go, you’re just being manipulative.

[00:11:50] Absolutely. That’s the best.

[00:11:52] And that’s the best.

[00:11:58] I interrupted you, but [00:12:00] I, that is the best. I’m excited to tell you why, but you had another question.

[00:12:06] Oh, no, I just, I find it funny because usually that’s some people’s defense straight away they go, oh, no, no, I don’t. I don’t wanna manipulate people. And I’m like, but you do it all day every day. You just don’t realise that you do it.

[00:12:18] It comes back to your intent. It depends what you’re trying to do. What’s the intent?

[00:12:22] Sure. Of your actions. Yeah. I’m fine of saying all human communication, all of it, every way that you do it verbally, nonverbal, it’s all manipulation. You’re either trying to get yourself. Someone else, some other group to do something.

[00:12:34] Tell a joke. You want somebody to feel happy. Yeah. You tell a story. You want to engage somebody. You give yourself encouragement. You wanna go work out and get a better result. It’s all manipulation. And so what kind of sick, sick scumbag. Is that an expression you use in Australia? Yeah. Oh,

[00:12:48] your scumbags.

[00:12:49] Yeah. We know what scumbags are.

[00:12:50] What sort of sick person? Would not use these skills to help a patient to get what they really need with [00:13:00] the flimsy excuse that it’s manipulation. That is pathetic.

[00:13:06] A scumbag podiatrist again. What scumbag podiatrist would not want to use these skills?

[00:13:12] Exactly. I mean, and of course we’re being silly and we’re using one of the skills here, which is something that’s provocative and probably funny, but drives home the point that if all human communication is manipulative, to your point, It’s the intent behind it that really matters. And is it informed intent?

[00:13:33] So if we really know what the patient needs, and we really know the best way for them to get that result, and we have a way of getting them to do it, I mean, only a dirtbag would not use that technique to get the patient the better result. I mean, you’d have to be a horrible person. Your mother would be ashamed of you, I think.

[00:13:52] Yeah. You’re a dirtbag, scumbag podiatrist that

[00:13:55] parents are ashamed. His mother is ashamed of him or her.

[00:13:59] [00:14:00] Yes. Yeah. Wow.

[00:14:01] On top of it, you’re manipulative.

[00:14:05] Yeah. I remember the first time I heard you mention manipulation and you were talking about it in this context. And I do recall you saying when you were telling someone a joke, your goal is to make them laugh.

[00:14:17] Pure manipulation.

[00:14:18] Therefore that’s pure manipulation because you’re changing their mindset. You’re changing the way that they feel. You’re changing a feeling. You’re changing their neuropathy. Yeah, but by making them laugh. Maybe that’s why some people aren’t good at telling jokes. I’m going to tell a joke, but I’m not going to be manipulative.

[00:14:35] I told you a Kiwi joke yesterday at the gym. Yeah. Oh, the, my Tasmania joke. Yeah. Tasmanian joke that Tasmania is proof that Kiwis can swim.

[00:14:44] Yeah.

[00:14:45] That’ll upset a few. That’s all right. But there will be a few people that just laughed at that joke and we have manipulated their thinking.

[00:14:55] Yeah.

[00:14:56] We’ve changed their whole neurochemistry and The Kiwis that [00:15:00] might be perturbed by it should know that I’m a Kiwi, like a sort of Kiwi. Yeah, you’re

[00:15:04] a semi Kiwi.

[00:15:06] I come and go with impunity and play. I didn’t play any American sports. I played rugby and cricket. So, take that for what it’s worth.

[00:15:15] I remember one of the other podcasts that we did together, I introduced you as the most Australian American I’ve ever met.

[00:15:21] I take that as a genuine honor.

[00:15:24] Because it’s one of those things, you did some of your education in New Zealand.

[00:15:29] You did some education in the UK, but you also, one of your earlier jobs, you worked in Bundaberg in Queensland.

[00:15:37] I worked in Bundaberg, yeah. So you

[00:15:38] know where the Bundaberg Rum Distillery is. And, and if you know where the Bundaberg Rum Distillery is, that almost makes you Australian.

