332 – The Lower Limb Conference

Jul 20, 2024

In this episode of the Podiatry Legends Podcast, host Tyson Franklin welcomes guest Cameron Bennet to discuss The Lower Limb Conference in Brisbane on November 2nd and 3rd, 2024.

Cameron shares the inspiration behind creating this independent conference to provide practical skills and insights for podiatrists and other professionals involved in lower limb care.

The episode covers the lineup of speakers, including experts in ultrasound, shockwave therapy, injection therapy, and more. They also discuss event logistics, sponsors, and the benefits of attending this groundbreaking conference designed to move the profession forward.

To learn more, please visit www.TLLC.net.au, or you can reach out directly to Cameron Bennet on LinkedIn. Also, don’t forget to use the BOOKING CODE: Tyson15 to get a 15% Discount.

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

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

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Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, I’m Tyson Franklin and welcome to this week’s episode of the Podiatry Legends Podcast. The podcast designed to help you feel, see, and think differently about the podiatry profession. With me today is Cameron Bennett. He has been on the podcast before, back in episode 297 – The Benefit of Early Career Wins.

[00:00:17] However, what we’re talking about today is a conference that Cameron has developed called The Lower Limb Conference. It’s going to be in Brisbane, on the 2nd and 3rd of November this year, 2024. So if you’re listening to this after November 2024, you dipped out. Big mistake. So Cameron, how are you doing today?

[00:00:38] Tyson, I’m great, mate. Thank you for having me back

[00:00:40] again.

[00:00:41] I thought it was fantastic. I heard about this event a couple of months ago. It must have been when you first started to promote it. And I thought, what a bloody great idea to have a conference that is the Lower Limb Conference, and it’s not part of the association, it’s a purely independent conference.

[00:00:59] Why did you come up [00:01:00] with this idea?

[00:01:02] Yeah, absolutely. So, completely independent, we’re just running this ourselves. The big thing was, I didn’t find the kind of conference experience that I wanted from some of these other events that I was going to. And so really the things that we were looking for was an event that’s very clinically applicable.

[00:01:19] We’re going to provide skills that people can walk away with and use, the next day. But also really the skills that are designed to take that, take your, Clinician to the next level. Where is the puck heading? Where are the skills that we need to be putting in place now to ensure that we’re ready?

[00:01:36] We’re ready to treat. We’re ready to embrace the entire scope of what podiatry can be. So, we’ve decided to develop the conference

[00:01:44] that

[00:01:44] we wanted.

[00:01:46] So how’d, how’d the idea start though? Like obviously you’d gone along to some of the association conferences or other events. And, I’m not saying that I just don’t go to association conference, but sometimes they might be for two or three days.

[00:01:59] They [00:02:00] cover a lot of topics. And I know a lot of people will look through the list of topics and go, it doesn’t apply. It doesn’t apply, doesn’t apply. I’m not in public health. And then when they narrow it all down, there’s only a small amount of things that they really want to see or what interests them.

[00:02:13] So is that sort of part of the reason behind it as well, to make it really

[00:02:18] specific? It’s exactly right. So from my personal experience, I work in private practice. So a lot of the other more public health focused conferences just aren’t particularly applicable to me. Or at least on a daily basis, I’m not going to use a lot of the information that I get.

[00:02:35] On top of that, a lot of conference experiences, and this is not to try and knock any of the current experiences, but they are. Very research based and research heavy, which look research, very important, of course, but if your research is for research’s sake, then it’s not something that I can take with me and present to my patient and help them get a better outcome.

[00:02:56] Yeah.

[00:02:56] So, while it’s fantastic that you’ve done the [00:03:00] research, you’ve gone down that pathway and it’s absolutely something I appreciate. I, I don’t necessarily want to come and listen to the event if I can’t then take something away from it. So everything that we’re trying to do is just, as I say, very clinically focused, just providing those skills that people can use to get their patients better outcomes.

