The one kind of big theme I walked away with was many of us show up and just try to wing it when it comes to the words that we're gonna use; the questions that we're gonna ask. Phil, really stressed the fact that you need to practice as much in that area as you do on your technical skill sets.
Background & Brief
After years of experience serving healthcare professionals, Phil was invited to work with a group of leading Audiologists and Hearing Care Specialists to enhance the patient experience, build their value proposition and help them grow their independent practices. Following extensive initial consultation, Phil was booked for a series of events to help the industry deal with the massive disruption being experienced.
Plan for the Event
The first event was to deliver a private group workshop for business owners and to help them understand just how much self-sabotage they were performing and how thinking and acting differently would impact their results. The next keynote was for a group of over 1000 people and involved creating messaging that was empowering, inspiring and motivational that followed the theme of creating an IMPACT in their roles. This meant creating a custom program that lifted from Phil’s personal life experience as well as delivering skills and insights to allow every attendee to have more impact in many of the key areas of their role. Each of the 2 sessions were both followed by interactive breakout sessions with Phil where he skillfully helped the audience find solutions to their unique challenges and shared with the EXACTLY what to do to achieve more success.
A Word from Phil
Helping the healthcare industry is something that brings me immense joy. These care providers have huge passion towards their patients and love making a difference, the challenge is all to common though, they have difficulty standing out from their competition, struggle to package their value, lack confidence in their conversations and don’t like asking for money. These audiences are a exact fit for my work as my passion is helping people like this to overcome the exact obstacles.
Exactly What They Say
Mason Walker from Audigy shares…
- How Audigy came to hire Phil
- Why they chose Phil to speak at their event
- The feedback from the attendees
- The key takeaways they learned from Phil
- The three (3) reasons why they’d hire Phil for a future event
Full Transcript
Lou Diamond: [00:00:00] Welcome to Exactly What They Say About Phil M. Jones. We are here with Mason Walker, President of the Audigy Group. Mason, how are you today?
Mason Walker: [00:00:11] I’m doing awesome, Lou. Thank you very much for having me on.
Lou Diamond: [00:00:15] Tell us a little bit about yourself so everyone can understand what you and your organization are all about.
Mason Walker: [00:00:20] Absolutely. Well, we’ve had the fortunate pleasure to have been building Audigy now for almost 15 years. And believe it or not, I was our first employee and I had the opportunity to join the gentleman that had the idea and the vision at the time. His wife was part of the team and there was myself. So the three of us, we kicked off Audigy Back in 2004. And with the desire and the commitment to be able to bring together a group of thought leaders in the medical profession that were independent practices and essentially bring them third party business support so they could focus on our patient care and in return we could focus on their day to day operations.
Lou Diamond: [00:00:58] So for over the 15 plus years that you’ve been involved with Audigy, what does the organization look like today?
Mason Walker: [00:01:06] Well it looks like today essentially we represent two divisions. One in hearing health care for audiology and second, another division ear, nose and throat and allergy. And essentially we today represent about six hundred locations between the U.S. and Canada. Over nine hundred doctors and audiology, as well as over five hundred physicians in ear, nose and throat and several thousand teammates in their offices. And we are helping them achieve essentially their personal, professional and financial aspirations through their vehicle, their practice, by tapping into our platforms and our tools and our resources and using those resources to assist them in operating their practices more effectively.
Lou Diamond: [00:01:49] So, Mason, how do you come across Phil M. Jones?
Mason Walker: [00:01:53] It’s a great question. As as any successful organization knows, you are always in search of individuals and thought leaders that are out there that might be able to take a look at who you are, what you do, what you offer and provide a little bit of a critique. Give us some advice on how we can continue to dial in our platforms and who we are as an organization. And we are hosting an event and we are in search of somebody to come be a guest or a keynote speaker and have an opportunity to meet with our doctors. But also somebody that we wanted to be able to see if we can learn something from. And we cannot across Phil through, I believe, one of the speaker bureaus.
Lou Diamond: [00:02:30] So obviously there are a lot of different speakers you could have been presented to by the different bureaus. Why did you choose to have Phil speak at your event?
