Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of empowering women in chiropractic. I’m your host, Dr. Cathy Wendland, and I am so excited to talk to you this week about your 2020 vision because it’s the year 2020 and your vision needs to be clear, your vision needs to be huge, your vision needs to be massive, and your action steps need to be in line so that you can accomplish all that you set your mind to. So today let’s really dig in to how to create a massive 2020 vision. It’s going to catapult you into a better life, a better experience, a better practice, and a bigger impact in your community. So there are three steps that we’re going to tackle today. Number one is creating clarity, number two is developing strategies and number three is staying focused so that you can actually accomplish your goals on time. So let’s start with creating clarity.
Now, oftentimes I talk with women and I talk with teens and I talk with professionals who want, but they’re not really sure how to get there. And you know why? Because they’re not really sure on what it is they want. They want more, they want bigger, they want better, they want more success, but they haven’t fully defined that means for them. So when you are talking about creating a vision of what it is that you want to develop in your practice, in your personal life for the year 2020 you have to sit and get absolutely crystal clear on what it is you want and what it is you no longer want in your life. The things you no longer will tolerate, the things you’ll no longer put up with, the things that are no longer good enough.
Because this is the year to say, “Good enough, is it. I’m ready for great. I’m going from good to great. I’m going from great to phenomenal. I’m going from phenomenal to outstanding, outrageous, extraordinary, awesome,” whatever word fits for you and jazzes you up and gives you that energy to really want to push forward and really create the life, the practice, the relationships, the friendships and the experiences that you not only desire but deserve.
So how can we really sit and get that clarity? It takes time of sitting and writing things down, thinking things through, listening to inspiring speakers or motivational speakers or step by step instructions on how to do different things and determining, and deciding, is this what I really want in my life? Is what I’m doing right now feeling good? Is what I’m doing right now fulfilling me? Look, I change things in my personal office, I change things in the exterior of my practice, I change things in my personal life all the time because I want to make sure that I’m heading in the direction that fully serves the life that I’ve been given, the gifts that I’ve been blessed with and the talents that I want to share with others. And I invite you to do the same.
Look around, see who is in your life that’s no longer serving you. See who you want to attract into your life, that’s the people. Now what about the places? Start thinking about the places you’ve been and the places you want to be. Is your practice location serving you? Are the walls around you jazzing you up and exciting you? Do you feel like this is the place where hope happens? Or do you walk into your office and you’re like, “I have to go to work?” If that’s the feeling you get, change something, change the vibe, change the music, play some upbeat music or play some… I don’t know, maybe you like to play spiritual music or maybe you like to play Disney music, like one of my friends up in Massachusetts. Do what feels right for you so that your office can feel like a place you are excited to go to, so that your community can feel like this is a place like no other.
If that means bringing in food or it means bringing in snacks once in awhile or bringing in healthy water or whatever it means for you, then start getting some clarity about how do I fix the places that I’m at, right? The people, the places, the circumstances. How do you start developing circumstances that you want to attract into your life? What is it you want to do? Do you want to be traveling? Do you want to be skiing? Do you want to be at the beach? Do you want to spend time doing mission work or do you want to spend time giving back to the profession or to your community or to a charity of your choice? Then start figuring out, what are the things that you really want to contribute your time to?
Because I promise you this, there’s a finite amount of time on your lifetime clock and we don’t know what that amount is, but the sand is running through the hourglass and you need to make sure that you’re using every grain of sand and bringing it out to the best of your ability to use it to enjoy the life that you’ve been given. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow. We hope for tomorrow, we plan for tomorrow, but you got to live for today. So getting that clarity about what is it that I really, really want to attract into my life. You know that saying, “If tomorrow was your last day on earth, what would you do today?” If you knew when your number was up, what would you change? What would you do now? Create some clarity around what is it that you absolutely, positively, truly want to attract into your life. Who is it that you want to surround yourself with and what are the circumstances and the experience that you want to make sure you get to have this year?
Start writing those down and then start mapping them out. When am I going to do this? When are you going to go to Fiji? When are you going to go skiing? When are you going to the beach this year? When are you going to spend time with your family? What are you going to do on Sunday evenings to prepare yourself for the week? How are you going to make yourself better, stronger, healthier, faster, smarter, more impactful, more valuable to your community, to your practice, to your family, to your relationships and to our profession? Start thinking about that and then once you have that clarity, it’s time to start developing strategies and strategies aren’t just like, well, by this time next week I want to have gone to the gym three times. That’s not a strategy. Map out what day, what time, what workouts you’re going to do.