[00:03:20] Yeah,

[00:03:20] I do agree. I think we need to have research, but I would love to see this just a research conference and anyone that just wants to sit there and listen to research can sit there all day and just knock themselves out. But I find when you go to conference and someone’s presenting the research.

[00:03:35] But there’s nothing that I can just go and use it on Monday morning back in the clinic, you go, okay, that was great. But sometimes I haven’t ever actually finished the research either. It’s still in progress, or there is no conclusion because it’s got to be applied then clinically. That’s

[00:03:51] exactly right.

[00:03:52] Give me the Cliff Notes version. Give me the half hour summary that I can take away from all of them would be fantastic. [00:04:00] But as you say, and I. I don’t want this to be misconstrued. Like I’m certainly not against any of the current conferences that are out there. I just wanted to offer up another experience for people and the one that I wanted.

[00:04:13] And so I couldn’t find it anywhere else. So we decided to develop it ourselves. I keep saying we, it’s just, it’s myself as a podiatrist and my partner, , she’s getting involved to make sure I don’t make a fool of myself.

[00:04:26] So how many, speakers have you got lined up?

[00:04:30] So we’ve got 12 speakers lined up at the moment, spread over two days over a range of different topics

[00:04:36] We’ll have both presentations and workshops as well. So the idea being that the information can get delivered in a presentation format. And then if that’s something that you’re particularly interested in or a topic that you want to explore further, you can go and engage in those workshops as well.

[00:04:52] So things like point of care ultrasound something that I’ve been using quite a lot in my own clinic, and it’s certainly a topic of [00:05:00] discussion amongst a lot of podiatrists, but perhaps you don’t want to go down the pathway of, Investing in a couple of day course, investing in the equipment to actually do point of care ultrasound without this taste, this little teaser.

[00:05:12] So we’ll present the information you can get hands on in a workshop. Is this something that you want to explore further? If it is fantastic booking for the course, we’ll have the reps there. We have the people that you can start to. Engage with to be able to upskill yourself as

[00:05:28] as quickly as possible.

[00:05:29] Okay. So somebody will come out, do a presentation on a particular subject or topic. You’ll sit there, listen to that. If you go, wow, that is awesome. I want to apply that in my clinic. Then there’ll be reps with that equipment there as well, that you can then talk to afterwards.

[00:05:45] Yeah. So a combination. So there’s reps.

[00:05:48] So taking the ultrasound example the reps will be there, which is fantastic, so they can get you hands on using the equipment as well. But also the presenter, James Ferry, he’s going to be [00:06:00] running workshops. So for a more hands on component to it, he’ll do his presentation, run you through the theory, run through some case studies.

[00:06:07] And then going across over to yeah, getting hands on ensuring that you can get the ultrasound probe in your hands. You can identify some structures and just see how this might be useful in your everyday practice. Okay, so who else, what, what other subjects are you talking on? We have a whole range.

[00:06:25] So, yep Point of Care Ultrasound is the first one. James is also presenting on Shockwave Therapy. So we have the guys from EMS, they’re going to be there for Shockwave Therapy and it’s, it’s, use in sort of chronic pain management. We have Craig Wanless coming along to talk through injection therapy.

[00:06:42] So prolo therapy and the way that he’s using that in his clinic, we have Talysha Reeve. She’s coming along with a couple of different presentations again. So, very fortunate. We’ve got her discussing ankle instability and also the way that she’s incorporating VALD the , host incorporating their technologies into [00:07:00] her treatments.

[00:07:00] So using their tech for quantifying data, quantifying patient outcomes

[00:07:07] to achieve better results. Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be a lower limb conference without Talysha being there. That’s

[00:07:13] exactly right. She’s prolific. We need to ensure that she’s part of it.

[00:07:16] And the venue is going to be at the VALD venue in Brisbane.