Mason Walker: [00:02:39] I would say that we often get very focused on the “what we do”. Our services, our platforms are these resources as cutting edge as they need to be. And sometimes we forget about the simple aspect of just how do we even present ourselves. So when we came across Phil’s information, it was almost like a breath of fresh air instead of a bunch of data and analytics around certain programs or platforms that we’re trying to build out or develop or bring to our members. It was nice to kind of hear something that I think really resonated with all of us and that was “it’s not always what we say, but how we say it.” Ultimately, it’s a feeling that we are leaving with our with our doctors and with our staff that is as impactful or meaningful as some of the programs that we’re trying to assist our doctors in using.
Lou Diamond: [00:03:29] So, Mason, share, if you could, some of the feedback that you heard from the attendees of Phil’s presentation and how it’s compared to other events that you guys have done in the past,.
Mason Walker: [00:03:40] Similar to what I just shared, Phil came in. He did a phenomenal job on the stage with an audience with over a thousand of our doctors. I think what really resonates with them (doctors) is that they get so focused on their degree, on the academics, and on the technical aspects of what they do with their patients that it really resonated with them, that they sometimes need to stop and think about the fact that not every one is invested in you because of a degree or your academics or your diploma or even because of the solution which you are going to offer. They’re going to invest in you. They’re going to business with you. They’re going to connect with you really because of the way that you phrase the word choices that you use, the questions that you ask, and ultimately the feeling that you’re establishing with them. And so you can really see when Phil got done on the podium in our first meeting with him, our members, our doctors and their staff absolutely ate it up and walked away from that meeting recognizing that we’ve got to come back to the basics. Sometimes we just need a reset in the type of conversations we’re having and the words that were choosing to use when it comes to not only doing business with our patients, but also how we as business owners lead our teams.
Lou Diamond: [00:04:49] Mason, if you could remember what were some of the key highlights or key takeaways that resonated most with you?
Mason Walker: [00:04:57] I would say one message that I walked away with. That, you know, Phil really drove home the fact that the time to think about what you will say and how you’re going to say it is not when you’re doing it. Not in the moment. That just like in medicine and just like in business, we have stress tests, We practice. We rehearse. We do beta tests. We have different analytics that we look at to predict how certain programs are gonna play out. Why are we not practicing and taking that same level of discipline ourselves? The one kind of big theme I walked away with was many of us show up and just try to wing it when it comes to the words that we’re gonna use; the questions that we’re gonna ask. Phil, really stressed the fact that you need to practice as much in that area as you do on your technical skill sets.
Lou Diamond: [00:05:45] Excellent. Finally, for those that are thinking about hiring Phil M Jones for an upcoming event and for having a speaker at a major conference, what would be the reasons you’d want to share with them on why they should hire Phil for that event?
Mason Walker: [00:06:00] Probably three core areas for myself and why I would bring Phil back to another Audigy event. One very much was his energy. He was passionate. I know that our team and our members left that meeting feeling very inspired after Phil’s keynote. He was very authentic and the level of kind of connection that he was able to establish with our audience — it was powerful. The team definitely felt it. Second, we were able to really look at that keynote as not just another speaker or somebody on the main stage, but he was very actionable and leaving you with bite sized pieces of information and ideas that I could see both our audience as well as our own team taking notes on as he was presenting to where when he got off that stage. Not only did we feel inspired, not only were we excited, but we actually had something to take back home that I could use in my tool box when I got back to my business or back to my practice. And lastly, I would say that he provided a reminder for us in the fact that in today’s world, business isn’t just about the products, the tools or even the transformation of what we think our tools are gonna be able to offer. That transformation, that product begins with your people. In order really to set your people up for success: We have to be willing to invest in them, not just in the technical aspects of what we want them to do, but in their personal ability to be confident enough to show up and speak with a level of clarity and a level of inspiration where they to by the words that they use to be can just as successful in their respective positions as is the products that we offer for them to be able to share. So I know that it was inspiring. I know that we left with a lot of takeaways. But the one thing that I think really resonated with all of us was that we needed to come back to center. And the fact that businesses deal with people, people move businesses and Phil’s guidance was spot on in being able to do that.
Lou Diamond: [00:07:57] Mason Walker, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts here today.
Mason Walker: [00:08:00] You’re very welcome, Lou. Thank you for your time.
