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Welcome to ChiroSecure’s Empowering Women in Chiropractic. The Facebook live show for successful women, by successful women. Proving once again, women make it happen. Join us each week as we bring you the best in business growth, practice management, social media marketing, networking, leadership, and lots more. If it’s about women in practice and business, you’ll hear it here. Now join today’s host Dr. Nicole Lindsey, as she talks overhead, debt and creating other sources of income. And now here’s Dr. Nicole.
Hello everybody. Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Nicole Lindsey, your host of this week show of Empowering Women in Chiropractic. I want to thank ChiroSecure for bringing this show to us, and giving us the opportunity to build a community within our profession. And I so appreciate them, and I hope you give them some love and support as well. My topic for you today is how to build your practice back by creating community. Now, I am the founder of Dominate ChiroMarketing, where I teach chiropractors, how to build relationships with medical doctors in their community. So I know quite a bit about just building community with other healthcare professionals. But with the times as they currently are, we have to be creative. And we all have had to do things and stretch ourselves and put ourselves in positions that we haven’t ever been in before.
So let’s turn to the slides and I’m going to give you some tips and strategies on what you can do, to help your practice right now. Because what’s happening is, the country is reopening, more so in some places than others. But most chiropractors are looking for ways to ease their patients back into the practice. Or to motivate them, or maybe even inspire new ones to take on natural health and get into their practice. So no matter where you’re at, if your practice is down 50%, 20%, some are up during this time, but I believe most of us are down and in the process of building back up. But irregardless of where you are, it’s really important that we stay in the game and we work on building our practice back. And I know for myself, I did not feel right about doing a whole lot of outside marketing throughout this pandemic.
I didn’t want to send a lot of Google ads and Facebook ads. And I know that some offices did and they did great with that. But personally, I just didn’t feel right about it. Didn’t feel like the timing was right. So instead, what I did was I focused on the patients that were already in my practice, and how I could build this community, make it stronger. Because here’s the thing, no matter what’s going on in the world, if you have a business, marketing is essential. It is essential, right? Your business is essential, so is marketing. Marketing is essential in order to keep that business of yours on the map. So, the why is what we’re going to cover. Why your patients, your staff, and your community need you right now. The what. What community strength means to your practice, why that is so important.
And then last but not least, I’m going to give you the how. How you can start building community, using creative campaigns and private Facebook groups that motivate, educate, and inspire your patients. And I’m going to give you my step by step plan and tell you exactly what I did, to create this community and build this stronger connection and bond with my patients. Now, your community, your patients, they need you right now. Now more than ever. And this goes for not only your patients, this goes for your staff, right? So your patients need community, your staff needs that community and you need it as well. We all do. If we look at what’s going on right now, the chaos, the confusion, the uncertainty, we’re out of our routine. There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of division, right? There’s all these theories and thoughts and we don’t know what to believe and what to hold on to.
A lot of people aren’t taking care of their health. They’re not exercising, they’re not eating right, they’re gaining weight, they have these negative thoughts. So right now people need community. And what a community is, it’s a familiar thread that brings people together, so that they can support each other. Right? So that’s the purpose of it. And humans, we need to feel like we have a sense of belonging. So our patients need this, people just in general need this and we need this ourselves. Why do we have to do this? Well, to support each other, so we can overcome some of these threats that are out there right now. More so mentally than anything. It’s important for borrowed motivation. I mean, here’s the deal. You can get overwhelmed. And I know I did, the first couple of weeks that this went down.
I mean, it was hard to get up in the morning and I just felt overwhelmed. But the more I put my head into my practice and what was in front of me, I could look around at the staff member that was next to me. I could look at my patients that needed me, that wanted me to be there and borrow some motivation from them. So I appreciated the community of my practice because it helped motivate me. Right? Having a community can help push your limits. It can push you to do things that you wouldn’t normally do for yourself. It’s easy to give up, right? That’s easy. But if you have a community, somebody that’s holding you accountable, then you might not stay in your pajamas all day. I know I was part of a couple of Facebook, not Facebook, text groups with girlfriends that were not in chiropractic that were all in all different professions that were not essential.
And they were struggling. They did not want to get out of their pajamas all day. They didn’t want to get off the couch. They didn’t want to do anything. And they weren’t being pushed to their limits because they didn’t have this community to push them in another direction. The community can also give you accountability, because, hey, if you have somebody asking you, “Did you do this? What did you do today?” You’re more likely to do it because you know that question’s coming. And then of course the collective wisdom. There’s a lot of misinformation out right now regarding disinfectants, regarding masks, regarding viruses, immune systems. And your patients in your community, they trust you. They come to you for a source of advice and truth. So giving them this community, this place that they can go to, is giving them that collective wisdom, which they so need right now.
