Talking with Local Doctors

– Welcome back to the Banowetz Marketing Podcast. Thanks for joining us, we have two guests here. So this is Dr. Orosz and Dr. Tanner with Family Foot Care Clinic. Thank you for joining us!

– Thanks so much for having us!

– Yes, thanks for having us. We’re happy to be here.

– This is very nice to have you guys on. So yeah, so Family Foot Care Clinic is a local business and you guys just bought this almost a year ago, correct?

– That’s correct, it was just about a year ago that we bought it. August 1st.

– Okay.

– So, it’s not quite a year.

– Perfect. And you guys worked at, you worked at the practice prior to that, right?

– Yeah, I’ve been at the practice since 2007, and I know Dr. Tanner’s been here quite a bit longer.

– Since 1998. Getting close to 21 years, actually.

– [June] Great

– Awesome! We’d love to hear a little bit about your families. So Dr. Tanner, do you wanna go first?

– Sure, I have a wife and two kids. My youngest one is 10 years old and just getting done with fourth grade. My older one is daughter and she is 14 years old, and just getting done with eighth grade. So she’ll be going to high school next year. It’s a big deal for us.

– Big transition.

– I have an eighth grader going to high school next year too.

– Big deal, huh?

– That’s your oldest, right?

– That’s a very big deal.

– Yes!

– Yeah, my oldest well biological.

– It’s sad.

– Yes it is!

– Time goes by so fast!

– Kinda scary! But Dr. Orosz got me beat as far as the number of children.

– So how many children do you have, Dr. Orosz?

– Married to Lisa, and we have four kids.

– [Sarah] Awesome.

– My oldest is actually finishing his freshman year at Linn-Marr.

– [Sarah] Great!

– And then I have another son who’s ’13, and then we have twin girls who are 10.

– Oh my goodness.

– And they’re finishing fourth grade so we’re almost out of elementary school.

– You are. All faces of life.

– It’s amazing.

– We have kids the same age because my biological children, the oldest is going into his freshman year. And then my youngest is finishing up fourth grade.

– Perfect!

– [Sarah] Yeah. So very nice. So, what made you guys become doctors? I didn’t warn you about that one either though, I just came up with that one.

– I bet they have an answer.

– No you did, that’s a good question.

– I know!

– Well for me I actually, my undergraduate degree was in sports medicine.

– [Sarah] Okay.

– Athletic training specifically, so.

– [June] Perfect.

– Dealing a lot with injuries, athletes, I was an athlete in high school so it seemed like a really good fit for me.

– [June] What sports did you play?

– I played football and track.

– [June] Okay.

– And track I just did the shot put and discus ’cause I’m not fast. So that was a perfect fit there. But I was interested in science and biology and my mom was a nurse so kinda was always around medicine that way. So sports medicine was perfect. So went and did that. And as I got closer to graduating, looking at jobs, at that time a lot of the athletic training jobs were in high schools. So I didn’t really want to be a teacher, and so it was part time work. And so that was… I’m not sure how this is gonna go. Kinda got more interested in maybe going further in more education and learned about podiatry and decided hey I’m gonna go for it. I can do a lot of different things and even get into doing surgery. So it just was a real exciting thing and so it worked out.

– Yeah and I just grew up in Rochestor, Minnesota where the Mayo Clinic is. My mother was a nurse, tons of people I knew of course were in medicine. So as far as I know, as long as I could remember I always wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know what kind until I got into college. I thought at first primary care, but as I looked into things I just kinda figured out that podiatry would be where I would like to do it because I like to be a little bit of a specialist but I also like to always see my patients and be able to talk to ’em and things like that. If you’re working on their feet, they could still talk to you and be friendly and kinda have fun conversations a lot of times in between educating them about their feet and hopefully helping them out in getting better.

– Yeah, that sounds like a perfect fit.

– Cool interaction there. Yeah, a really important interaction to be able do there with your patients.

– Yeah, I really like that. I mean there’s a lot of other specialists which are great too, but I would work at the Mayo Clinic in the summers during college and I was in a special hematology lab and the pathologists have a really great important job, but they spent a lot of their time looking at microscopes and things like that and that just wasn’t for me, I was more of a..