[00:07:20] Yeah. So Vald headquarters, absolutely. So they have an enormous space. They’ve got a huge auditorium space, big projector screens, everything set up ready to go. We can use their equipment. We could get everything from the dynamometers to the analysis software and just looking through everything that Vald have to offer in the way so you might be able to incorporate that into your clinic.

[00:07:43] That’s pretty cool. So who, okay. Who else is speaking? So going down a slightly different pathway, we have Josh Truscott coming along in conjunction with Curacorn. So Curacorn, a company out of the UK utilizing injectable therapies to replace these diminished [00:08:00] fat pad areas and these areas.

[00:08:02] This is their Australian launch. They’re going to be signing up people to run training courses based on those people that want to engage with them at the conference. We have Dr Oz, Ozan Amir, coming along with some P& A. Tips and tricks. Steve Collins. He’s a SNC physiotherapist. He’s jumping in to discuss some SNC concepts, cuing and the way that kind of our language can be really beneficial or detrimental in the way that we are coaching our patients through some, some rehab. Gosh, who else do we have? We have Jono Steedman. He’s a registered dietician coming to discuss REDS. Beck Brown, she’s an exercise physiologist, was associated with Queensland Ballet for quite some time as well as being a dancer herself. Coming along to talk through pre point assessments and pointe shoes and some of these different kind of avenues that podiatrists can specialize into.

[00:08:56] Um, we’ve also got Sam [00:09:00] Turner. Many of you might’ve seen him on Instagram, the football podiatrist. He’s coming up to discuss technologies that we can be using for our greater assessments and orthotic prescription for footballers or people in football boots. Jarrod McGinnis, he’s coming along again discussing VALD, so he just did a presentation at SEPA not long ago up at Noosa , so he’s presenting a similar sort of one discussing some case studies and the way that they’ve used VALD technology, but we’ve also got the CEO of Heidi. So I don’t know if you’ve seen much about Heidi Heidi AI.

[00:09:29] They’re a note taking software. They’re fantastic. I’ve been using it in clinic myself. You just have your discussion, have your consultation and they securely store it. Pull the, relevant information out of it and write your notes up there for you. So they’ve got note templates, letter templates, all of this kind of stuff.

[00:09:47] So we’re really fortunate enough to have the CEO, Tom, he’s coming out to discuss all things Heidi and the way that it can be input implemented into the, into your clinic. And it’s going to be great. And then we have [00:10:00] sponsors as well, the list keeps going.

[00:10:01] So with your sponsors, how many, who are the sponsors? Give them a, give them a shout out. Even though none of them, I’ll point it to people, none of the sponsors or nobody that’s mentioned here has paid to be mentioned on this podcast. I don’t have any sponsors on this podcast.

[00:10:14] This is just us having a conversation about the lower limb conference because I thought it was a great idea. So who, who’s sponsoring it? But if a sponsor is listening to this and you want to sponsor the podcast, by all means, reach out to me.

[00:10:28] Absolutely. Yeah , get the exposure. No, we’re, we’re really fortunate.

[00:10:31] We’ve had a, a whole heap of fantastic companies wanting to get involved. So, we’ve got VALD, obviously. So they’re hosting us. They’ve generously allowed us to, to use their venue there, which is absolutely fantastic. As I said, the space is just perfect for this kind of event. Paromed the orthotic company.

[00:10:47] They’re on board. So if you need anything orthotics related, definitely have a chat to them. Uh, Curicorn coming along to present. We’ve got P3 from Talysha ultimate podiatrist with Josh Truscott. [00:11:00] Brooks. So Brooks are getting involved in the conference and they’re giving away some shoes for us, or they provided us some shoes to give away.

[00:11:09] So everyone get a

[00:11:10] free pair or they’re too tight to do that?

[00:11:18] Well, they’re not a sponsor of my podcast. I can say what

[00:11:22] I want. Not quite. Not quite. Everyone gets a free pair, unfortunately. But if you head over to our socials, there is a competition running. Right now, if you want to get involved to potentially win yourself a free pair of brooks just for coming along to the conference, which would be amazing.

