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Hey everybody. Welcome. Thanks for joining me. Uh, before we even get started, let’s give a big shout out to ChiroSecure who sponsor and host these events to get you informed and keep you informed and make you be better at what you do always visit them for all of your insurance needs. I am Dr. Randi Ross of premier practice consultants. And I am here today to always, what I try and do is make you think a little bit about some of the things that, because we’re all so busy and we have a million moving parts, we sometimes let a few things slip through the cracks. So we’re going to get started. And today what we’re talking about is as far as your business, are you a master or are you a mess? And we’re going to pop some slides up here so that you can follow along as we do this.
So, which are you, are you a business mess or are you a master? Let’s try and find out here and see how you do and we’ll move to the next slide. So one of the things, oh, let me kind of prefaces anything I ever talk about on these shows or bring to you is current stuff. These are things that we experience every day in our business and make me start thinking, why is it like this? Why are people not prepared? We are so important to the healthcare industry. Why are we not treating our businesses with the same respect that we do to everything else we do to deliver care? So what I’m talking about here today is important and pertinent to every single one of you listening, just take some notes, pay attention, and look, let’s go ahead and get started. So one of the things that we run into all the time and all of these things kind of make me go, oh, I don’t understand.
Um, is people keeping their documentation current at all times, and as business owners, some of these things are a little bit variable depending upon how you have your company set up and things like that. But so this is gonna really address the majority of people in majority, majority of, of how your business is structured. So there are a few documents that you always want to have. Current. I am shocked that we are halfway through the year and the majority of people have not submitted their taxes to their accountant to be done. Now, are there exceptions to that? Somebody that needs an extension for whatever reason, but it shouldn’t be a really, really small percentage of you out there that actually need that. You should always keep it leased your last three years tax returns. And once you get into the first quarter, your, your, that year’s tax returns in this case, twins 21 should be completed and kept in a file.
When I say in a file, I mean, you should have a file with all these documents, either on a computer, but ideally in a cloud that you could access it anytime you need it. We’re going to talk about certain need times that you’ll need it, you know, in a few minutes, profit and loss, you know, don’t skimp on your account and this is something else that I see a lot of, you know, you kind of get what you pay for. So, you know, if you have an accountant that is not producing monthly profit and loss, quarterly profit and loss, and then obviously at the end of the year, they give you one document or it should be, um, you know, find someone that’s going to provide that quality service to you. Profit and loss is such an important document. Uh, and a lot of people really don’t keep that up to date or properly, you know, configured as, as we might say, overhead.
And I’m going to say current and real. And what I mean by that and follow me on this a little bit. There’s, there’s your overhead that you’re spending now to run your business. Now, we all know as small business owners, that there are things that you can legally write off on your taxes as a business expense, but wouldn’t be what we refer to as a pass-through expense. If someone was looking at the profit in your business, possibly a buyer, or if you’re refinancing or all these other things that we’re going to get into. So real is what I call. If I walked into your business today and I took over your practice, what expenses am I going to have to keep this practice running the same way than it is now? So all the things that you see in overhead, maybe, you know, a car expense or maybe certain travel, you know, you’re going to conferences and things like that.
Those are things that are not what I refer to as real or what I would say pass through. Those are your current keeping those two things separate, cannot keeping a run-up, you know what we could consider your current overhead, that you are processing as well as what is real or would pass through to somebody that was taking over your business. These are going to become really important as we continue this conversation and equipment list. Um, this is also something I see a lack of, you know, you should at least once a year go through your office and do an updated quiz, excuse me, equipment list, um, the date that it was purchased and an approximate value of it. Now, if it’s brand new or with it’s in, you know, two, three years, your, your value is pretty much what you purchased it for. If it’s something more than five years old, the typical rule of thumb is you go to 50% of the purchase price.
I know some of you don’t want to hear that on some of your biggest, biggest, big, or ticket items like digital x-ray or some of the higher end tables. There might be a little wiggle room in there, but that’s kind of a comfortable rule of thumb for you to keep that updated. Also the building. Do you own the building? Um, if you do you want to make sure that you keep an updated what I call a prospectus or an overview of the building, and that could be anything from as detailed as you had an appraisal of the building, and you keep that in the file. Um, it could be something as, you know, just a drawing, which kind of gives you the broad strokes of the property and the building. And then the information, if you don’t have an appraisal, the information about the building certain details, that would be important to know as well as the value.