So what does community strength do for your practice? Well, building a community, in essence, it gives your patients a place where they can feel, seen and heard. Especially right now, when they might not be able to get out of their house because they’re following these stay at home orders. So maybe you do a telehealth visit with them and you’re hearing them, you’re seeing them, right? So you’re doing this by creating a brand. You’ve created a practice with a certain brand and you have a loyal following. So what this will do as you build it stronger and stronger, you’ve built this community of patients that now they look to you as a source of truth, it builds retention. And even during a pandemic, even during a time where businesses are closing, and they’re not able to pay their staff anymore, you’re able to continue to build brand loyalty by doing what you do, right?
And this will just keep your loyal customers coming, keep your patients coming because they trust you. And so building community strength will help build retention for your practice. It also is going to help you attract new business. I created a Facebook group and created a campaign around it, which I’m going to talk about in a slide, a couple slides from here, and tell you how to do this yourself. But what I found was that, patients were inviting their family members and friends into this group. Because they wanted their family members and friends to hear this information. They wanted to bring them in. It attracted new business. And I wasn’t doing it for that. I wasn’t creating this community campaign to purposely get new patients. I wasn’t even thinking that. I was thinking, “Build my community within, make it really strong.” And what it did is it helped me attract new business in the interim.
The third thing that building community strength can do for your practice is it can enhance patient success. I mean, who doesn’t want that for our patients? Right? So having a stronger community you’ll find that your patients will support each other. They’ll build a sense of comradity. They will also have conversations without you even present, and they’ll develop strategic connections and things will happen. I mean, magic happens when you put people together that feel like they can be part of something. And this is all going to strengthen your practice, build your brand, retain your practice and help you build it in the interim. So how can you build brand? How can you build community strength in your practice? Well, here is what I did. And I did this March 11th, when the World Health Organization deemed this pandemic.
It made me dig deep and figure out what I need to do, because I like most of you listening to this, running your practice, had all kinds of thoughts running through my head. “Am I going to be able to continue practicing? Is it safe? How am I going to pay my employees? Am I going to have a business six months from now?” All of that running through my head. I’m thinking of my overhead, thinking of my family. And I knew that I had to do something. And so anytime I’m faced with adversity, what I do is I focus on what I have control of. And I knew that I had control over my thoughts and I had to do something. And what I’ve found is that, the patients that continued to come during the two weeks that were the worst during this pandemic for us so far, what they were saying was, “I’m depressed. I’m sad. I don’t want to get off my couch. I’ve never felt like this. I can’t stop thinking these negative thoughts.”
I mean, there was some real dark stuff coming out of my patients. And I know, I was feeling it too. Let’s just be real, right? So this gave me the idea, is that, I had to help my community change their mindset. Because if that didn’t get changed, nothing else would. Right? Everything we know as chiropractors, everything starts and ends in the brain. So getting the mind right was what we needed to do. So the first thing, is I had to pick a topic for my campaign. And for you do the same thing. Maybe getting the mind right, is not something you feel passionate about, but make sure whatever topic you pick it’s relevant. And right there at that moment, getting the mind right for my patients was very relevant.
So number one, pick a topic. Pick something that you want to create a campaign around. Number two, was create a private Facebook group. So you can put your patients into this community. And what I did is, I picked a name for this that would live beyond this pandemic and would live beyond this moment right here of getting the mind right. How else could I use this group down the road, to help build community for my practice? And for me, I want to always help patients with their mind, their body, their soul. The name of my practice is Back In Balance. So I named my private Facebook group Back In Balance – Mind, Body & Soul. And I figured we’d start our first campaign on getting the mind right. So create your private Facebook group and then invite all your practice members on Facebook. Invite them to join.
As your patients are coming in, tell them. Tell them that you’re creating this community, a safe place for them to come, where they can help each other, that you can help them, we can help each other, we can motivate, we can inspire, we can maintain health and get healthy during this time. And I also let them know, I didn’t have all the nuts and bolts figured out. I just knew I needed to do this. And you can do the same. Don’t wait until you have it all figured out, just get it into motion. And I started letting my patients know, “Look, I’m going to put together a 10-day self improvement plan for you, that we can do together because I know I need to do it too. I need to get my mind right too. So it’s a 10 day self improvement plan. That’s going to focus on helping us get our mind right. And I think it will really help you as well. So please join my private Facebook group. There’ll be more information in there on it.”
And that’s all you have to do. Create the group, pick a title and invite your members. The next thing, is to create a post in there. And what I did is just a general welcome to the group and what the purpose was. Basically that same script, that same sentence I gave my patients in the office, I did a Facebook live video and put it in there. I did a post about what the purpose of this group was. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s real, right? I think I did it at my lake house in the morning, and it just hit me that I needed to do this now. And that’s what I did. Then the next thing you want to do is pick a start date for your 10-day self improvement plan, or whatever campaign you decide to do. And you’re going to post that in there.