[00:15:45] Yeah, I almost got a passport because of that.

[00:15:48] So yeah, it was very close call at the last minute. Some high government officials intervened and it didn’t happen, but I’m going to take a stab at it again. But I kept saying in the interview, Bundaberg, I know where the distillery [00:16:00] is. I’ve been there.

[00:16:00] Yeah. And that’s, uh, that’s my codename in the Business Black Ops group.

[00:16:04] It is. You are Bundaberg. I am Bundaberg, just, just south of Cairns.

[00:16:12] So to put that in context, everyone who’s listening to this with the group, Business Black Ops, the event I go to every year in October, we all have code names. And mine is Bundaberg because of the Bundaberg Rum Distillery. And it’s a bit of a joke between Dave and I that whenever Americans say, Oh, where’s Cairns?

[00:16:31] And I normally will say, Oh, it’s just north of Bundaberg. And people, when we mentioned Bundaberg, always say, Oh, it’s just South of Cairns. only about 18 hours south, but it’s just south. If you look on the map

[00:16:44] for the Americans, that would have no meaning anyway. They, they don’t know where Cairns or Bundaberg are, so,

[00:16:49] no.

[00:16:49] But for the rest of us, it’s funny. So , we were talking about manipulation.

[00:16:54] Yeah. And, and oh no,

[00:16:55] we were talking about scumbag podiatrists whose mothers [00:17:00] are ashamed of them.

[00:17:01] Well, and we’re obviously being silly, but we’re making a point to a part of the brain listening in.

[00:17:07] So if you ever Secretly, quietly to yourself or gave voice to this idea of manipulation. We, took a path to change your mind about that. That was potentially provocative, but also was pretty clearly joking. And so the brain’s getting these mixed messages, which is a confusion technique in communication.

[00:17:32] There are a lot of times that we do this where we confuse the conscious mind that’s monitoring all these things. And we get to a little bit to the unconscious mind, which is more able and willing to think about things less dogmatically. And so hopefully the reason we were being silly, but provocative is we wanted, if anybody still had this lurking manipulation, aversion. We want to get rid of that because people who are great at persuasion and influence and [00:18:00] enhanced communication do not think of themselves being manipulative.

[00:18:03] But I recall when we’ve been at one of your events and you’ll be explaining something and say, oh, I want your feedback. And, I have used, I’ve used this with coaching clients and I’ve said, you can try this with your patients as well, and you’ll say, an extreme stupid example at the top and an extreme stupid example down the bottom, which lets them, makes it easy for them to guide where you should be in between. So you can do that with patient’s treatment.

[00:18:27] Sure, because it’s so shocking, like people are not expecting that scale.

[00:18:32] And so again, part of their brain that would usually be super critical is suspended. And then they’re kind of relief. And you say where am I there? I’ll give you an example where I first discovered this. I was working at a hypnotic pain clinic, which is weird because I think it should have been called hypnotic pain relief clinic.

[00:18:51] But that’s a problem for another day, but it was, and my supervisors there used to always be perturbed with me because I worked [00:19:00] very quickly. And so they had a scale. They would ask the patient when the patient would present in the, and they were in the waiting room to fill out a thing. Zero is I have no pain and 10 is I have very severe pain, but I would come in and I would I want to follow up on that questionnaire you filled out where zero.

[00:19:18] is there is no pain at all, you are so relaxed that you cannot control your bowel or bladder. You’re just a total jellyfish of love. And, so people be like, what is happening? Why is he saying this? What happened to zero to 10? And I’ll go, Oh, 10, there’s still 10. That searing pain where you pray for me to kill you it’s so horrible.

[00:19:42] Now I’m exaggerating a little bit here for the podcast, but I would do that. And then what would happen is people go like, okay, on that scale. I’m like a four because I don’t want you to kill me and I don’t want to soil myself. So I’m like a four and I would say, okay, now what I want you to do, [00:20:00] and this is going to hurt a little bit, is really focus on the pain and see if you can help me to take it from a four to a five.