And this is something, especially in today’s real estate market, you always want to have current, if something happened and you needed to, you know, refinance or possibly sell, you want to have that information current. And, um, you know, obviously if you don’t own the building, what you would want to keep in that file. Current is the lease with the, uh, the property owner of your office. And you want to keep a current version. Uh, sometimes I see people have been in a space for maybe 10 years. And w when we look for, at a lease, they’re showing me the original lease that they had. Well, that’s, you know, some of the details in there obviously, you know, a concurrent and run through, but a lot of that information has changed, especially, you know, what are you paying? You know, are you paying real estate taxes or cams or any other expenses?
Those are important to have detailed lists, and that can be actually on your overhead, but you want to keep things, uh, you know, as concise and organized as possible. And we can go to the next slide. So this is also something that I run into that always shocks me a little bit, that people do not know how to retrieve, print an access, the different reports that are necessary to being a business owner, to keeping on track of, and this shouldn’t be something that you’re, you know, office manager or front desk are the only ones that know how to do this. There may be times that come up when you don’t want them to necessarily know why you’re asking for something or why you need a document. You know, what you do is, is private. Obviously, if your spouse is your office manager, that might be a little different scenario, but other than that, you know, it’s one of these things that I always say, no one should know how to do something in your office that you don’t know how to do.
This is one of those things and the different reports that we kind of typically, uh, you know, see that you should again, have on hand, keep updated, keep in that cloud folder where everything is neat and organized and easy to access your stats. This is something that most people are pretty good with, especially if you work with any kind of coach or like that new patient services, collections, billing, things like that. But one of the other things that’s really important is what we refer to as service breakdown. So if you are a straight chiropractor and all you provide is chiropractic adjustments, uh, obviously this is not something that would pertain to you, but other than this, a lot of people have different programs and profit centers and things that they’ve integrated into their practice. And it’s really important to understand where your money’s coming from in those situations.
So that should be a report that you could print out and whether, you know, how much of your collections, you know, dollar amount is chiropractic care. Um, you know, how much of it is, uh, you know, something like orthotics, or maybe you have PT, or maybe you have stem cell therapy that you read, whatever that is. That is something to really understand what the breakdown is. You should have separate reports that really could look at it any time and have an understanding of where the money is coming from. The other thing is payer profile. This is something with the exception of people that are a hundred percent cash. That’s easy to know what your payer profile is. Um, but if you have a little bit of a mixture, you’re going to want to really have an understanding and be able to print and visualize a report of your payer profile at any given time.
Um, it varies from practice to practice. Usually we see four or five of what percentage cash, what percentage Medicare, personal injury, um, and different types of insurance, whether they’re a major medical HMO PPO, um, some people do workers’ comp and there might be a couple of categories that are not, you know, maybe abnorm in general to everyone, but that’s a really good understanding to know where your patients are coming from, and you should be able to print a report on that. And again, that report should be in the cloud in this folder with everything else. And if there are any other things that you know, and I can’t go through everything here, uh, that all your business, a different structure that you have set up or something along those lines, you know, keep those reports printed on a regular basis, ideally as monthly and then quarterly.
And then, you know, every year to have this breakdown of everything that’s going on, you know, some of this seems like, why is she telling me this? Yeah, this is simple, but you know what? Sometimes we get busy. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we don’t do it at all, which is hopefully the people that are going to, you know, prod a little bit here. This is really, really important to the success of your business. And we’re going to go to the next slide. And we’re going to kind of delve into a little bit here of why this is important, other than the obvious is you are a business person. And there are certain elements that we know pertain to running a business. The ones that I discussed are different record keeping that is really important to a chiropractic or actually most healthcare practices. So the reason why this is so important and something that we come across, as, you know, as practice sell consultants, is a few reasons.
One, if you’re selling one of the biggest things that happens, why deals do fall through is because people don’t have this prepared and organized, even though you can be sure, I tell them from the beginning that they needed. And my nickname in the company is bossy pants. So I’m pretty strong with my recommendation of having this prepared people don’t in that case often, not all the time. What we see is deals fall apart. You know, it it’s, it’s about presentation. Sometimes if you, if someone is interested in your practice and whether they’re, you know, looking at it digitally, or they’re coming for a visit, if you don’t, if you can’t readily produce these documents and these reports that I just expressed to you, they feel that’s a reflection on how you run your business. That you’re sloppy, that you’re disorganized, and that’s it. They’re not gonna go to, you know, purchase something or engage in moving along with that practice very often, because they already have a bad impression of buying a business.
