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So, you've been doing biomechanics for a while, but you're unhappy with your career!
Stuck in a rut?
Can't see a direction?
Too greedy to just take a steady income but but can't be arsed to actually do proper work?
Lack the imagination to make a breakthrough?
Well have no fear, because after literally 20 minutes of hard study I can now offer my
PERSONNAL IMPROVEMENT STARTER SCHEME
Its simple. Choose the career path which suits you best and send me £20,000 and I will send you the Sequential Career Advancement Manual. In no time at all you'll be raking in money had over fist and have Cameron Diaz as a personal assistant!
The Loreal approach.
Because you're worth it! If you have sufficient self belief, simply charge upwards of £1500 for your orthotics. Remember there is one born every minute so take out a buncha high price adverts, get yourself a spangly clinic, Slag off everyone else who is providing the same devices for a quarter the price and off you go!
And for added benefits, just spend all the money, and put the company into liquidation thus distancing yourself from all those pesky patients who want their money back. You could always start up again just up the road after a nice long holiday!
But if that one does not carry enough prestige then try....
The "retro" approach
Inventing new ideas and techniques is such a bore. Lots of clever people have invented stuff which now never gets used. These inventions have been superceeded and thus most podiatrists (especially the new ones) will not recognise them! Drag them out the dustbin, paint over the scabby bits, give it an exciting new name, and launch it on the market. In no time at all you'll have a following of gullible podiatrists who have not kept up with current events! Make a mint on the lecture circuit and bask in the admiration of your peers! And if you can patent your "new" method then so much the better!!
But this requires a bit of sales ability. If you lack the charisma why not try...
The "alchemy" approach
Yes it really works. Come up with an idea. It does not need to be good, or even plausible. Design an insole which makes no rational sense whatsoever. Then you turn it to gold by claiming it cures EVERYTHING!!! Seriously, don't let yourself be limited by the bounds of knowledge or logic! And especially don't shy from claiming cures for really serious problems, after all desperate people will part with money for ANYTHING right?
What's that you say? Not enough money for you?
The ADVANCED alchemy approach
So you've made your fortune claiming to cure every disease in the dictionary. Why not push it to the next level! Mediocre podiatrists are as desperate to find treatments which work as their patients are to find cures! Come up with an appropriately long winded and expensive course and start a franchise! You'll have it all, fame, fortune and a following of desparate podiatrists who think they can't understand what you say because its SO clever (as opposed to because you just make up phrases which sound plausible together in random order).
Don't think you've got the minerals to pull that one off? Try...
The "simplification" approach
Lets face it, biomechanics is a bore. All that training, all that physics, who wants it? Podiatrists face a constant battle between their desire to be good podiatrists and the natural laziness which has plagued you your whole life. So give them an out! Work out a nicely simplified system based on one or two measurements and make out its all anyone needs to learn! Patent it and take it to market!
Aha, I hear you cry, surely people will see that this is a retrograde step and that it involved unlearning all they've learned. Well never fear, my Sequential Career Advancement Manual has the answer. Find a theory which was great in its day but has been superseded, and rip it to shreds! In spite of the fact that it is completely irrelevant to YOUR paradigm, you'll look ACE by comparison!
But if you're less greedy perhaps you'd be better with...
The Nostradamus approach.
Yes, you can tell the future. Find a nuggett of science which looks like it might go somewhere. Then PRETEND YOU FULLY UNDERSTAND IT!!! Nobody will argue because most people will have only heard of this stuff in passing. The few people who DO know about it will only be able to splutter about how nobody really knows how it works and that there's no evidence and that just makes you look even cooler for claiming you DO or HAVE. Make a broad sweeping claim about what some insole does. Try to make it as esoteric as possible including lost of words like "neuro", "macro", "Kinesthetic" and of course "proprioception". Not the most lucrative method here but for sure it will will gain you a following.
Or if you'd be too worried about being busted later perhaps you need the last of my Sequential Career Advancement Manuals,
The Equipment Junkie.
Get a piece of techno kit. For preference it should have pretty sciency pictures and knobs and whistles and stuff. Get to know it, then CLAIM EVERYONE NEEDS ONE. Don't worry that everyone has got on fine for years without one, they need one NOW. And the punters will be SO impressed with it, they'll form queues to have a £12,000 machine tell them what a decent clinician could tell them just by looking at them. Get a contract with the people who make the machines for the REALLY big money.
So send your money NOW for your Sequential Career Advancement Manual! And look out for the new one coming out in the new year wherin I charge you that price just to teach YOU how to charge OTHER people that price!!!!
