As I sat down to record this video – those words of Jon Lennon popped into my head.
And in ‘Days Like These’ it’s Leaders like YOU who need to step up and lead your tribe through your actions, words and deeds .
YOU – because our supposed leaders aren’t actually leading.
There is a huge opportunity here for you to help others and thereby help your team and your practice.
Watch the video – read the transcript – listen to the audio.
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Transcript
There will be days like these!
Hi, it’s Diederik here…
We were just sitting down to record this video and these words out of a song came into my head and the words are, “strange days indeed.”
So, we just looked it up on Google, and it’s a John Lennon song, and the song is ‘Nobody Told Me’.
And – we are certainly in a time of – strange days indeed…..
It certainly is isn’t it; with corona around and all the stuff that’s happening, I’m not going to go into that.
- What I want to go into is, how are you reacting?
And I use the word deliberately, are you reacting, or are you very deliberately focusing on what you can do to get through these strange days and how you can do it?
Corona is here, it’s devastating the world…
How we all manage it and handle it, will determine how we come out that other side.
Are you going to come out the other side better than you went in?
Are you going to work through this positively in your practice? And have your practice either stay stable or maybe even grow?
And are you setting yourself up for growth coming out the other side, or not?
Most practices I talk to or let’s rephrase that; I’ve got lots of people ringing me at the moment, and they are all about doom and gloom and the world is crashing and ending and they’re reacting and they’re putting their heads in the sand and they’re not doing anything positive.
And then there are my coaching clients and my inner circle clients…
We’ve been doing a lot of work around this corona thing and these guys and gals are behaving exactly opposite to the doom and gloom practices.
They are looking at this as a huge opportunity to maintain their balance, increase their market share, because they’re (and I’ll tell you how that’s happening in a second) planning on coming out the end of this with an upper trajectory.
Here’s an example.
I wrote an article called ‘Coronavirus and your pet’, and what I did with that is I put in all the questions that our clients are asking us.
We put it on our reception counter, we put it on the consultation room counter, we made a Facebook video about it, we put on Instagram, we emailed it to our clients.
I mean, wherever we could put it, we put it out there.
The amount of feedback that we’ve had from that has been astronomical, it’s been huge and people saying, “wow, thanks you etc”.
Anyway, so I did that and it was a bit of a tester, and as I said, it worked gang busters.
Then I emailed that document to all my one on one and one on two type clients, and they’ve been using that as well and getting huge feedback.
[ASIDE: if you’d like a copy of that document – just email me and I’ll get it right to you]
This is very simple and it took around 15 minutes to write and it dispels so many myths that clients have about what’s going on.
It shows them that we are here for them and that we’re taking the front foot.
What’s that called? It’s called Leadership.
Most of the world, at the moment, has a leadership abyss or vacuum.
There are certain people doing it well, but most of our leaders are crap, and because that’s happening – the people that we work with, our clients, the ones that come in, don’t know what to do, don’t know how to behave or who to trust. They are running around a little like headless chooks, because there is no leadership.
YOU have the opportunity, here and now, to step up and become the leader.
Our industry has the opportunity, here and now, to step up and become the leading industry in this scenario and in our field.
As a leader you can step up, educate your team obviously and take all appropriate health measures which I’m sure you’re doing.
You can educate your clients, show them that you’re here for them, and show them how you can help them. Whether that’s with telemedicine, whether that’s with house calls, whether that’s with your practice app. Whatever it is that you’re doing, show them.
For example, one of the things we’ve done is put in a Click and Collect bay.
- So people can ring in their order, pay for it on their secure credit card, which we’ve got filed securely and then drive to the inner parking lot on to the click and collect bay.. on arrival they’ll ring us and we’ll come out with their order, they don’t even have to get out of their car.
- Other things that we’re doing for example is, they can park their car in the car park, they don’t have to come in, they ring us and we’ll come and get their pet out of the car, examine it and bring it back.