[00:11:36] We’ve also got Clarius. So, as I mentioned before, they’re getting involved. They’re going to have a whole heap of handheld units there for us , to use, to ensure that it’s the right.

[00:11:44] So they’ll have ones that people can actually use and test it all out. Cause I’ve got a couple of, I’ve got a couple of coaching clients that actually have bought the Clarius system and they’ve only had it in the early stages, but they love it. I think it’s fun.

[00:11:58] But they’re fantastic. I [00:12:00] use one in clinic myself.

[00:12:01] So yeah, they bring you along a whole heap of handheld units so you can test them out. You can have a bit of a play, see how they feel in the hand, make sure that it’s the right tech for you. Yeah. EMS, Dolorclast, the Shockwaves, they’re coming along and sponsoring. They’re going to have a couple of units there to trial as well.

[00:12:16] Again, as someone that uses a Dolorclast in my clinic It’s chalk and cheese compared to every other unit that I’ve used in the past. So come along, get hands on, discover why this, this might be a bit of a different one. So especially people who maybe have trialed shockwave in the past and didn’t find that it was as good of a treatment option as they might’ve expected, dolorclast units are fantastic.

[00:12:35] So, and speaking with a couple of other potential sponsors as well, the whole point of these sponsors is I just want to get the best experience possible for our delegates, if that’s getting them hands on with the tech that they want, if that’s being able to provide, giveaways and these sort of things, running the best networking event we possibly can, whatever it might be, the sponsors are getting involved to [00:13:00] ensure that this event’s going to be a success , and we’re super grateful as well as being grateful to the Podiatry Legends Podcast as well.

[00:13:07] Yes, I

[00:13:08] know. Well, that was the thing because when I heard you were doing this. That’s why I reached out to you. You didn’t reach out to me. And I said, Oh, do you want to come on the podcast, talk about this event and in return, can you put Podiatry Legends Podcast as a sponsor? And this, this is something that like, I love collaborations between different people.

[00:13:27] If, if I can help you out, promote the conference. And you can help promote the podcast. Then to me, it’s win win for everybody.

[00:13:35] Absolutely. No, it’s it’s great. We, we love the opportunity to get this kind of exposure. We are, we don’t have the reach of some of these other big conferences, so we’re, everything that we’re doing, we’re, we’re building this our first ever time doing it.

[00:13:47] So, hopefully only, only going to continue to grow from here as well. But no, we really appreciate being able to share what we’re doing with your audience and yeah, in return, hopefully, Put a few more [00:14:00] people across over , to listen.

[00:14:01] Yeah. And I’ll point it to people overseas, if you’re listening to this, Brisbane in November is a great time to actually visit. It is, I did my LIVE Reboot in November last year, I think it was in Brisbane. And we were just saying how good is the weather here this time of year? Like during winter, it’s too cold for me because I’m up north, but November is absolutely fantastic and it’s not overly hot then either.

[00:14:26] So have you had any registrations yet from New Zealand or anywhere else overseas? We have.

[00:14:32] So we’ve got a couple from the UK. We’ve got a couple from New Zealand, a couple from Singapore coming across. So, we’re truly international. We’re looking forward to welcoming as many people across here as possible.

[00:14:42] Interestingly, we’ve had just heaps from across Australia. So pretty much every state and territory so far, everyone traveling up to Brizzy. So really looking forward to that. We have also More, I guess, logistics of the event, organised accommodation for people with a discount [00:15:00] code. So if you are looking to travel across, definitely get in touch.

[00:15:02] We have some relationships with some of the closer hotels to the venue there just to get you that little discount and make sure that. You can just enjoy the event as much as you possibly can. Now

[00:15:14] it’s gonna be fun. You already know that I can’t be there, which is a unfortunately, ah, when you told me the dates and I said to you, oh, I would love to be there, but I’m actually gonna be in Las Vegas and I know everyone hearing that is feeling terribly sorry for me.

