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Hi, everybody. Welcome to today’s show empowering women in chiropractic. I’m your host today, Dr. Nicole Lindsey, founder of DominateChiroMarketing, where I teach chiropractors, how to build profitable relationships. With medical doctors and much more. First of all, let’s thank ChiroSecure for having us bringing us together every week with wonderful hosts, wonderful shows and educating us all sharing information so that we may be.
Healthy and safe and successful in practice. Today’s topic. Let’s go to the slide is how to stay in love with the business side of business. One of my favorite topics for most chiropractors being in love with the clinical side of our business. Is not hard to do. We got into this profession of being a chiropractor of doing what we do by hand, because we love to help people.
We love to adjust people. So this is exciting to us getting to see the. The hugs, the miracles, the stories, seeing people get well, right? This is easy for us. This is why we do what we do. It fills up our cup. Unfortunately, this is not enough. It’s not the only thing that you need to learn to have a successful practice.
Attention, it’s up to you to learn. And we often hear this. We didn’t learn it in school and we want to blame that. We want to blame our school or education on the fact that we didn’t learn all the business skills and how to market and how to, we get one class or two classes, but here’s the thing.
No other profession gives you a bachelor’s degree in business, along with your law degree. Or your MD degree, right? You have to do that on your own. So we’re not alone. Getting the clinical skill is absolutely the most important part, getting that degree and being able to adjust people in a healthy way and get the results.
But you also need to learn the business side of it as well. And this you must do on your own. And it’s something you can do while you’re in school. You can do it as an associate when you come out of school. But bottom line is, it’s a must because without those business skills, you will not have anybody to work on.
You need the business side so that you bring people in, so you retain them. So you employ others to help your business grow. So you can be the clinician that you want to be. So before we jump into how to love the business side of your business and keep that going for years to come. Let’s talk about what it takes to run a business, because I think it’s important to understand every little aspect of your business in order to truly love it and to keep that love alive.
What made me pick this topic for today, which I think is important to mention is I was scrolling through Facebook, through different groups and I was in a group with a large amount of chiropractors in there and somebody posts. Who’s earning seven figures in practice collecting data. I just want to know, and there was maybe one or two mentions in there and that it was like crickets.
And this is a group of close to 10,000 chiropractors. Later that day, somebody posted in that same group, I have decided to. Not practice anymore. I’m leaving the beloved profession. I would love ideas from anybody in this group that chose another career. What did you choose and why? And lo and behold, within two hours, there was 200 comments on that post.
And that upset me, that made me want to talk about. Y, we need to love our business, what we need to do to keep that love alive, because we need 200 chiropractors times, a thousand times a million loving their business, staying in business so that we can further our profession so we can grow our profession so we can help people right.
Learn about chiropractic. So that is why I chose this topic today because I feel that a lot of people fall out of love with the business side. Of what they’re doing. So here it is. Number one, your business needs structure. Okay. And the first part of this structure is having vision, having goals, a target to reach a mission purpose.
Who are you and what do you serve? What are your core values? And sitting down really. Journaling about this, thinking about this, and if you worked as an associate and now you’re on your own, sit down with a journal and write this out and answer those questions for yourself. What’s really cool.
When I was in chiropractic school over 20 years ago, I had the vision of those hands and my logo. And there’s a picture of them right there on the slide. I had that vision that I really wanted to help people to the point of, I wanted to see miracles that I heard about went to seminars while I was in school.
And I heard these chiropractors really helping people change in their lives. And I saw the power that chiropractic has and that’s what I wanted. And that’s what that logo signifies for me. So that was the vision I had was to serve as many people in my community so that I can help them. So I could spread this message and help them in a natural way.
So what is your vision? I’m asking you that I’m asking you to sit down and figure that out. Today number two, what you need to run a successful business is an integrator most of the time when you first start out in business and it’s just you’re the visionary, you’re the integrator, you’re the clinician, you’re everything and everyone, and this is okay.
You have to be right. However, the integrator is the person that takes the vision and all the little things. And puts it into action. Makes sure that all of those action steps get done. This is not an ideal position for the visionary. They do not. Work well for the same person. So you want to do it short-term but then you want to find somebody, whether it’s a staff member, your spouse, somebody that can take your vision and put it into action steps.
I had to learn this the hard way. And I did this myself for many years in practice. And what kept happening is I kept self sabotaging my own business because I’d get to a certain level. And the detail, I’m not interested in all the detail. I know the vision, I know the goal. I know I where I want to go and I’ll figure it out.
I’ll figure out the big steps that need to happen, but all the little things bother me down. And when I have to be tied to them and I have to figure out all the little. Stresses me out and I start procrastinating and then I self-sabotage, and I don’t achieve the goal. So once I figured that out that I need an integrator, that I need somebody to step in and help me, it was a game changer.