There are lots and lots of things that you can do.
But what the biggest thing you can do is help control the miss-information that’s going around and maybe we’ll use a famous phrase, you know ‘the fake news’ that’s going around.
- It’s time to tell your clients that you’re here for them, that you’re their rock, you’re their pillar in the storm and that you’ll help them work through this via their pets yes, but also them directly, because a lot of them are just getting false information from everywhere.
You are the leader, they can follow you, they can trust you, they can listen to you, and they can rely on you. You are there and you will help them.
You need a battle plan
You need to work out how you’re going to do this, you need to train your team, you need to do role plays and develop the right phrasing so that when a concerned client comes in, you have the right strategies and you have the right verbiage to help them through this.
My suggestion is that you start to promote all the things that you can do, whether it’s telemedicine if you believe in that, whether it’s house calls, whether it’s your click and collect bay. Whatever it is that you do to help them… promote it, tell your clients and as part of that promotion, dispel any myths.
And lastly this may sound very counterintuitive. I’m getting so excited, my voice is going harsh because this is just so fabulous and is working so well for so many people, and the last thing is advertising.
You may not want to do paid ads.
Me I’m certainly increasing my paid ads at Highlands Veterinary Hospital and my Google AdWords and all that sort of stuff and very carefully, testing it very carefully.
We’re increasing our spend for a couple of reasons;
Number one, most of our costs are going down, the ad spend costs are going down, so I’m getting many, many more bangs for our buck, because everyone else is pulling their head in.
Number two – no-one else is advertising so our ads will be more ‘prominent’.
Let’s look at what the other practices in my area are doing….
There’s one local practice doing something BUT none of the others are…
They are just burying their head in the sand, so we’re getting a lot more traction, a lot more views and by setting ourselves, the practice up, as a leader.
We’re having many more people contact us. They will join us now and when we come out the other end, they will still be there with us, because of the leadership that we’re showing and you can do the same thing.
A Facebook post cost you nothing.
Do Facebook posts, send newsletters out to your clients, if you’ve got a practice app use that go, on Instagram, do Facebook lives when you educate your clients.
There are lots and lots of things that you can do that cost you nothing, as well as that you can do some paid ads for example.
You may or may not have heard of my Veterinary Business Academy.
It’s a monthly subscription site, it’s $35 a month, Australian.
So, that’s what? Seven, eighteen dollars a month US or something like that, same in UK pounds.
It’s really, really cheap subscription; it’s got masses and masses of massive information on there.
Every month I produce a new topic and as part of helping you get through this pandemic, I’m giving you free access to one topic for one month.
Earlier this year, I foresaw this coming, not coronavirus as such, no I’m not that prescient.
But I saw the rise of a whole heap of threats to our industry; Apps, telemedicine, the growth of the house call practices, millennial clients, millennial employees and a few other things.
I released a module called ‘Practice Threats That We’ll Be Facing’.
These practice threats are now the exact opposite for the practices that are using these strategies.
These threats are now huge opportunity for you to help the local pets, help your clients, put yourselves up there, put yourself- yourselves you and your practice and your team up there as leaders and to get a really strong bunch of like-minded followers that will follow you anywhere when you stand up and wave the flag against corona and fight the fight and help them to do that successfully.
Your Gift
We’re opening up this module for you – GRATIS.
Have a look at it, I’m not changing it, it’s still called Practice Threats, but read through the transcript or watch the video, and then take action on the things that you see, because those threats are now your opportunity to grow your practice, survive and even thrive during this pandemic and grow out the other side, hugely leaving everyone else in your wake, because they’re being reactive and burying their heads in the sand.
I most sincerely hope that you take up this opportunity and….
… look, honestly I’d love you to stay on as a VBA member, ongoing at $35 a month but if you don’t want to do that, just take this opportunity anyway!!
You’re not locked in, it’s a free access to this module this month and use it to help you and your clients.
See you next, on the next video.