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Welcome to FREEDOM WEEK, baby.

Independence Day is Friday. So let’s talk fireworks, hot dogs, and all things ‘Merica this week.

Today’s lesson comes from the great American philosopher Joe Dirt.

There’s a scene in the movie where Joe finds a struggling fireworks stand. The owner, Kickin’ Wing, is complaining about his terrible sales.

Joe asks why he only sells two types of fireworks. Where are the spleen splitters? The whisker biscuits? The hoosker doos and hoosker don’ts?

Kickin’ Wing’s response: “Because snakes and sparklers are the only ones I like.”

This is where Joe drops some wisdom:

“That’s the problem, brother! It ain’t about you. It’s about the consumer.”

I’ve made this exact mistake. Multiple times actually.

I wanted to offer THIS particular service. I wanted to sell THESE certain products. Because that’s what I liked. What I thought was important.

But here’s the thing with clients / customers / patients…

They don’t much care what we like. Your patients have their own reasons for choosing a procedure: fun, adventure, safety, cost savings, vanity, freedom, etc etc

All these reasons, all across the board, and everyone prioritizes different ones.

So if you use the same words, ask the same questions, focus on the same benefits with EVERY patient…

Sure, you’ll convert some of them to surgery. But you’ll also miss many opportunities because you aren’t connecting with each patient’s priorities.

Just like Kickin’ Wing missed customers who wanted more than snakes and sparklers.

So how do we figure out what a patient’s priorities are? We use DISC profiling to figure out what makes people tick.

When you know someone’s personality type, you can easily figure out their communication style and their priorities. And when you know their priorities, you can speak their language.

And armed with that skillset, you have a lot more to offer than Snakes and Sparklers.

Talk soon,

Troy Cole “Joe Dirt was ahead of his time”
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PS – Now is a great time to plan for end of summer / back to school / fall coaching programs with our DISC for Doctors & Teams. (At least that’s what the market is telling me because we’ve had a bunch of practices reach out about it.)

And we have some bonuses happening right now for anyone who gets a coaching session on the books. For details on our killer, transformative programs and special bonuses, reply “DISC me!” And I’ll shoot you the info…

Coming at you from a Laundromat in Weatherford, TX at 10:14 p.m. on Tuesday. Why? Because our 3-year-old “smart washer” outsmarted itself. 😑

My parents had a washer that lasted DECADES. They still have the same fridge from when they built my childhood home in 1995.

“They just don’t make things like they used to!” (Cue curmudgeon-y old man voice)

But seriously, any appliance you buy today has 743 bells and whistles. And when one whistle breaks, the whole ship goes down.

Of course this meant I spent 30 minutes on live-chat with Best Buy Geek Squad (I have a 5-year coverage plan for this very scenario).

They sent me to Samsung due to a recall on the washer, where I spent an hour download their “SmartThings” app, connecting my washer to the internet so I could update the software. (This is not a joke)

That didn’t work, so I talked to them for 20 minutes as I worked through a possible solution.

That got me nowhere, so I get back on the phone with Geek Squad. “Hold for a team member, or you can press 1 and we can troubleshoot via text!” Um, no. I need a human to help me and hear the anger in my voice.

Long story semi-short, they’re sending a repair person out to assess the situation on Friday. But my family of 6 needs clean sports uniforms, hence the laundromat adventure.

Hours online chatting with maybe a person, maybe a robot. App downloads, connected devices, automated AI phone trees, links to websites. All to no avail.

All the tech in the world to help me fix the busted tech in my teched-out washing machine. Jumping through all the digital hoops. When all I wanted was a human to solve my problem.

It reminded me of another moment: landing in Nashville recently, walking out of the airport, opening my phone, getting ready to tap 15 buttons just to call an Uber…

But then I looked up.

And I saw a line of cabs. Walked to the first one. Driver popped the trunk, loaded my bag, and said, “Where to?”

No app. No algorithm. No friction. Just one human helping another. In fact it cost half as much as the uber would have – and it felt better.

“But Troy — everyone uses Uber. And AI is all the rage. What are you even talking about?”

Yeah. I get it. I use Uber too. And I’m not anti-tech. I’m pro-human.

AI is great at crunching data, following rules, scaling tasks.

But it’s not great at recognizing the subtle shift in someone’s tone.

It doesn’t read the pause in a sentence, or the tightness in a voice.

It doesn’t see people.

Tech makes things efficient. But people make things matter.

And in the world of customer experience — especially in healthcare — that difference is everything.

You can’t automate empathy.

You can’t systematize warmth.

You can’t AI your way into trust.

If you want to win in business today, you probably don’t need more tech — you need a team that knows how to meet people where they are.

That’s why I always bet on people. And it’s why we teach what we teach in our DISC for Doctors and Teams coaching program.

If you’ve been through this program, you know exactly what I’m talking about — your team’s ability to read a room, recognize someone’s communication style, and “speak their language” in a way that builds trust fast.

And if you haven’t?

Let me just say — it’s not just training. It’s transformation.

If you’re curious, reply to this email.

Let’s talk about how this could work for you or your team, or how you can take it to the next level if you’ve already been through one of our foundational DISC programs.

Always betting on people,

Troy “King of the Laundromat” Cole

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P.S. – We’ve had leaders tell us this DISC coaching shifted their entire team culture. If you’re even a little bit curious, hit reply. No pressure — just a real convo with a real human.