Please send Cheques to
Robert Isaacs
Banko de Swiss
Switzerland
Terms and conditions apply. Results may vary. Cameron Diaz may NOT come to be your PA. The author explicitly denies all liability for any damage to reputation occasioned by this Sequential Career Advancement Manual. Whilst these may have worked in the past they are all based on previous success this may NOT be predictive of future performance.
**************************************************
Kevin A. Kirby, DPM
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Applied Biomechanics
California School of Podiatric Medicine at Samuel Merritt College
Yes possibly too much time on your hands (it IS Christmas the week after next) but brilliant nevertheless.
Thanks- a good laugh before I face all those Xmas shoppers.
Regards
Deborah.
"Political Correctness" is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end
I think Mr Butterworth deserves a separate theory to our Brian. I mean they are both based on the idea that if you change the sensation of the plantar foot something magical happens but that is where the resemblance ends.
This is just too funny. I have to sign up for a course as I want to be famous too.
Having said that, there is a serious side to this and I hope some of those above and those aspiring to these heights realise that the approach that they are taking is likely to be viewed. I wish more of my DPM colleagues were aware of this.
Brilliant!
I hope I am not too late to take advantage of this offer. Please would you be good enough to accept £40,000 and allow me to sign up twice so I can be twice as good at the biomechanics?
I believe this entitles me to Ant AND Dec as PA's. I appreciate they may be very popular in the North East and would be happy to accept 2 Nolans or Beyonce and Jay-Z.
Many thanks for your kindness and sharing your knowledge.
I'll have the DVD player please.
And the laminate sign.
I am delighted to say that the throughput of my school remains high with dozens of personal improvement starter scheme artists being created every week!
Not being one to stand still I am proud to announce that I will soon be releasing a NEW SERIES OF Sequential Career Advancement Manuals! Yes thats right, exciting new SCAMs are being invented all the time. We never sleep!
The abstract terror approach.
This one is actually a development of the "alchemy" approach. In Alchemy you learned to promise big by offering to cure any and all ills. This opens a huge market for you.
HOWEVER the Abstract terror approach opens up the entire population as a potential cash cow, ripe for the milking.
The simple elegance of the plan is this. You cure people... of problems they don't have yet. Its perfect. you warn people that because of their gait/ foot type / hair colour / fact they have a head, they are GOING to get something nasty. They are DOOMED. They are probably heading for a wheelchair in a few years. Cut a hole in your trouser pocket, take a pair of tweezers and pluck a few hairs while delivering the news and a sympathetic (looking) tear will come to your eye (optional but it makes you look like you really care)
There is only one hope for them. You, and you alone (thats important) can promise them good health IN THE FUTURE.
Call it wellness, or optimal function, or good health or anything suitable vague that cannot be tested or proved either way! Fit them up and hey presto. You don't even have the risk of them coming back and complaining because (and this is the really clever part) by being vague about the problems you prevent, you can always say its worked. Got shin splints in spite of the insoles? Yes but you never suffered a stroke did you? $600 please.
AND by promising vague "good function" instead of threatening specifics or actually offering to cure a rear problem you even get to sound positive and pro active while you're doing it.
Watch this space folks. New Sequential Career Advancement manuals are appearing all the time. Stay on the cutting edge! Send £10,000 to my offshore account today to receive updates and remain on the cutting edge!
"Political Correctness" is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end
Been a while since I expanded on my Sequential Career Advancement Manual. So Its high time I offered up anothe dose of my Personal Improvement Starter Scheme. Anyone wishing to take the Personal Improvement Starter Scheme need look no further!
The Godfather Approach
"you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather..."
So you want respect? You want to leave a legacy? You want to be a legend? You want ownship? Well then I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Have a baby. Become the "father of" something.
It does'nt have to be something original. It doesn't have to be yours. It can be as vague or as specific as you like. It helps if you can find someone else to call you it, even if its your spouse, so you can report on your website "he's been called the father of *******" rather than announce it yourself. Its hard to be humble when you are the father of something but its important to try, lest you look like a self promoting cynic applying home made laurels to your own head.
And then, you've arrived. A legend in your own mind, you can know that anyone who used or does what you've adopted does so under your paternal stare, (even, in a Dr who styly, those who did it before you came along).
If you wish to read the whole chapter, please send a bankers draft for £20,000 to Robert Isaacs, the father of Personal Improvement Starter Schemes And Livelyhood Liberation
Ways to Succeed in Biomechanics
I'm already signed up by the look of it !!
Re: Ways to Succeed in Biomechanics
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