[00:20:08] Now notice I’m asking them to help me to raise the pain and then I’d go and I’m gesturing like this and I go, okay I’ll take a deep breath and relax and you take it down to about a two or below now I’m saying they’re in charge So what was happening in this little super short exchange is I was getting them to feel Like they had way more control over their unconscious mindset Well, we just went from a four up to a five then back to a two You A piece of cake.

[00:20:37] The unconscious mind goes, ah, by where we put our attention and how we breathe, we could get relief from this pain. Look, he just showed us. We just did it. And he was responsible for taking the pain up. Who was responsible for bringing it down? We were, yeah, so let’s do that. And so I got that idea and it just worked fabulously well, almost 100% of the [00:21:00] time.

[00:21:00] I remember the first time you discussed this with me, I still had the podiatry clinic and I’d be the patient, they’d come back in, you’d be doing your orthotic review and I’d say, okay, the pain that you had, and I would take them through Those scales. And when you used to just say, oh, how have they been?

[00:21:16] Their answer was so vague. But I found when you spoke with a patient and gave them two crazy extremes that they even, they knew were ridiculous, but they’d have a bit of a laugh with it as well. You would get a more accurate feeling on where they were. And then I think they also too could mentally, like you said, they could take it up and take it down.

[00:21:37] Just by thinking about it.

[00:21:39] It’s interesting too, when you use a scale like that with a patient, you can also say, or with anybody for that matter, I’ve become so good at doing it that I can use this in almost any situation, seamlessly, nobody thinks anything of it. And it is to your point, both amusing, so a piece of the brain is getting tickled and releasing happier juices, which is good because they’re not [00:22:00] making these judgments from a sad, depressed place.

[00:22:03] But what I’ve found is, if they rate their discomfort or I’ll say like where , where the results you’re getting, where you’re able to walk around or do the sport again, , how good do you feel about it? Where zero is, terrible and 10 is just amazing. And they say I’m at a six and they were previously in a two.

[00:22:20] Okay, great. Then I can ask them this question. Why did you say it was a six instead of a two or three or a four? And now they tell me like their unconscious mind knows and they tell me 20 reasons why it went up so much Yeah, and then I ask them. Oh, by the way, just out of curiosity. I’m, just wondering so we’re taking away There’s no judgment here.

[00:22:40] But and when we say we’re just wondering the barriers the caution barriers come down All right I’m curious, I’m just wondering, what would have to happen, what could you do to take it from a 6 to a 9, or a 6 to a 7? And by doing that, I’m having them rehearse it, and I’m giving [00:23:00] them power again. I’m saying, what would have to happen, what would you have to do?

[00:23:03] Implying in the very question that a lot more of this is within their power than they may be thinking. And a lot of times they’ll give you an answer. They’ll go, Oh, well, , I still feel some pain when I walk upstairs in my ankle. So, if I could just bring that down a little bit. So that I could go up and down the stairs, without feeling discomfort That’d be like, every day would be an eight.

[00:23:23] So they’ve already started to give themselves a plan, now, where they’re responsible and capable and able to take it from where they’ve had this amazing progress already to even better progress.

[00:23:35] So it’s getting them thinking about the progress of their treatment, not you dictating, you must do this 1, 2, 3. You are letting them work through it. Because probably they already know that when I do this, it makes it worse. Oh. But when I do this, it’s better. Mm-Hmm. .

[00:23:51] So

[00:23:51] when you talk through it with them and then you get them identifying the things that make it better, then they’re overall gonna feel better and they then they know what to do [00:24:00] and they’ve helped put the plan together.

[00:24:01] Yep. And I at that point, if they’ve missed something in the plan, and obviously I’m not a podiatrist, but I work with lots of podiatrists and but I do this in my own professional practice. When we, empower them and when we use language patterns that let the unconscious mind know, like I’ll often, somebody will tell me something that they’re doing that’s terrible, or I’m working with a doctor where the patient tells them all these things they’re doing that are terrible.