– [Sarah] People person?

– Yes, a people person. I wanted to be around the patients a lot more if I could.

– How did you end up in Cedar Rapids, then?

– This is my wife’s hometown, my wife Shannon grew up here. And went to co-college and has always lived here pretty much. So when it was time to find a place to settle down, figured it was a nice place to go and we really like it here, so. We’re pretty happy with Cedar Rapids.

– Awesome.

– Good, and what a great thing to do because you had preknowledge even before you moved here so you had a concept of what Cedar Rapids and the community was like.

– I really did. Obviously coming to visit here a lot and being her hometown, I really knew quite a bit about Cedar Rapids before I came here and moved here. And it’s not a lot different than Rochester, it’s just a little bit bigger. But it’s another Midwest town with a lot of friendly people and it’s been a good fit for raising a family.

– And I have to just interject here that just haven’t visit with the two of you very long, by the way I’m June Schmidt and I’m the client specialist here for Banowetz Marketing and knowing Cedar Rapids ’cause I too, like your wife Shannon, grew up here although I went away to college and whatnot and moved away. But just the fact that you have indicated to us that you are people people and very much interested in the personal care of the client, one of the things that I can say pretty universally about Cedar Rapids is that that’s really important here. As you indicated Doctor that there are people that would be very okay with not having that personal connection or that personal interest but it seems to me that that’s something that both of you generate, and I’m sure that your patients really appreciate that. So thank you.

– Well, and as I went to your practice, Family Foot Care Clinic when… Was it called Family Foot Care Clinic eight years ago?

– Well, it was Family Foot Care Center eight years ago

– Then it got bought out about six years ago by Podiatry Associates and then we bought it and now it’s named Family Foot Care Clinic which is very similar.

– Okay. But we were thinking that you were probably my doctor when I had stepped on one of my child’s matchbox airplanes with the little metal wings.

– Yeah.

– And then I was also a photographer at the time and the weight of carrying my equipment, you treated me for plantar’s fasciitis.

– And it sounds like it went well?

– It did go well!

– Oh, that’s good!

– It took only one cortisone shot and man I felt so much better.

– Well that’s good, I’m glad. With four kids you gotta be on your feet. We don’t wanna have you taking a long time to get better if we could find a way to get you better quickly.

– But when were thinking of who to invite on the podcast, ’cause we wanna invite local business people. That was one place we stopped because yeah I did have a great experience.

– Oh great, I’m glad to hear that.

– So Dr. Tanner, we’ve heard a little bit about why you decided that particular area of medicine was your passion. Dr. Orosz, why did you determine that podiatry was going to be your life?

– Well I knew I wanted to do something in medicine, and the sports medicine was very interesting.

– [June] Sure.

– But then you kinda say okay, there’s a home volleyball game Tuesday night, well I probably need to be there. There’s a basketball game Thursday night, well I need be there. And the football team’s going down somewhere an hour away, well it’s football I gotta go with them. So it’s kind of a lot of, really a lot of commitment. And that can be a little difficult. But dealing with athletes, lots of sprained ankles, foot injuries, all different sorts of things. Kinda makes you realize just how important the foot is. And so for me it was just a natural extension of okay I’ve been dealing with this already, I just wanna really learn as much as I can and just be as much of an expert as I can and then have more kinda control over what I do and when I do it and that sort of thing. And then just the variety of patients that we have. We have young ones, we have all ages, elderly folks. Everybody’s, like Dr. Tanner said, just great conversation and you can always find something that you can laugh about. You learn things everyday. To this day I still go “Oh, I didn’t know that.” I just was chatting. It’s really great that way.

– So I hear you saying one of the things that you just talked about at the fact is that you’re a lifelong learner.

– Yeah.

– You want to continue to learn and how you welcome that, and that’s so incredibly crucial.

– Yeah, absolutely.

– And also I would imagine for both of you because you’re able to have that patient relationship, pain is not any fun. And the things that the two of you can do to alleviate that pain and get beyond that have to be huge. So I would like to hear from each one of you a little bit about one of those instances and if I were a perspective patient, what would you want me to know about your practice?