Put them in place. Have them down on your phone with an alert and a reminder, and another reminder to say, “Hey, don’t forget your sneakers. Don’t forget your gloves. Don’t forget your bathing suit, whatever it is you need, because tomorrow at three o’clock you’re going to the gym, or tomorrow at 7:00 AM you’re hitting the gym before the office.” Or, you’re meeting with key decision makers at lunchtime tomorrow, so make sure you have the right clothes, the right attitude, your calendar is set, you know when you can do things, you know what you have to offer. Develop those strategies. That doesn’t just mean think about it, it means plan about it. Put it down on paper and put it into action. Put things on your schedule that you know you need to, want to, would love to do, and then because they’re on your schedule, guess what? You’re more likely to get them done.
I’ve talked to people who say, “Well, my goal this year is to read a hundred books.” Okay, fantastic. How many did you read last year? None. Okay, that’s fine. If your goal is to read a hundred books in this year, there’s 52 weeks, so that’s roughly two books a week. We’re already into the second week of the year. How many books have you read? Zero. Well now you’re four books behind, because now you’ve got to catch up because you didn’t read last week, you didn’t read this week. How are you going to accomplish your goal? If your goal is to do 5 million steps a year, like my goal was last year, you got to do 13,750 steps a day. I blew past that in November, so this year I set a goal for 6 million steps in the year and that’s 16,500 steps a day. Blowing past that already, you know why? Because I set the goal, I’ve developed the strategies, I mapped it out as to what I need to do.
And I’m going to encourage you to do the same because goals without action steps are just dreams, right? And action steps without goals, that’s a nightmare waiting to happen because then you’re just running haphazardly around thinking that, “Well, someday I’ll be successful and someday I’ll accomplish things, but I don’t really have a goal, so I’ll just keep working and moving forward.” I’ve been there, I’ve been in those kinds of relationships, business relationships and personal relationships with people who are just like, “I just want more,” but they haven’t defined more. So create your clarity, develop the strategies, develop crystal clear strategies to go with that crystal clear idea of what it is that you want and really map it out.
Do you want to see more patients? Then what are you doing, or what are you willing to do, or what are you going to do in order to attract more people in and educate them so that you can retain them? So you don’t want to just do 50,000 screenings, or ten different dinner with the docs, or five different lunch and learns a month and attract people if all they do is come in, use up your time, your resources, and go back out the door because you haven’t actually retained them. Attracting more patients should be attraction, education, retention, every time. Attraction, education, retention. Get them in, educate them about what it is that we do and how it benefits them in terms that they understand and matter to them and then retain them as patients by over-delivering, making sure that they’re getting what they came for and you’re constantly, continually educating them so that they understand the continual benefits of staying under care. That’s a strategy.
Saying that I want to do 10 screenings, that’s not a strategy. Lining up the 10 screenings and then having the steps in place for when we do the screening, we get the person’s schedule, we do the exam, we do the report of findings. This is the education that we’re going to do. Whether you’re going to use drip systems, where you can email out stuff, or text out stuff, or you’re going to do workshops in your office, write it down, map it out. Get your team on board so that everybody knows this is what we’re working toward this year. And maybe you don’t want to increase your volume, but maybe you want to improve your collections, then you need to sit down with your team and say, “Where are we right now?” That’s your clarity, “Where do we want to be and how do we get there?” Map out those steps so that everyone on your team is onboard and has the tools and the direction to get the job done.
And then as life moves on and we get out of January, and we get out of this idea of having a 2020 vision and setting goals and working toward them and life happens, you know what I’m talking about, school, and kids, and family, and vacations, and practice, and insurance, and continuing ed, and seminars. You know what I’m talking about. When life happens, how do you stay focused? You need to have things built into your schedule now. Now, while you’re on fire. You know when you have a new patient? They are the most excited about care, right? They are the most excited as they’ll ever be about getting better because they have this final sense of a feeling of hope in your office that they’ve probably never had in anyone else’s office with any other doctor, with any other therapists, with any other treatment. They’ve probably never had that sense of hope that they feel with you.
So that day one and that day two, that’s when they’re so excited. And you know when we do a re exam, what do we do? We bring them back to day one to remind them, this is where you started and look where you are right now. Look at the positive changes that you’ve made. Look at the change in your nerve scan. Look at the improvement in your X-ray. Look at the function that you’ve been able to restore, or the ability that you’ve regained, or the fitness level that you’ve been able to re adapt to now that your body is functioning at a better level, right? We bring them back to day one with a re exam and you should be doing the same thing either quarterly or monthly with your goals and your strategies. Bringing yourself back to day one of what is it that you wanted to accomplish and why.