[00:15:29] ’cause they go, oh, you’re gonna be in Vegas, but. I will be at the Business Black Ops event that I usually go to every October, and then I’m hanging around for an extra week’s holiday. But while I’m on that subject, people would have probably seen that I’m already promoting Dave Free’s event in Cairns on the 24th of August.

[00:15:47] So might as well give that a plug at the same time. And details are on my website www.tysonfranklin.com, if people, what’s the website? If people want to go and read all about this.

[00:15:59] Yeah, [00:16:00] definitely. So, the website TLLC.net.au. Take a look at our website. All our sponsors are on there. All our speakers are on there. All the event information’s on there.

[00:16:09] Take a bit of a look at that. We’re also on socials, the Lower Limb Conference on Facebook and on Instagram. I’m sorry to everyone that follows me on LinkedIn. They’ve obviously just passed out so much information about this recently. I can’t wait. I think this event’s going to be a lot of fun.

[00:16:25] As well as providing an event that just gives like a really good learning experience to people. We, we want it to be fun. We want this to be a really great weekend. You’re coming away, the information you’re going to take away is going to be very useful in clinic. And the thing you’re going to remember in 10 years time is how much fun you had at this event.

[00:16:44] The people that you met, the networking that you were able to do. And so we’re trying to facilitate that. So we’re running a great networking event on the Saturday night. Details to come, all included in ticket price. So how much are

[00:16:58] the tickets? [00:17:00]

[00:17:00] Well, Tyson, I’m glad you asked me.

[00:17:04] I know when people are sitting there going, I wonder how much this all is it all sounds too good.

[00:17:09] So, there’s so full ticket price, two day conference, networking events, everything all included is 599 AUD. Depending on when you’re listening to this. If you’re listening in the next couple of weeks, we do have some codes for 15 percent discount. So if you jump onto our Instagram you’ll see those codes there.

[00:17:31] Whatever presenter you’re most looking forward to using their name, number 15. So if you can’t wait to see James Ferry present James15, if it’s Talysha that you’re after Talysha15 and down the list get yourself 15. That’s a

[00:17:46] really good idea doing it that way

[00:17:47] I’m a little bit envious that I’m not going to be there, especially when I know this is probably going to be an annual event. Like this one, well, we’re already talking off air. You already told me how many tickets you’ve sold. So this thing. Yeah, it’s pretty [00:18:00] much three quarters sold out already.

[00:18:02] So even if nobody else books in, , the thing’s going ahead. So it’s not one of those ones, because I know some people sit on the fence sometimes thinking, Oh, do I really want to book my airfares and my accommodation? What if it doesn’t go ahead? This thing is going ahead regardless. It’s, there’s enough tickets sold already.

[00:18:18] That it, it’s, that’s happening. That’s, so I’m really envious. I’m not gonna be at the first one because this will be something that I can see in 10, 15 years time where people go, oh, remember the first one?

[00:18:30] I hope so. And

[00:18:31] there’ll be a hundred or so people that go, yeah, I was at that one. And, and I’ll be the one in, 15 years time going, ah, I missed the first one.

[00:18:38] I was in Vegas.

[00:18:39] Yeah, but I did. I did have him on the podcast in the lead up to it. So yeah, it’s

[00:18:45] episode 3000 or something by then. Exactly,

[00:18:48] exactly. No, it’s yeah, we’re super excited. Like the response from the podiatry community, podiatry and physio community. In fact, so that’s a, that’s a point I haven’t even touched on.

[00:18:59] This is the Lower [00:19:00] Limb Conference. So this is for anyone who has an interest in treating patients with lower limb concerns. , we’ve got exercise physiologists signed up. We’ve got physios signed up. We’ve got many podiatrists signing up. It’s the information that you’re going to gather from this.