– [Sarah] Yeah, that’s a great question.

– What would you want me to know about your practice? Dr. Tanner, what would you like me to know?

– Well, one of the biggest things that I’d like everyone to know is that we would treat everyone basically like family, that’s why it’s called the Family Foot Care Clinic. Every single person’s important. We wanna treat everyone with respect, not as a number or as a person coming to a very large institution. Very large institutions are very important but it’s also kinda nice to be able to park right next to the building, come right in, especially when your foot’s sore. Get treatment for whatever medical condition you have with your foot in a nice friendly environment without having to walk through hallways for five minutes to get to your spot.

– I did not even thought of that, but especially in icy weather? That’s a wonderful plus!

– And if your foot hurts, it’s nice to be able to just walk a short distance before hopefully getting some kind of treatment to help with the pain and to find out what’s going on. We got x-ray equipment right there at the office, so you don’t have to go somewhere else to find out what’s going as far as that goes and then be called later on. We can just get the x-rays, take a look ’em right there when you’re there and use those to evaluate what’s going on. If you don’t if you’ve got a broken toe or a broken heel or something like that, we’ll be able to figure that out generally pretty quick, obviously do whatever treatments necessary to try to help you out so you heal up, whether it’s a broken bone or whether it’s a sprain or a inflamed ligament like plantar fasciitis or achilles tendonitis with a tendon or something, and hopefully you going and on your feet without it being an unpleasant experience.

– You know what I really like hearing from you Dr. Tanner is the fact that as your patient, and Dr. Orosz, that I would know pretty quickly what’s going on and as we know that it’s the waiting or the unknown that off times is more unpleasant that the actual diagnosis. So that’s good to hear that I would know and then move forward.

– Yeah, a lot of times if you’re having pain, you wanna know whether you’re walking around on a broken bone or a sprain, there’s a big difference. And the treatments can be different too, and to know that you’re on your way to recovery rather than possibly walking around on something that you’re making worse by continuing to be on it, can make a big difference.

– So you have a long history of being doctors, but now you’re business owners. Do you have, speaking of pain, do you have any pain points in terms of… Okay, the reason I bring this up is Banowetz Marketing is, I started it back in January of 2018 and I will tell you that running a business is very hard work which is one reason I wanna network with other business owners because you have to lean on each other, and people go through different experiences and stuff. So yeah, do you guys have any questions in terms of marketing or that have been pain pointed that or business leadership or anything like that? ‘Cause June is our resident business leadership.

– Happy to help.

– [Sarah] Yeah.

– We would like any advice that we could get, obviously social media questions, how can social media help us? We have been doctors for a long time, we know a lot about feet, how to take care of feet and how to get them better. But we’ve only been business owners for less than a year, so that part of it we really could use a good education on.

– [June] That’s a great question.

– What social media could do for us and any business leaderships information too.

– Now, that makes sense. My dad is a business owner in the area too and I remember we had this conversation about seven years ago and a lot has changed in seven years. So seven years ago when I mentioned that he should be doing Facebook, he was already doing radio, TV, print, and I said you need to do Facebook and he didn’t agree with me. Now he does. But he didn’t agree with me then so sometimes when I get into a conversation about that, do you know the value already? Do you know the value already of why you would use social media in terms of that’s where people’s eyeballs are at?

– I think we do, because of just our own experiences. I was chatting with my wife about doing this podcast, and she said yeah. I do all my research online or I’ve mentioned to her that a lot of our new patients that are coming in, we ask them how did you hear about our clinic and probably at least two thirds of them are putting down internet or online or Google. And so that’s very clear just from that that the online and Facebook and the social media avenues are extremely important so I think we instinctively knew that really from day one.

– Yeah, we definitely knew.

– Good, good.

– It’s just kinda knowing what’s the best..

– What’s the best way and how to do it?

– And I think you’re beyond that now that your wife is gonna be able to tell you that, but your kids are gonna start telling you that. “Dad, that’s where you’re gonna find…”

– Our employees are a little bit younger than us, there’s some different age ranges but we have a few that are younger. And they laugh at the phone book.