[00:24:28] I will say, Oh, that’s really interesting. Tell me how you learned to do that. And they’ll tell you, well, first I did this and then I did this and then I did this. Now I have this terrible habit, but here’s the thing. If they’ve told you that they learned it, there’s a part of their brain that’s already recognised without you even having to say it, that they can unlearn it.

[00:24:50] So it’s very empowering to have people talk about a problem they have As how did they go about learning to do that?

[00:24:59] Okay. [00:25:00] And that would apply with your team as well.

[00:25:02] Absolutely.

[00:25:04] Anything you’re doing with a patient or family, you could do with your team as well.

[00:25:08] Absolutely.

[00:25:09] That’s when typically when I’m speaking to, to docs, so I’ve spoken to the American Academy of Pediatric Medicine. One of my favorites is I spoke to the American Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. All these medical groups, and they all say, I want to be better with my patients, but secretly a big part of them would love to get even a tiny bit better performance out of the team.

[00:25:39] And so all of these things will help you to build better systems, to learn how your team members learn and what they respond to, and to be able to build onboarding and training that’s just way more effective. So, and I get it, not every doc does their own boarding, not every doc does their own training, but lots of them in small podiatrist practices [00:26:00] do.

[00:26:00] And so anything we can teach them that we can also show them how to use with the team or in their marketing or at home. Like if you could solve Problems. I, one time was asked to speak to a, I won’t say too specifically what it was, but it was a big construction organisation in the United States and it revolved, it involved concrete.

[00:26:21] And the leaders of this organization took me to an Italian restaurant. And there was one big leader and two very big Italian bodyguards. And so at one point he goes you know, we’ve, we’ve got good radar. And so it looks like you haven’t really don’t have a lot of experience with concrete. So I was like, no, I do not have a lot of experience with concrete.

[00:26:50] He goes, it looks like you talked to a lot of doctors and lawyers and government, like we’re concrete. So I was like, yeah, I get it. I said, [00:27:00] do you ever, here’s what I do. Do you ever tell your wife, have your wife tell you you’re good and you should do something and then you do it, you think you do it perfectly and it’s nothing like what she wanted?

[00:27:10] And he goes, yeah, what’s it to you? So I said, that’s what I do. I help you to get to understand what she wants and give her what she wants so that she’s way happier with you. You know, so he stops. He’s like, well, that’s kind of interesting. So I tell him a little bit more about how we relate. I’ve made some headway.

[00:27:29] I’ve been persuasive. He goes, You have a DVD of one of my speeches, I’m assuming, so I go yeah, got, got one. Sure. He goes, can I have it? And I said, no. And he goes, what do you mean? No. Now this is by the way, a technique that I’m teaching while we’re talking here in this because he’s expecting me to want the job so bad that I’ll go out to my car and get this DVD and get it to him.

[00:27:54] And I was like, yeah, lots of DVDs, but you, you can’t have [00:28:00] them. Now these two body cards. They are losing their stuff. They’re like, what is happening? Nobody talks to the boss this way. And I said, you said you’ve got good radar. And I said, I don’t know anything about concrete, but I know how to help all your guys.

[00:28:21] Talk to their teams and how to make those companies more profitable by becoming better communicators and doing better. I go through all those things. I was like, you said you have good radar. Am I good or not? You don’t need a DVD. And the guy goes, you’re right. I don’t need a DVD. You’re hired. And you see these other guys on two sides are like, Oh my gosh, we don’t have to kill this Dave Frees

[00:28:46] we kinda liked him. We didn’t wanna have to kill him. Is that a recent story? I haven’t heard that one before.

[00:28:54] Yeah, it’s a true story from probably that’s probably like 06 or 08 where that’s happened. [00:29:00] Alright.

[00:29:00] That’s why you can’t mention any names. Yeah, it’s

[00:29:02] fairly, you

[00:29:03] know,

[00:29:03] there’s, everybody’s still alive.

[00:29:05] well, maybe actually we don’t know, but hopefully,

[00:29:08] Depends how well they communicate with their team.

