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.