[00:19:14] Maybe it’s not that every single presentation is going to be super applicable to your practice, but if that’s the case, perhaps a workshops on at that time, that’s the exact thing that you want to hear. And that’s the way that we’ve tried to organise this event so that people can get involved with whatever they want to get involved with.

[00:19:31] And as I say, take that information, take those skills, and if not apply it straight away on Monday morning, at least know that is something they want to investigate further, that they want to go and do , their point of care ultrasound course, that they want to have a bit of a closer look into prolotherapy or whatever it might be.

[00:19:51] We can’t wait, I’m so excited.

[00:19:54] What I’m looking forward to, like these type of conferences, is you can look through everything and I might say, okay, I’m [00:20:00] not really, into the curacorn stuff I’m like, I’m not really interested in that. I don’t have to attend, I don’t have to watch that, I can sleep in or go and have a coffee with somebody else who may not be interested in that particular subject.

[00:20:11] There’s enough things that you can pick and choose, even if it’s two or three things, and for how much a ticket price is. If you apply that back in your clinic and yeah, and in my book, I always mention, yeah, the orthotic economy. It’s like one pair of orthotics to attend a two day event. If you can’t afford that, then you’ve got to change how you’re doing business, I think.

[00:20:35] And if you really want to go talk to your employer about, Hey, send me along to this. So I can bring those skills back into the clinic. ,

[00:20:42] We’re trying to build the value in there as much as possible, of course. But also I understand that some conference events, especially multiple day conference events can be really expensive.

[00:20:53] And so, We want to strike that balance, maximum value for, as reasonable as we, as we can possibly run an [00:21:00] event of this kind of caliber. So, we are all about just trying to progress the profession. The skills that we want to have in there are the skills that we think that clinicians should have.

[00:21:10] If podiatrists aren’t seeking to extend themselves and seeking to extend their scope, We’re going to be relics. It’s ridiculous. You can’t just sit there and clip toenails forever. We need to be embracing this technology. We need to be embracing these sort of techniques to ensure that we are the leaders in lower limb or physios.

[00:21:29] Come get us, let’s go, come along to the conference, come learn these skills, take that away. I saw

[00:21:35] a post in the UK podiatry Facebook group the other day, there was somebody applied to the bank to get something. And they said they couldn’t get the loan because they wrote down podiatrists as a profession, but that profession wasn’t listed with the bank as a real profession.

[00:21:52] It’s terrifying, isn’t it? It’s so sad. I

[00:21:54] just shake my head thinking, what are they doing over there? What, what are they not doing over there to promote the profession? [00:22:00] And I think this is where I think Australia, the U S and some other countries have really elevated what podiatrists do and not saying that routine foot care is not important or saying that home visits isn’t important or high risk feet aren’t important, but the profession has to move, move on from there.

[00:22:19] And sort of just embrace other technologies. And that’s what this conference I think is going to do.

[00:22:27] That’s the goal. That’s the goal is just introduce these skills. Maybe it’s something you’ve been thinking about. Maybe it’s something you’ve been hearing about, but you haven’t been ready to pull the trigger on it.

[00:22:36] Come along to this event, get the information you need, engage with the presenters, engage with the people that can teach you, engage with the suppliers of the equipment, get yourself just upskill, make sure that you are ready. Otherwise other clinics will, and you’ll get left behind.

[00:22:54] Yeah. So this would be, is there a student discount or anything like that?

[00:22:57] If students want to go [00:23:00] to it? Just charge them full price. Yeah. If they really, if they want to go, there’s a 15 percent discount if they use a name.

[00:23:07] That’s exactly right. So there’s no official student discount at the moment. However, we are looking for a couple of students if they want to get involved just with, Signing people in on the day, just wanted to uh, you know, snag a ticket for helping out over the weekend.

[00:23:22] So just seeing how the event runs getting to listen to presentations and just being involved, but perhaps meeting your employer, the person that you’re going to go work with next year or whatever it might be. So if you’re a student and you are, If you’re interested in coming along, reach out,

[00:23:38] What’s the best, if somebody wants to reach out and contact you, what’s the best way to, to do that?