[00:29:11] And by the way, it was a fantastic audience. They just loved it because everybody there was like, I could be better. Like I do a lot of shouting at people. I could be better. And and so, and the other thing was, I was like, you don’t have to understand all the science.

[00:29:27] I’ll talk to you about the science if you want, but just do these three things. Get used to it. Get good at it. Let it just feel comfortable for you and you’ll be so much better at this. Like this, that’s the beauty of both this call for this podcast. Yeah. Also the event is you don’t have to get a whole lot out of this.

[00:29:49] To get dramatically better results. You just become a little bit better. I mean, think about it. If you were 10 percent more persuasive, if you were 10 percent [00:30:00] better at figuring out how your team needs to learn something in order to do it better, more effectively on an ongoing basis, I mean, it’s just transformation.

[00:30:10] It’s true though. It’s not becoming a hundred percent better in every area of your business. It’s becoming, like you said, 10 percent better. over multiple areas and then they compound on top of each other until there’s a massive improvement. . Even yourself will sit back and go, my God, there’s so much change in so much improvement.

[00:30:31] And I’ve seen, there was some of my coaching clients where we’ve changed little things in different areas, but over a number of years, you see all those changes taking effect. that there’s this massive improvement and even they look back and go, I never would have thought the clinic would be where it is.

[00:30:50] I would have people do these materials. We’ll have them do some of these same exercises. And I was doing one, one time and then years later, maybe [00:31:00] four or five, six years later, I was doing an event and there was a woman there who had been at this event, , five, six years before. And she said I thought you were a charlatan.

[00:31:11] Like she got up to give some remarks and ask you a question. And she goes, I saw you speak. And they said, this guy’s a lawyer and he was a interrogator . And, , and you said, it’s easy. You just have to do one or two things a little better. And I was talking about the reticular activating system and have clarity about what you want.

[00:31:28] And so one of the things when she wrote down these goals, and I, In the exercise, we had them make the goals like bigger and better and more robust and we just keep working with them and working with them until it got closer to what they really wanted. The old, the first thing they write down is a lie and she said in front of the whole audience, she goes, but I, when I saw you were at this conference, I came to see you because I went back and opened that notebook up from your first conference where I said, this guy’s a charlatan and this is never going to work. She said, I [00:32:00] was horrified to see that I had achieved like every one of the goals that you had me write down the bigger, more robust ones. Like multiple times over because she was thinking so small.

[00:32:12] And the other thing is if we 80:20 skills, like if you’re just a little bit better at your communication skills, your persuasion skills, your influence, a little better negotiator, you get into fewer disagreements with people, just a little bit, you’re just a little bit better. That makes you better in every role.

[00:32:29] It makes you better as a podiatrist. It makes you better in my case, as a lawyer. It makes you better at managing your people. It makes you better with your spouse, like every role you’re in in life. You’re better and you’re a lot better because improved communication skills improve every other skill like every other skill is dependent upon like even communication skills you can even think of as how you communicate with yourself which means that when you get good at this you get way better at learning faster because [00:33:00] you become more self-aware.

[00:33:02] Yeah. Of how it is you learn optimally and what it is that’s important to learn versus not. And how you communicate with yourself means that you can learn so much more, so much more thoroughly, so much more quickly and apply it.

[00:33:14] I think it’s, also one of those things too, that when you know what works for you, you’ll try different things and you get the improvement, but then you’re also, I think you get a lot better at picking the resources on where you will find this information. Who are the speakers? You don’t have to listen to 50 speakers to try and get information.

[00:33:32] You know who talks about what subject. and what they specialise in. And I think you can choose your speakers better and therefore you’ll learn faster.

[00:33:43] Yeah, because you’re not given all kinds of conflicting information. There’s a lot of people out there, you see this when you read popular books on business or whatever it might be, is that there’s a lot of people that are just regurgitating stuff.

[00:33:58] They may not even have a lot of [00:34:00] experience with it and they may not be good at teaching and yet with we if we spend a bunch of money and time and effort and energy acquiring information from those kind of speakers or those kinds of podcasts or those kind of books, it’s counterproductive because we’re losing the time we could spend with somebody really good at a skill that we need to be really good at, and or who’s really good at teaching that skill.

