What Your Doctor Can Learn From my Shoe-Shine Man. – By Alex Lubarsky

“There’s no shortage of dirty shoes, you just have to figure out how to get em’ in the chair.” – Don Ward (NY’s favorite shoe-shine man corner 47^th Street and 6^th Avenue NYC)

‘Hey Mister, your shoes need shining!’ – The man who had set up a shoe-shine stand on a New York street corner said to me as I was waiting to cross Sixth Avenue with my teenage daughter. I looked down at my feet, and did not feel an immediate need to sit down on one of the two office chairs, my innocuous accoster jury-rigged onto a wooden platform. ‘I’m good’ - I answered. Without skipping a beat, now focusing his smiling gaze at my 14 year old daughter, ‘Miss, your boots need a shine!’ One more time I looked down, now at the boots that were recently a prized possession of my wife. This time he hit the nail on the head. Those boots were in desperate need of exactly his kind of attention.

With a technique for shining shoes Don perfected over the last 20 years, he went to work with all the joy, speed and pride in his work of a true professional. As he was shining the boots, he continued making comments at the scruffy shoes of the people passing by, explaining the psychology of those who turned him down ‘those are trust babies, they did not like being called out on a perceived imperfection’, and at the same time sharing his own surprising story with me.

‘I was a pastry chef, then I lost my job and was jobless for over three years, before that I was an accountant working in a cubical.’ Smiling at my daughter, he whispered as if sharing a secret ‘that was boring, don’t do that!’ Quickly returning to his story, he said ‘I had Johnny Carson in this Chair, I told Ted Turner of CNN his shoes need shining … he did not have time for a shine but gave me a $20.’

There are lots of things to love about Don, he is a free spirit, he did not settle for a government handout or a system that was, as he put it, referencing a Seinfeld episode ‘killing independent George’, he is a marketing machine, and he is good, very good at his work.

It’s just not the same with most people who are good at their chosen craft, be they doctor, chef, lawyer or auto-mechanic, few are able to market themselves effectively and many believe that if they just do a good job, word-of-mouth will take over and eventually they will be very successful. Maybe, but that may just take two lifetimes.

Understanding marketing is crucial. If educating the public about your service is not incorporated into the cost of doing business, if it is something that comes as an afterthought rather then top-of-mind, true success will always be just around the corner French-kissing your competition. You will either learn to embrace marketing or you will always be at the mercy of those who do.

Maybe that is why our system of health care is run by third-party shysters that have virtually nothing to do with it while the doctor is relegated to cabin-boy status on the lowest deck of his own ship. 

With what is the ultimate insult to the health care industry, by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, all controls of the helm will be placed in the hands of a few ‘selfless’ politicians. Most doctors will capitulate to the virtual subjugation by an emboldened, oppressive system that will have them working in the proverbial cubical, as third-party bureaucrats slowly kill independent George.

It’s not about money. It’s about freedom, and it’s about practicing medicine that touches your soul, makes you excited to go to work, and doing it on your own terms, not to mention, makes some kind of an impact in the sobbingly-sad and epidemically-deadly health statistics of generation Y and her children.

The only chance for the future of health care, indeed for the future of our country, is for doctors to identify what their passion is, cultivate a message, dump all the insurance companies, say no to government intervention and begin marketing themselves, just like they pay the rent in their office, i.e. consistently and for as long as they wish to be in business.

There is no shortage of un-well people, you just have to figure out how to get em’ in the chair.

For the last ten years, I’ve ended each of our weekly radio programs with a wish and a prayer, and it is with that thought that I’d like to begin our partnership:“May G-d give us the wisdom to protect our health from the drug-pushers, the mangled-care monopolies and the compulsory medical Marxist, may the health care provider unify and take back the health care industry, and may it happen within this decade.” www.HealthMedia.us