[00:23:43] Absolutely. So if you Cameron Bennett on LinkedIn, You can always get me through there. Alternatively, the Lower Limb Conference on both Facebook and Instagram. Shoot us a message through there and I’d love to have a chat.

[00:23:56] Yeah, last year we had, when Jonathan Small came over, we did the Work Smarter, Not [00:24:00] Harder program in July. Then I did my reboot in November, both in Brisbane. And we had a student that contacted me and said, Oh yeah, Oli. Yeah, you met Oli. Yeah. Oli got so many job offers over the Work Smarter, Not Harder program.

[00:24:18] And then he came back and he said, Would the reboot be worthwhile for me? I went, hell yeah. I said, because what you’d learned there as a student, I said, we’ll make you such a valuable employee. , you’ll use those skills through your whole career. So I think any student listening to this, I’m not saying that do the future reboot, but coming on to the lower limb conference is a great way to learn information.

[00:24:41] They’re not teaching you at uni, probably. And you’re going to be in a room for another hundred potential employers. And to me, and that just shows that you’re keen to learn and we, we mentioned it before I press record, but some people say, Oh yeah, I’ve got to get my CPD hours up. And I said, [00:25:00] if you’re only doing the minimum CPD hours, I won’t say exactly what I called them.

[00:25:06] To me, that is just, it’s almost embarrassing. If you’re only doing the minimum, you should be just exceeding that by a mile.

[00:25:15] Absolutely. But if you are someone who’s just trying to tick off those hours, you will get 10 hours of category one CPD for attending the conference, which is the max that you can get out of that.

[00:25:26] That category. So it’s worth it. It’s worth it from a CPD perspective. It’s worth it from a networking perspective. It’s absolutely worth it from a skills acquisition perspective. You. The number of people that we’ve had sign up, the caliber of podiatrists, of physiotherapists, of clinicians that have already signed up to this event.

[00:25:45] Even just the people that you will meet, that makes two days worth it. It makes two days worth it. On top of that, you get to learn about these new skills. On top of that, it’s a small group environment where you can interact with the presenters. You can ask the questions that you want to ask. [00:26:00] You can run the workshops.

[00:26:00] You can speak to the the sponsors and the exhibitors there. podiatrist. cairns. com The amount of value that we’re trying to cram into two days, we’re, I just want to exceed anything that’s been done and make this the best event, make this the event that people mark in their calendar for next year.

[00:26:16] So

[00:26:17] we’re looking forward to it. But that’s a really good point that you said, the caliber of podiatrists have already signed up. You know that if you’re on the fence at the moment and you’re thinking about going, just realize the people that are going to be there are going to be the podiatrists that are up here.

[00:26:30] Because a lot of them really don’t want to be rude to anybody, but there are some average podiatrists in our profession and they’re in these beige little clinics that have never progressed, have not changed in 20 years, and they have no intentions on changing.

[00:26:46] So, you know that they’re not going to be there. It’s only going to be the podiatrists that are wanting to actually move the profession forward. They’re the ones that actually listen to this podcast, not the ones who bag this podcast. Cause there’s a few podiatrists there. The ones that [00:27:00] bag the podcast are usually the ones who have the beige little clinics.

[00:27:03] Absolutely. It’s self selecting, right?

[00:27:05] It’s like

[00:27:06] evolution is Darwin’s theory of evolution. This is it. You want to be the best clinician you can possibly be. You’re going to an event like the Lower Limb Conference, and that’s why we’re marketing it as such, this is the event for the people who want to take their practice to the next level.

[00:27:21] This isn’t for the person that wants to turn up, bang on the dot when they start, leave at 5pm in the afternoon, provide a bare minimum service. This is for the podiatrist or the clinician who wants to provide the highest level of care to their patients, who wants to be the one that’s known in their The industry leader, these are the kind of people we want at the event.