[00:34:23] And one of the things that I’m good at, I really feel that you are too, is that we get people, we, we’re not just revealing something to them, we’re helping them to find it themselves, but then we’re showing them ways that they could get better at it and use it and do it. And I’m constantly, you could verify this because you’ve been there, using these manipulative language patterns to let people know that they can rehearse this in their brains, they could start to notice when they’re making progress, because a lot of times we’re making incremental progress and don’t even notice.

[00:34:55] Hmm. But when I give someone a post hypnotic suggestion to notice the [00:35:00] little changes that they’re making, then they’re getting a little dopamine reward much earlier in the process, and they go, I am getting better at that. I do know something that’s working. I’m gonna do more of what’s working, less of what’s not working.

[00:35:12] That is a absurd strategy. People laugh at me when I tell them that. But I’ll go like, here’s one of my big strategies I’ve learned in life. Let’s do more of what’s working, less of what’s not working. And people are like, that’s stupid. But the truth is, if you ask them what’s working, what’s not working, you go through their lives with it.

[00:35:30] They’ve got big piles of things that aren’t working, that they’re spending a lot of time on doing. So sometimes these very apparent strategies have real value.

[00:35:40] But sometimes it’s the simple stuff. I remember you talking once and saying that whenever you meet someone for the first time, that you always know there’s something you can learn from that person.

[00:35:49] No matter who they are, what they do, what their background is, their education is totally irrelevant. You know that person can teach you something. So you will have that open [00:36:00] conversation with them. Searching for that thing that they can teach you. They know something you don’t know.

[00:36:05] And that was one thing I really walked away from just going, I’ve learned so much from everybody that I talked to. And the other simple thing that I thought was great, which when you said always look for something that you can compliment somebody on, genuine, the Yeah. But it’s gotta be genuine compliment.

[00:36:22] So instead of just meeting them and you might walk ger, geez, that was a nice shirt they had on, is actually consciously think about what’s a genuine compliment, and you can actually pay that person, whether it’s something they’re wearing, or it might be something they said, or something you saw them do.

[00:36:38] So I think those two things, learning from everybody, and a genuine compliment. Whoa, just opens so many doors in your communication.

[00:36:48] It changes their neurochemistry too, because they may react with embarrassment or whatever to a genuine compliment, but they know it’s a genuine compliment. And, we can always find that in [00:37:00] somebody.

[00:37:00] And then the other thing is they sense if you’re really interested in them, and you think this person has something that they could teach me, you’re giving off a very different vibe than if you think this is a, this person is unintelligent and a ne’er do well, and I’m never going to learn anything from them.

[00:37:17] How you present to them and how you sound to them is going to be completely different, especially at the sort of like less conscious level, but even at the conscious level, you’re going to stand differently. You’re going to look at them differently than if you’ve made an intentional conscious decision that I’m going to get to know this person.

[00:37:36] And they probably have something that they could teach me because you’re acknowledging that they’re smarter or better than you at something. And people love to know that you’re acknowledging that and you don’t have to say that out loud. It comes through in how you hold yourself and your tone of voice and the eye contact you make with them and all of those sorts of things.

[00:37:56] So the last thing I just want to touch on before we wrap up is [00:38:00] like in the title of the presentation you’re going to be doing in Cairns, the power of persuasion, the mindset strategy and tactics that enhance leadership success, and the last word, profitability, all these things we’re talking about, everything to do with communication persuasion, the bottom line, you will become a better leader, but you will also have a more profitable podiatry business.

[00:38:25] And I think there’s a whole host of reasons for that, but one is when you’re better at this, you become better at finding out why patients come to you, the language that they’re using to describe, like they’re not using your language, you’re an expert, you’ve been trained to have this medical practice, they’re thinking of their ankle injury or their plantar fasciitis as something else, and they use different words.

[00:38:52] So when you learn what it is that people are really feeling, how they describe it, how they come to understand what [00:39:00] solutions are, how to solve it, when you get to know where they are on the journey, your treatment of the patient becomes better, and so they make referral of other really good patients.