– [June] I’m sure!

– [Sarah] Yes!

– ‘Cause we actually will look at the phone book once in a while for something, they find it funny. Why are you looking at the phone book? And I said well there’s a lot of good stuff in here. But they just don’t have that as the first thought that “Oh, I’m gonna check the phone book when I need to get a plumber” or whatever.

– Well and granted your older patients, that’s still the way that they’re going to find you. But as our clientele gets younger, they are looking for other methodologies in which to find you.

– Well and June brings up a good point too because as we talk about more newer media, especially with people who their target audience is still using the phone book you don’t wanna cut out yellow book ads.

– [June] Absolutely not.

– I probably wouldn’t do yellow book ads because my target demographic is a younger demographic but…

– [Tanner] Yeah, we’d have to do both.

– You would need to do both. It’s not a matter of one or the other. Okay so I’ll tell you some really cool things about social media. So think of a billboard right off of 1st Avenue ’cause we’re here at the Banowetz Marketing offices. So we’re right off of 1st Avenue, and normally you’d buy a billboard if you’re doing your marketing really well, 20 years ago you’d buy a billboard. And so you would be paying for all of the eyeballs driving back and forth down 1st Avenue, or at least in one direction depending on the billboard. And so the company that’s charging you for the billboard is charging you for every single eyeball. So that’s why it’s expensive, it’s because you’re paying for every single eyeball. But not every single person driving down 1st Avenue is your target audience. Most of ’em probably don’t have problems with their feet or anything like that, right? So you’re paying for a lot of missed opportunities, so that’s what makes it more expensive. So one of the neat things about social media in terms of both.. So with the difference between Facebook ads and then Google AdWords, both of ’em can be targeted. So let’s about Facebook ads. When I say Facebook ads I also mean Instagram ads too because Facebook owns Instagram, and so a lot of younger people are on Instagram and a lot of older people are on Facebook, but when you start an ad it goes to both platforms as long as you have an Instagram account too. So when I say Facebook ads I mean Facebook and Instagram. So with a Facebook ad, you actually can choose exactly who it is that you’re gonna target. So instead of spending, I don’t know what the price point is for a billboard on 1st Avenue but let’s say it was $1000 for three days. It’ll probably be $1000 for a month. Okay, let’s say $1000 for a month, and all the eyeballs on that, okay? Versus you could spend probably just $300 and get a similar amount of views, but it’s just those targeted views. Not the same amount in general, but so instead of reaching everybody in Cedar Rapids you could target it down to maybe athletes, well athletes would be one. Who’s your target demographic?

– Well most people have foot problems at some point in their life. Older people usually have more foot problems, and other health problems and younger people, unfortunately for them.

– [Sarah] So you could target by an age.

– It could be done by age.

– [Sarah] There are referral from doctors too, so I would probably target people who have careers in the medical.

– This is true. And a lot of times the patient’s mother if it’s a child. So a mom would be a good target because they would take their children in plus themselves, and sometimes they’d make their husbands go in too. And they may also be the transportation for their parents. ‘Cause some of them don’t drive and some of them do.

– And so this is a good point too because you could actually target… so on a billboard on 1st Avenue you have one message that you’re putting out to everybody. If you’re targeting on Facebook and Instagram, you actually could have one message go out to the parents or the drivers and a different message targeting the people who are actually injured. And so would spread out, let’s say you were gonna spend $300, you might put $100 towards each of 3 demographics.

– [Orosz] And spread it out.

– [Sarah] And spread it out.

– Oh yeah, that makes sense.

– So that’s what’s really neat about social media as far as targeting. Now the difference between Facebook and then Google AdWords is with Google AdWords it’s more expensive on a per click or per view because whereas Facebook, people are on Facebook on social media looking at pictures of their friends’ kids and their grandkids and such, right? It’s more of a passive form of marketing that you are trying to get their attention while they’re doing something else. But with AdWords, they’re searching for help. And so it costs a little bit more per click depending on which keywords you’re at but whereas with Facebook it’s more like a billboard going out to them. With AdWords, it’s more like the phone book. And so it’s like getting an ad insight.

– It’s more active.

