There are 2 ways to run a service based business. 1. With Systems 2. Without Systems Running an office Without systems means you are depending on the God given talent and past learned behaviors an employee has (personality, decision making and critical thinking skills) to get the job done right. Running it With systems means you depend on protocols and scripts to overcome the ‘shortcomings’ a person, including you, will inevitably prove to have. I have been creating chiropractic training programs and coaching chiropractors through for more than 15 years now. During that time the most common underlying problem I have uncovered with clinics that are struggling is a lack of systems. Why is this? It all has to do with the Consistency. Consistency of the Customer Experience, consistent education, consistent messaging, consistent marketing and on and on. It is this same consistency that powers a franchised business, increasing its likelihood of success and making it [...]

There is no greater foundational principle that drives, or blocks, success than your own Head-Space. You should always be working to refine and retrain your brain if you want to move forward toward a more positive professional and personal life. So, let’s cut to the chase! I broke it down for you in 3 steps for dialing in your Success Oriented Headspace. You must understand and truly believe… 1. Why you are doing ‘this’ Start by creating and understanding the clear picture of your Purpose (the Why) and role of your occupation as a chiropractor. A simple description might be as follows: A way to help people in my community achieve better health without drugs and surgery A way to move toward a higher level of personal prosperity (whatever that means to you) That’s it – it’s that simple. Don’t over-complicate the purpose of your profession and your practice or you will quickly lose your focus [...]

Having owned many practice types from multi-million dollar multidisciplinary insurance based to cash only chiropractic, there is a reason that I am now only focusing my time on helping chiropractors create a cash practice. That reason is that you have more control over the growth and income over time. It only took the ‘insurance rug’ being yanked out from under me once to make me begin to reevaluate the long-term viability of a business model that includes an X factor called ‘insurance’ in the success formula. That brings me to today… completely out of the insurance game, running a much more successful and sustainable model than I had with insurance and helping other chiropractors realize the same dream. The dream that I was essentially forced to go create. Here are a few of the benefit I didn’t even realize would be part of going all in on all cash. I believe they are important to share [...]

It was the summer of 2016 and I was seeking a chiropractor to run a new Express Chiropractic location. Dr. Mike Vilello applied for the job. During the interview, we shifted into the topic of “what do you really want to do?” He replied with a simple statement: “I really want to get my own practice off the ground and going.” And after a little more conversation the path became clear. He needed a new and better business model if he stood any chance of surviving even another few months, much less thriving. Truth be told, if he lived closer to my office I never would have agreed to help him. I liked him within minutes of meeting him and knew he would make a great associate doc. But that’s not where his headspace lived. He had a family and a new baby and was smart enough to know that he wasn’t building his future working [...]

Are you a chiropractor that wants to build a successful Cash Chiropractic Wellness Practice?   It all starts with how you market your chiropractic office in the community, how you present your care to patients and what you discuss during follow up visits. For now, let's focus on the latter... what you say during follow up visits. Do you discuss their pain relief when speaking with patients? Or worse yet do you discuss topics that are not chiropractic, their health, subluxation or spine related during the visit? If so you are wasting valuable education time.... time that will help improve a patient's understanding of chiropractic wellness care - for life. The principle of Cognitive Fluency says that as someone hears something enough they will stop dismissing it and instead grow to understand and accept it. THE GOLDEN QUESTION (Early in Care) When trying to grow a chiropractic wellness care office, and especially if you want to [...]

You do the Chiropractic Marketing... You Run your Cash and/or Membership Practice Like a Top... You Work on Growing your Business every day. But how much time are you spending on making sure your cash chiropractic business is GOING in the right direction? Markets change. And if there is one 'thing' I see with my Cash Practice Clients (and insurance based practice clients that I used to have before I made the switch to cash and membership practice models), it's that they typically duck their head and ignore market forces and competition. Instead they just plug along oblivious to everything and everyone else. Is that approach broken? Well, if you position your practice in a unique enough way where you render the competition irrelevant and cater to the 'wants' of people in the community well enough then you can go a long time with great success doing the 'same ol' thing.' For the vast majority of [...]

Online marketing is a never ending platform of opportunities to promote your cash practice. Unfortunately, it is also a common source of confusion. This post gives you a synopsis of the 3 categories you will target at promoting your business on the internet. 1. Social Media Marketing 2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing 3. Advertising (Online Ads such as Google Ads) Marketing Social Media This literal universe of faddish websites allows you to keep up with friends, family and celebrities. However it is also a great way to create and maintain contact with patients and prospective patients alike. In short you want to select the top 4 or 5 most popular sites (think Twitter, Facebook, Google +, YouTube and Instagram) and set up your business page. From there you will simply post and repost high quality content that gives people simple education or points of interest. More selectively and less frequently you can provide insight into [...]

We are well aware that the better you are at retaining patients, the less chiropractic marketing you need to do. This especially holds true in the Chiropractic Wellness Practice where our entire goal is to help patients understand the need for and follow through with lifetime spine checks. Sometimes an adjustment, or even the entire visit, just doesn't go as well as you had hoped. This can make a visit with an existing, but especially a new patient, very awkward. So beyond explaining how you are reducing subluxations and reduction of pain is a side effect of this and Not Your Goal with care, use these additional tips to not only reduce the chances of a bad first visit but also how to restore and clean it up should it begin to head that way. PREVENTION: 1. Build a bond with all NPs by meeting them in the lobby first. You should always have an ear [...]

Just as there are a host of problems an insurance based practice must contend with on a daily basis, a cash practice that offers ‘membership’ as a way to pay for services, comes with its own set of obstacles and issues. The good news is they are far, far less than those of an office that accepts 3rd party payments. I know – I’ve practiced on both sides of the fence. Regardless of whether you have an insurance, cash, membership or practice transitioning from one to the other, one common concern doesn’t change. How can I build a bigger patient base? […]

The people in our community that we target as potential customers, patients and practice members have been spoon fed the same old health paradigm since birth. No Symptoms = No Problems. That is a huge obstacle to overcome with retaining patients but is something you could obviously use to your advantage when marketing for new patients. But be careful!... If you want to build a chiropractic wellness patient base that ultimately grows into a high-volume cash practice, you cannot directly market pain relief care. Well, actually you CAN but the lack of congruency you will generate in your office will either just shape your office into a pain relief center – by default – or at the very least sabotage the growth of your ‘wellness’ practice. If your goal in the office is building health rather than simply reacting to the decline of it, then don’t market pain relief as a service. It’s not needed because [...]