Why did you set these goals? Attach a why to them. Why are you changing the people in your life? Why are you choosing better opportunities? Why are you choosing a better circumstance? Why are you making these improvements in your space, in your office? Or, why are you deciding that you need to go on vacation once a month, or once a quarter? Map all that out and then put it into your schedule as a reminder so that six weeks from now when we slump back and do that slow fade back into the old routine, put a reminder there of why you started these changes, what your goals are, the steps that you need to follow, check yourself before you wreck yourself, right? I love that saying, “Check yourself before you wreck yourself,” keep yourself on track. And the best way to do it is to number one, create clarity around the things that you absolutely want and no longer will tolerate in your life.
Get that kind of clarity and let me tell you something, nobody’s going to come walking through when you say, “This is no longer an option in my life, but this all is,” and now your vision is so clear that now you can focus on what it is you want and start going for it by developing those clear cut strategies that are going to keep you moving forward toward what you want and keep what you no longer will tolerate in the background until the point where you finally turn a corner and it’s no longer in your rear view mirror, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t touch it. It’s a world away, it doesn’t even feel like the practice that you used to have, or the relationships that you used to have, or the circumstances that you used to have, could ever be part of your new life.
Because that’s clarity, that’s strategy and that’s staying focused on what you want, why you want it, and how you’re going to get there. So put a couple of things into your schedule now that will keep you focused five weeks from now, two months from now, three months from now. Put a marker at maybe April 1st, or April 15th. Or maybe July 1st, or maybe the first of every month. Or one of the tricks that I love with my clients is on your birth date. So my birth date is the 21st of the month, so on the 21st check in with yourself. Every 21st, check in.
How’re you doing? Are you on track? Did you slip? Did you get derailed? Did you fall back into old habits that are no longer serving you? Or, are you moving so far forward at such an enormous, phenomenal, fantastic, dynamic, powerful pace that we need to readjust those goals and move them in a little bit closer because it’s not going to take you 12 months to hit them? Or do we need to make the goals bigger? Or do we need to make them better? Or have we already accomplished something that we thought would take us six months and you hit that goal in three months and now it’s time to dream bigger? Visualize bigger, visualize a greater impact, prepare yourself for more, better, but not just random more, not just random better, lay it out.
I want to thank you so much for joining me today and I want to remind you that there’s three steps when creating this massive 2020 vision. Number one, you have to sit with yourself and take the time to create absolute clarity around what it is you want, what it is you’ll no longer tolerate, and what it is your big, crazy, audacious, hairy, scary dreams that you want to accomplish for your life, get some serious clarity around that. And then step two, develop the strategies that will step, by step, by step take you there in the timeframe you desire, right?
We said, if you want to map out a certain amount of steps for this year on your Fitbit or whatever tracker that you have, then sit down, figure out how many steps do I need to do every day, put it as a strategy, set the timer, set the goal on your watch so that you are making sure that you’re hitting that goal early in the day. Don’t wait till midnight, hit that goal early in the day and do that with every goal that you have. Map it out so that it becomes simple step by step, follow the instructions, get it done kind of system.
And then number three, stay focused. Have people that hold you accountable, reach out to someone, get a mentor, get a coach, get someone who can help you stay focused. Put it in your calendar, write it down on the wall, get your team involved, whatever it’s going to take to keep you focused on your goals so that when life happens, you don’t get derail and go down a different path. You can say, “Yeah, that’s something different we want to incorporate,” but it’ll still keep you focused on your 2020 vision. Why you want to do it, what you want to do, and clear steps on how to do it.
Thank you so much for joining me. I’m hoping that you have the most amazing, phenomenal, incredible, impactful year of your life yet, but not the greatest year ever because next year is going to be even better. But right now, with your 2020 vision, I hope for you health, happiness, prosperity, abundance, love, joy, true joy, freedom, friendships, financial abundance, and all the world has to offer because it’s all out there just waiting for you to go out there and claim your stake. Thank you so much. Join us back next week when we have one of my good friends and the brilliant, talented Dr. Monika Berger as she hosts Look to The Children. I’ll see you next time soon, right here on ChiroSecure’s Empowering Women in Chiropractic.
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 enjoyed 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.
Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/Chirosecure) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/chirosecure/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiropracticmalpracticeins/) Periscope (https://www.pscp.tv/ChiroSecure). If you have any questions about today’s show or want to know why ChiroSecure is still the fastest growing malpractice carrier for over 27 years, then call us at (866) 802-4476. or find out just how much you can save with ChiroSecure by visiting: https://www.chirosecure.com/quick-quotes/malpractice-quick-quote/.