So that’s really important. The next thing you need to run a successful business is to know the four different departments of your business. Again, the clinician. That part is absolutely an important part, but there’s the operations department, hiring people, managing training, the scheduling, how you’re going to schedule patients.
Is it online? Is it through your software, the systems that you’re going to use in your office? Every successful business has systems. What are you. You have to figure that out. And then the flow, how do you want to take care of people? How do you want them to flow into your office? So that’s a very important.
And it’s too much for you to do all of it. So ideally successful businesses, put people in place to manage each different department, which can be a chiropractic assistant in your office. The second departments marketing, how will you bring patients? You need to figure this out and it needs to be ongoing and change and be relevant with the times, things I was doing 20 years ago when I first started practicing, I’d get laughed at if I did today.
So that’s an important department. And if marketing is your saying, which it is mine, I love to do that. Running a seven figure practice. I don’t have time to do it. So I have to put somebody in place to run that department. For me. The third department is going to be your financial department.
What’s your plan for selling care? How are you going to do it? you going to take some seminars and learn from experts that are doing really well at this? Are you going to go by scripts? Are you going to create your own ultimately? How are you going to get paid? How are you going to go about collecting payments?
You don’t let people just donate money, or are you going to put people on care plans and be rigid and structured with everything, your choice, but this is important to figure out. And then of course, the fourth department is the product is the adjustment is the results that you get as a chiropractor in your office.
And again, I said in the beginning, Is the easiest part for us as chiropractors is to be the clinician, because this is what we love to do, but as you can see, it is not the only part. So that’s important to have those departments in place as a business owner. You also need to have these qualities at minimum.
Hopefully you have a lot of other strengths, but I have found over the years, that number one, I need to be flexible. I may have an idea of the way I want things done. Like my software, for example, I thought I found the last software that I’d ever have to own, and I used it for years and I loved it. It was okay.
But one of the major health insurance plans in our state decided that we had to have a certain. Part of our software that they needed to connect with. And my software was not willing to build that. So I had to get another software. I had to be flexible and I could him and haul and, drag my feet and be inflexible with this, or I could just make it happen and switch.
And that’s what I did. So being flexible when things come up is important you may have the perfect front desk person and they’ve helped you succeed and get to a certain level in practice. I know how that is. It’s very important. But they may give you a notice and tell you they’re going back to school to further their career and their life.
They may decide to become a chiropractor. How many of you have had that happen? Time and time again? Okay. Lex ability, and this is where number two, you got to persevere through all of this. It is hard practicing. It never gets easier. It gets different that’s for sure. But you have to persevere through all of it, all the ups and downs.
You have to have that quality that you’re going to make it through. And then the third quality is the ability to accept change. And once I did that in practice, once I learned it took me years to get to that point, that change was the only thing that I could count on in practice. I became. I became more satisfied and the burnout factor went down to a minimal.
So letting things just roll off your back and make decisions and roll with it, adapt change, and be flexible and not to mention persevere. So very important qualities to have. As a business owner. And then of course, last but not least one of the things that you need to do in order to run a successful business is never ever take your finger off the pulse of your practice.
Even if you decide you want to take a month off and take a well-deserved vacation, you’ve been in practice for 20 years and you want to do that. I did that last year and. Even though I did that. I looked at the stats every day. I checked in with my staff. I conducted the staff trainings from afar, never ever take your finger off the pulse of your practice, because everything means something when you’re in practice.
And when you start ignoring, not paying attention, you miss things. Things like. Holes in your systems, right? This is why you need to be looking at stats, looking at the numbers, using those as metrics for what’s going on at any given point in your practice. So if you start noticing. Generating as many new patients, but they’re not signing on why is that what’s happening?
And you have to look at that and figure out where you need to train in that specific area. And things are going to constantly evolve and change with different staff members coming on, board, different things that are going in going on in their life. Stats are going to dip in some areas and rise and others.
So it’s important for you. To be aware of this because you provide the heartbeat to your practice. All of these things, looking at stats, the training, how well your patients are satisfied, staff members becoming disenchanted or team dynamic. Do you have cohesiveness all of this? Tells you how well your practice is doing or not doing, and you need to pay attention to that.
So once you find a way to fall in love with these metrics, you’ll find that practice will get easier. So don’t take your finger off the pulse of your practice. So here are some tips that I have found over the years, 20 plus years of practice. That I have found made me more in love with my business than ever before.
I finally got to a point in my practice where I’m earning seven figures. I have a couple of associates. I have a team and I’ve cut my hours back to 20 hours, a max of patient time in the office. But what I find is that I want to be there. And I’m working more hours now than I ever have. Not because I have to, because I want to, so that I want you to understand that you can get to that place in practice where you actually love running your business and you want to work more because you love it.
And that’s okay. So I’m going to share some tips that have helped me and hopefully they’ll help you so that you can fall in love. Your business side more and more number one is to get organized and efficient. And I know you’ve heard this before. But listen, who has time to be sloppy? Ain’t nobody got time for that, right?