– And it’s like pulling them to you. So that’s the difference between those two. And then the other thing about why it’s important to do social media in terms of just organic social media where you’re not paying for it, you’re just talking about the clinic and then your customers and your patients and things like that. I mean you’re doctors, so you can’t say–

– [Tanner] We can’t talk about our patients specifically.

– But just in general so that it resonates with them. Think of it like the mall, right next to Lindale Mall the mall 20 years ago, 30 years ago was like the hangout place. And so they would be talking like “oh my foot hurts” while they’re in the mall hanging out with their friends because that was the place you would go to network and socialize with people. And people don’t do that anymore, the way they do it is now on things like Snapchat and Instagram and YouTube and everything like that. So, I don’t know. Does that bring up any other questions of general overview or?

– No, that’s a good overview.

– Okay.

– Appreciate that, I’m sure though we have a lot more specific questions like what kind of AdWords would be best for us?

– That’s a great question.

– And things like that that we could get advice on. And some of it I’m sure would be the medical conditions, but there may be other things that we haven’t really thought about because we’re not really marketing people.

– And Sarah, I’m gonna piggyback off something that you said going along with the way that awareness factor has changed. Leadership style has changed. We experienced a paradigm shift from 20th century to the 21st century going from that top down concept and words we began to hear in the educational field were collegial sharing. And as a result of so many things, I began to do a pretty intensive study on leadership and being privy to a lot of information in regards to Chick-fil-A because they really about 15 years ago did an incredible study on what leadership looks like and effective leadership, and I think we look no further than how that company has just exploded, that that’s been one of the entities that have allowed them to do that. And so the resource people that have come alongside Chick-fil-A, and have partnered with Chick-fil-A, books, podcasts, whatnot, again I had privy to and have been a student and a scholar of leadership styles. And not only that, and I hope Ian can attest to this, our videographer, that I also would implement them with kids as I was a high school teacher as well in our business and I found that they work. It’s great to read about theory, it’s great to study things, but having been a teacher initially in my professional career, I’m all about application. Is this really gonna work? Is this really gonna make a difference? And I can without reserve say yes it does, it does make a difference. And it resonates in whatever your office structure looks like. So that’s been my part as I’ve gotten to partner with Sarah, and thus with Banowetz Marketing that I get to do, and I just really enjoy it.

– Well yeah, and as far as application, Google AdWords, like specific keywords, that’s putting rubber to the road. So to answer your question, well one I don’t wanna answer your question on publicly because I don’t wanna give your competitors the keywords that we would use.

– I’d appreciate that.

– What you wanna do is you wanna look at who your target audience is and then what they’re searching in terms of to find you. And there’s some tools that we can use with that, there’s actually a podcast, I have another podcast called Sarah Squared with a lady named Sara Leisinger. I am a marketing director, so I’m the one that makes all of the gears work together. So I built Banowetz Marketing on the aspect of a wanting to hustle, a agency that hustles for small business. And so I’ve essentially built a marketing department, so I don’t know all the things. I’m the generalist. I’m not just using this ’cause you guys are doctors, this is what I actually say. I’m like the general practitioner, and then I hire really smart people who are specialists.

– Good idea.

– Yes. So the resident STO specialist is Sara Leisinger, so she can answer this question better than I can. But I will say that she uses tools that can analyze what’s currently happening and trends in what people are searching, and looking at the trends. It’s hard to get that local trends just to Cedar Rapids, but we can look in the Midwest. Maybe 10 years ago they were searching more.. I think the data goes back to 2004, so it’s been more than 10 years but 10 years ago they might have been searching different things than they are now. And then one thing I know that Sara Leisinger does like saying a lot is what’s happening… And this is actually, I agree with this. This is actually happening, it’s one reason why we’re podcasting right now, is that the future of marketing. There’s this guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s out of New York. He is an amazing marketer. He has an 800 person marketing company and started as a, he grew his parents’ wine company via YouTube. If you learn anything, name Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V. Follow him, he swears a lot, I am sorry. It has affected my vocabulary ’cause I listen to him so much. My family is like “Mom.” “We’re going to start saying what you say now.” So just beware he does swear a lot, but he does know his stuff. And the way that he’s talking is that audio is the way we’re going. So in terms of keywords, what’s happening is 10 years ago we were not searching doctors office near me. We type differently than we audibly search, so that’s the other thing that we have to be aware of. And things change so fast, so whatever we’re doing right now? Six months from now, a year or two years from now it might be slightly different and you’re gonna tweak your keywords. If you find keywords that work right now, you gotta keep tweaking ’em.