[00:39:11] But your marketing, in whatever form that takes. Ads on the internet, ad on television, a little sign up sheet at the front desk where they could sign up and give you their email to get more information about x, y, or z that might be important to them. Everything you do becomes better and so also you become faster at seeing patients and helping them to get to the result that they want.

[00:39:36] And the result is better. And so your margins go up. So anytime that we can treat patients more effectively in 10 percent less time on a consistent basis, even if we don’t change our pricing

[00:39:52] but, but even if you were fixed, if your pricing was fixed, one of the ways to get better pricing is for your team to work better, to [00:40:00] work more quickly, to work more smoothly, to get the better result for the patient, possibly in less time, and your margin is going to go up. You’ll be able to see a few more of make more money.

[00:40:10] They’ll come to you more easily. And for those practices that aren’t capped by what they could get for particular procedures or treatments they’ll be comfortable as the demand for your practice, your business grows, your ability to raise prices grows. Because if there’s more demand for you and your practice and the team you have, then you could possibly fulfill, it’s okay to start to raise prices. And people that really want to come and benefit from your treatment will pay more.

[00:40:43] It just makes sense. So on the day itself, you’re going to be giving, it’s not just theory, we have a lot of practical examples and there’ll be handouts and be things that people will be filling in.

[00:40:55] Well, I can tell you that I try to make it so that they leave with a clarity that they probably didn’t have before [00:41:00] about what they want. And when they have that along with some things that specific things they could do, they’ll pick things to do to achieve these goals or to create systems to achieve the goals that are much more in alignment with what they really want.

[00:41:14] Like a lot of times I find when people don’t really know what they want and they don’t have a plan, then they just do stuff. And that stuff might be smart and in alignment with the goal, or it might not be, in which case it’s burning time and money and energy and resources and keeping you from getting to see the patients that really matter.

[00:41:32] So they’ll have actionable things that they can do to get results they really want and probably have some clarity about that. That’s better than they’ve ever had before.

[00:41:45] No, I think it’s going to be, it’s going to be absolutely fantastic. And I’m just going to point out to anybody too, if you have happened to be watching the video.

[00:41:52] Every now and then you would have seen a snout pop up from the bottom of the screen. That’s Dave’s Jack Russell.[00:42:00]

[00:42:01] I’m just thinking if anyone was watching the video, they’d go, I’m sure I just keep seeing this little black nose popping up.

[00:42:07] It was either that or possibly have like that mountain lion sound that she makes. She’s tiny. She’s a tiny Jack Russell, but she walks around Like a mountain lion challenging like anyone in her path.

[00:42:21] I know. When we first started the recording, I heard all this growling. I was going, Dave, get something to eat. Well, you have a feed. It’s in your stomach. It’s, it’s just, it’s growling so loud.

[00:42:32] Well, I have a country house, as you know, Tyson, and I have a house in a town. And so, of course, as fate would have it, on the day that you and I could get together to do this, I was in town.

[00:42:42] And that means if a pit bull or some other dog walks by, that was that ruckus that we heard earlier. The, and, but there’s two Jack Russells, and so they fight constantly with one another. , so that that growling you heard was the two of them. They were like, we don’t have anybody else to fight.

[00:42:58] We’ll just fight.

[00:42:59] [00:43:00] Yeah, we’ll fight each other. Okay. Dave, I wanna thank you for coming back on the Podiatry Legends Podcast and anybody who’s listening to this, if you’re in Australia, August the 24th, it’s a Saturday up in Cairns, go to my website, WWW.TYSONFRANKLIN.COM all the information will be on there.

[00:43:17] Click on events. There’s limited numbers. So don’t sit on the fence too long. You will get splinters in your bum.

[00:43:25] I look forward to seeing everyone and then maybe we’ll make a quick drive down to Bundaberg.

[00:43:30] Just, just South of Cairns. Okay, Dave, thank you very much.

[00:43:34] Thank you, sir. Be

[00:43:35] well.