That’s unorganized, doesn’t run properly. And, um, not something that they really want to make their investment in. So that’s really important, you know, whether you’re selling or possibly you have an associate that’s buying in or any of those kinds of scenarios, this is so critical to being successful. Maybe you’re refinancing, you know, a loan that you have on your business. Guess what all the things I just described to you, a bank is going to want. And it’s kind of the same thing. If, excuse me, if you look disorganized and disheveled and how you present your information, that’s how that bank and that underwriter is going to view, uh, or that loan officer, you know, how your business is run, and are they going to want to take a risk with you? You know, there’s is all about risk and reward. Uh, so then it might actually prevent you from getting a loan or it might actually make your loan come in at a higher interest rate, which means it’s actually costing you money to be sloppy and unorganized.
That doesn’t make any sense. This is not anything that’s super time consuming. It’s just a matter of a habit like anything else. Um, maybe you’re expanding your practice. You are looking to move to a bigger location, or like, what I didn’t want was a practice around the corner from where I practiced. And she was, and I kind of bought her practice and incorporated them into one. Maybe you’re doing something like that, and you’ll either need to, um, go for a loan. Or if the selling doctor is going to owner finance, they’re still going to want to see all this information on you to make sure you’re a viable buyer. Uh, so that’s really important. Maybe you’re purchasing equipment. Um, and that’s something that we frequently do. You may not need as detailed information in that case. Uh, but as far as the financial doctor and to that, they’re going to want to see, they probably will not want to know your stats or your payer profile or, or anything like that.
That, and what’s, what’s really, really important to understand, even if we want to push aside someone to say, well, I’m not telling my practice that doesn’t matter to me. Let me tell you, you know, I’m doing this a long time and I deal with a lot of people and, you know, I call this a matter of top-down organization and what I mean by that is, and you’re all going to agree with me. It’s kind of two-fold thing here. One is if you’re disorganized and you’re not efficient, chances are the people below you are not going to be as efficient as they should and could be or would be because you’re not presenting that. So it’s hard for you to critique someone else when you’re not, you know, walking the walk and talking the talk. So keeping organized and efficient, all the finances, all the aspects of your business, something good for your team to know you do, because then they know you’re going to expect the same thing from them.
The, the, one of the other things that’s really important is, you know, I dunno one of the things that I used to say, I don’t know if they still say it. I’m a little bit of a dinosaur, as you know, it’s easier to stay well and together well, right? I mean, that’s kind of a tagline in our neuro profession, right? This actually is the same premise. You know, it’s easier for your business to stay healthy. Then when something comes along that you want to do, whether it’s selling or buying a piece of equipment or purchasing a building or whatever you might be doing now you’re scrambling to get everything together. And sometimes they’re requesting things three, four, normally it’s three years, but I’ve seen people request things five years back. Now you’re trying to like backpedal on all this. So if you just made it a habit like anything else, you do this all the time.
This is just important to your practice. As the care you render, as, as you know, you’re the new patient that walks in your office, what the process is with them. This is just as important as that. And I can promise you you’ll be a better business person as a result of this type of organization. And it will ultimately make you a better doctor because then all the expectations you have of your staff or even your patients are going to trickle down you. If the trickle down is, you know, lazy and unorganized and not doing what you’re supposed to do, it’s hard to expect that from other people. Well, that’s the few things I wanted to always kind of make you think about, we’re going to just go to the next slide. I’m going to tell you a little bit about if for some reason you were thinking about finding out about what the market value ready of your practice would be, whether you’re selling or not, or just kind of planning for the future, where to the viewers of this ChiroSecure event, we’re offering 20% off evaluations.
I know it says through the month of June, 2021, and people might be watching it after that. But if you go to our website, click on the little blue button that says client intake form at the bottom of that, there’s a code spot. You put that code in this code is only available to people that are watching this event. And we’re happy to kind of take you through what that process would be, what it looks like and how if you need help, that we can help you. Well, that’s my time for today. I’m so always so glad to get an opportunity to spend some time here with you. And I hope that it brings a little bit of value to some of your thoughts about your business and ways that you can do better. And ultimately at the end of the day, if you, if you do better chances, are you going to make more money? And that’s always our biggest goal together. I’m Dr. Randy Ross, premier practice consultants, and I hope everybody has a fantastic day.
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