– [Tanner] I see.

– [Orosz] Stay on top of it?

– Yes.

– [Tanner] That makes sense.

– Because as we go to an audio platform, and this is why I mentioned Gary V, he talks about how we’re getting close. No one has come up with, the engineers have not come up with a way to integrate… So, do you remember? ‘Cause you guys remember this. I remember this. Do you remember when the iPhone really did take off, and when social media really took off? Because before Facebook we had Myspace.

– [Orosz] Yeah.

– And other ones and they didn’t take off like Facebook. What Facebook did was they merged what we do in real life with what we do online, and they merged it so it was a lot more seamless. There’s nothing that does that with audio yet. People like listening to podcasts and we do have Hey Siri and Hey Alexa and stuff like that? But none of it is excellent yet. None of it has integrated our real life with audio yet, and when that happens people like us who are podcasting, we’re gonna be on the forefront of the audio and so things like keywords are going to change, it might get to the point where… I don’t know where it’s going. But it’s gonna be exciting.

– So as we begin to get to the end of our time together, what are some other things you would like those listening to this podcast to know about you? What are important things about you, about your practice? Any nuggets that would be just really valuable.

– Well I think Dr. Tanner really nailed it earlier when he just said we have this kind of almost family atmosphere. We have just a small number of employees, they get to know the patients. A lot of times, ones that come in regularly, they walk in the door “Oh, hi!” they know their name. So they get this kind of relationship going and so we just really try to make it a good experience whether it’s a just a one time visit or if there’s something that maybe requires some more detailed attention. And we just want everybody to get the best experience that they can.

– [June] Excellent.

– Very nice. Was there anything you wanted to add to that, Dr. Tanner?

– No, that was really good. That is kind of a good summary of our philosophy with the Family Foot Care Clinic. We have two offices one on the east side of the town and one on the west side of town.

– [June] That’s important to mention.

– Yeah.

– To recognize.

– It’s not right downtown, they’re both close to downtown but not downtown. And they’re easy to get to, you park right next to the building, come right in, have somebody greet you most of the time right there. When you first come in, usually doesn’t take that long before you’re actually getting into the room and being seen and hopefully finding out what’s going on and coming with a plan, being educated on what’s wrong, how we’re planning on hopefully getting you better. Or if you have kind of a chronic condition that you might have to return for a few times or forever unfortunately for some people, we’ll tell you why and what our plan is to make it so it’s as easy for you as the patient as possible.

– And so if someone’s listening and they haven’t talked with, or they maybe… So they would go to the general practitioner, right? And then ask for a referral to Family Foot Care Clinic?

– No, they don’t have to do that.

– Okay.

– Okay, they can just call us right up? Look in the phone book or use Google or Facebook, and find our numbers and we’ll–

– So the website is familyfootcareclinic.net, and like they said they have the west office on F Avenue, Northwest, and then the east office on Center Point Road, Northeast. And so the Center Point Road was the one that I’ve been to and it’s easy, it’s very easy to get to. And your phone number, what is your phone number?

– So the east office on Center Point Road it’s 319-393-4343 and F Avenue is 319-362-1947.

– Perfect! We’ll reach out to them. Thank you Dr. Orosz and thank you Dr. Tanner for being on the podcast.

– Yes, thank you!

– Thank you very much.

– Well we appreciate both your help. Both of you for all the help that you’ve given, it sounds we probably need to listen to you more and find out more information that we can get without our competitors getting that information from this podcast.

– Well thank you for your time, we appreciate it.

– Thank you! And I didn’t mention this early, so my name is Sarah Banowetz and I own Banowetz Marketing and if you need any marketing direction or implementation, give us a call, reach out to us, and we will see you later! Bye.