[00:27:41] And not only is that great for, for us, because we get to hang out with those people and we get to provide a really good event, but it’s great for everyone else that’s there because they all get to engage with each other and develop friendships and discuss things related to podiatry or related to lower limb treatment.

[00:27:59] So [00:28:00] yeah, we’re really grateful to the the people that have already bought tickets to the people that have already signed up and, and we can’t wait. We just, we’re looking forward to providing you with the

[00:28:08] best experience we possibly can. Yeah, well, I can see this, like I said before, 10, 15 years time, it’ll be this type of conference that people will be lining up trying to get tickets to, because it’s not going to be one of those ones where eventually it’s going to be a thousand people.

[00:28:23] It’s always going to be a smaller group, but it, it’ll be those podiatrists that go back year after year that are the ones that you’ll hear about in the next five or 10 years in the profession that are doing amazing things.

[00:28:35] That’s it. It’s, just doing cool stuff, right? Just podiatry, Allied Health, our scope is so broad, we can do so many cool things, why are we limiting ourselves to boring stuff?

[00:28:49] Come learn the cool stuff, come engage with the people that can teach you the cool stuff. There’s things, speaking to people like James, speaking to people like Talysha, there’s things. That I [00:29:00] didn’t even know that we could do, like as a podiatrist, I’m like, am I allowed to do that?

[00:29:04] Like I didn’t even realize that with that. This is something that is within our scope and yet it is, but we’re not taught this stuff. We’re not taught this stuff at uni. We’re not taught this stuff by our employer who perhaps doesn’t know it either. Come to these events, learn these things, increase your scope,

[00:29:20] just be better.

[00:29:22] Yeah, and that’s not a blight on the universities either, that they can only teach so much during your course. And when you’re doing placements, you can only learn so much depending on where you actually have a placement. However, the more podiatrists go along to this event, the more that they use that technology in their clinic, then the more the students will be exposed to it.

[00:29:40] And that will become the norm. That’s what everyone will just expect. It’s exactly right. Okay. So one last time, give us the website, contact details and everything else people need to know before we wrap up.

[00:29:54] Definitely. Website T L L C. net. au. Jump on, book [00:30:00] your tickets. They are selling quickly. As we mentioned before we’re over three quarters sold, which is astounding.

[00:30:05] Get in, get involved. Reach out on Instagram or Facebook, the Lower Limb Conference. You’ll be able to find any discount codes that are currently available on there. Jumping on now, find your favorite presenter, put their name, the number 15 at checkout on the website, score yourself 15 percent off your ticket price.

[00:30:25] Or if you just want to have a chat to me, ask me some questions about the conference. You’re not quite sure yet. Reach out on LinkedIn. Always more than happy to have a chat. But yeah, we’re, we’re excited. We can’t wait. We think this event’s going to be awesome. Unfortunately we can’t have you there Tyson, but we really appreciate you getting involved, mate.

[00:30:41] We really appreciate it. And the more we’re talking about it, the more,

[00:30:44] the more envious I’m like,

[00:30:45] damn it. But next year. Next year I’ll,

[00:30:48] I’ll rough it in Vegas and I’ll, I’ll be thinking about you while I’m there.

[00:30:52] Hanging out in Bri Vegas,

[00:30:55] from one Vegas to another. So Cameron, I wanna thank you for coming in here talking about [00:31:00] the lower limb conference and yeah, I’m hoping it’s a complete sell out for you and everyone has a good time.

[00:31:05] And then. Probably get you back on after it just to get feedback on how it all went and what you learned from the conference and then what you probably got prepared for the next year would be great as a follow up.

[00:31:17] Yeah, most definitely. Yeah, keen for a recap. As I said, we’ll run through those cliff notes.

[00:31:21] I’m looking forward to it. Thank you again for having me on, Tyson. No, it’s been great. Great to chat, mate.

[00:31:25] Okay. Talk to you later. 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.