Now, each day, what I did for 10 days is, I went live in that group for five, 10 minutes, no more than that. And I picked a topic, something that I could cover for them that would help them get their mind right. And I’ll give you a list of some of each of the things that I did each day. So you can just get a feel for what I used and you can use mine as well. In addition to posting that Facebook live, what I did is I gave them an action step. Simple, some homework. Something that they would, just one thing that they could do in regards to that topic for the day. And every day I did this. And I also posted memes and comical things in there to help encourage connection, conversation, to ask questions, accountability, “Hey, who listened to the video? What did you get out of it?” That sort of thing.
So my 10-days, what I did was, for example, some of the things I did here off to the right of the screen is, how to give back. What I did is I also use this as an opportunity, use that day as an opportunity to pull in other community members that were struggling. I found a local coffee shop that serviced hospital workers. They are near the hospital, and I bought a gift card from their coffee shop and worked with them to collaborate, to give back to them. And told them that all hospital workers could go there on me and get a cup of coffee, and I’m paying for that. And so they posted, I posted, but that was just a suggestion. That this group could do.
No, not everybody in my practice owns a business. So they may not want to go to that extreme, but what could they do in their neighborhood? Maybe it’s go grocery shopping for a neighbor and buy groceries and put them at the end of their driveway. Anything, just do something to give back, that’s an example. Get your hands in the dirt. That’s something that my husband and I did throughout this 10-day self improvement plan. We built patio steps and it was a big project, but it felt good. It felt good to just get outside and get our hands in the dirt. So I encouraged my practice members to make that part of their self improvement, their 10-day self improvement plan. So, as you can see on the right of this slide are examples. And that’s what I did for my self-improvement plan. In the middle of the screen is a screenshot of a video of the Facebook live.
And my associate and I would go live in the group, and talk about that specific topic. And then the action step, what we did, is we ended up creating a workbook. So every day that we created a action step that went with a specific topic, we turned that into a PDF. And at the end of the 10 days, I had a workbook that I could put into this Facebook group, so that now we have actual, a workbook that goes along with the campaign. And patients could get the workbook and work on that at a later time or work on it throughout.
What you can also do is repurpose your work. So this is really important because if you do something once and you can use that in three or four different areas, why not? So the more I got into this campaign, the more I realized this, and I thought, “Well, I can turn this into a lead generator later on.” Because getting your mind right, and doing a 10-day self improvement plan is not only good during a pandemic, it’s necessary during a pandemic, but there’s many times throughout the course of a normal year, pandemic free, that we need to be working on this.
So I can use that workbook I created, and I could make Facebook ads and encourage people to come into this group, and just maybe, and use that as a lead generator and get them into the 10-day self improvement plan, expose them to this community that I’ve created, and it could potentially turn into new business later on. One of the other things you can do in a private Facebook group, is you can turn it into a unit. And that way it’s organized nicely, the PDF the workbook is in there, but each video, day one through 10 is saved in there as well. And everybody that goes there can watch and participate in an organized fashion, which helps them and it helps you.
The next way you can repurpose your work is you can… your existing patients. You can invite them into this ongoing. So I have new patients that started up this week. And one of the things that we do is, we give them when they become a patient, a folder, which has coupons and information for nutritional supplements, and invites them to our podcast and our social media, so that they can participate and be aware of everything that we do. Well, in addition, I’m going to invite them into this Facebook group and let them know that there is a 10-day self improvement plan to get their mind right in there, that they can participate. So it’s a benefit to the patient, when you have all of this other stuff that you can give to them. So you can invite your patients through emails, in-office appointments, through folders and through Facebook ads.
And listen, it doesn’t stop here with just this one idea, let the creativity flow. So after this 10-day self improvement plan, another idea is to do a five minute desk makeover. You can do the same campaign, take the same idea, do it in five days, do it in three days, come up with your videos, come up with your PDF and create the same flow, but just different campaign. And you can do that for many things, stay at home exercises, how to foam roll your body in 10 minutes, self trigger point therapy. So just let the creativity flow and create these campaigns that can be used as lead generators, they can boost your community within your practice, help you retain your practice members and do a whole lot.
So I hope I gave you a lot to work with today. I know that I have all these ideas of things I wanted to do during this time, but I’m not complaining, but our office started to get busy and all these ideas I want to put into action, I’m having to put on the back burner, but I will get to it. And I hope you do too, because your practice will build by doing all of this stuff. And as Robert Ingersoll said, “We rise by lifting others.” So I hope that I’ve lifted you a little bit today as well. Please join in for our next show of Empowering Women in Chiropractic next time. Have a good day everybody.
Join us each week as we bring you the best in business growth, practice management, social media marketing, networking, leadership, and lots more. If it’s about women in practice and business, you’ll hear it here. We hope you enjoy this week’s Facebook live event. Please like us on Facebook, comment and share. We look forward to seeing all of you next week for another episode of Empowering Women in Chiropractic. Now, go ahead and hit the share button and tell your friends and colleagues about the show. Thank you for watching. Have a beautiful day. This has been a ChiroSecure production.
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