Nobody has time to be sloppy. And when you are running a practice at this level, a seven figure practice, you do not have time to be sloppy. I’m telling you that right now, everything has to have its place and you have to be organized and efficient. And the busier you get. The more organized and the more efficient you have to be.
And here’s the thing. If you are not an organized person, if you tend to this, isn’t your strength. I suggest you hire somebody. That is how about that? Put them in charge of that, right? Because. Any successful person. This is one of the most common traits of a successful person is to be organized. So get your stats on Google drive at any given point, you should be able to pull your stats up and know what’s going on.
I was talking to a colleague the other day and I asked them and we were talking about goals and I said, ask them what their PVA and their retention was. And I said, oh, I don’t even look at myself. What do you mean you don’t look at your stats? I don’t pay attention to them.
You should. Every day you should look at your stats and you should be able to pull them up and they should be real time. It shouldn’t take you a month to get last months numbers. You should have that at any given point. So stats on Google to do lists every day. What do you need to get done today?
And your to-do list might be 50 items deep, but pick three or four things be realistic. What do you need to get done today? That’s most important towards your goal delegate, what you can’t get done or what you don’t need to be doing? What, where your strength is not delegate that out and use electronic calendars, get rid of the paper there and go.
Just make it easy on yourself. This is the most important tip and that’s why I’m going over it. First. The next tip to stay in love with your business is to plan your agenda. Don’t let it plan you. It’s important to set goals and map out where you’re going and where you want to go in life. Don’t just let it happen to you because it will right.
You can create what you want for yourself. If you don’t do it, somebody will do it for you. So schedule the time to work on the different departments of your business. For example, once a week, I put in my calendar an hour. For creative thinking for brainstorming. And I try and go for a hike or I go somewhere that fosters that, that stimulates creativity for me.
And I actually schedule it. Like I skipped schedule a dentist appointment. I schedule it in my calendar so that it gets done because it’s important. I scheduled time for Tutin training and I had to close the office to do it last week because we have so many employees we’re open all the time. Now. It was very hard to get us all on the same.
So I had to close one day, but very important because we have to work on this area, this department of the practice seminars. Are you going to them? Schedule them. Are you chatting with mentors and colleagues when they’re reaching out to you and they want to call you and talk to you and spend time brainstorming with you doing.
Don’t ignore that call or that text. What do you want? And go get it and plan it out. Plan your agenda. Don’t let it plan you. So that’s the next tip. The third tip to falling in love with your business and keeping that level live is to become the CEO of your business. And what this means is. Get it, get to a place where you can work on your business and not just in it.
I heard that for many years and I thought I knew what that meant until I finally got there. This is where you can actually. As a CEO, improve the things that need to be improved upon and not be so reactive, you can be proactive and here’s how you do it. Number one, create that a team, you need the right people in the right roles and make sure you just hire what you need.
So if you need. Say you’re getting tired and practice and your body just, isn’t what it used to be and doing 200 visits a week exhausts you physically. I get it. I understand. Been there, done that, and you need a strong adjuster. You need a good clinician. Hire an associate that’s, their strength is adjusting, right?
If marketing is not your thing, you’re not good at. You do not do well at bringing new patients in hire somebody that is, if you’re not organized, get that front desk person. So put the right people in the right place. And let me tell you, this is right up there with organization. This can be a game changer.
If you have the right people in the right role in your business, and don’t just settle. So that’s important. Create your 18. Take calculated risks. This is also a very important part of being a CEO. You’ll never know if you can handle it, if you don’t try it and you don’t always have to have every little thing figured out.
Yes. The important things. But it will fall into place. Do your due diligence, make sure it’s a smart decision, but go for it. Every single time I’ve reached another level in my practice and my life. It was because I took a calculated risk and you will never know. Never know unless you take that risk and all CEOs of successful businesses.
The third part of this is to not fixate on mistakes, learn from them and move on. Haven’t you ever made a $50,000 mistake before? I have [00:22:00] a few times and that’s okay. I don’t let it define me and don’t let it define you right. Figure out what you did wrong. Don’t make that mistake again. I know I didn’t, but.
Learn from that and move on. You will feel the burn from mistakes in life, but hopefully if you do this enough, you’ll learn next time. When you come into that situation or you have that experience, you’ll learn to avoid that. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me, but it helped mold me into the person I am.
An example of this is I went into partners with a real estate partner and this went bad. It went, did not go well, long story short, I lost a ton of money and I gave up on real estate for awhile. Figured out my mistake and learn from that and moved on. And now I successfully as a side gig, run vacation rentals and have two of them and do really well with it and love it as a sidekick.
So don’t fixate on the mistakes you make in practice. Don’t fixate on the mistakes you make in life. Learn from them and move on and successful CEOs. CEOs do this. The next tip that I want to give you is the final tip. And this one here is to create your own success story, not someone else’s. What is success to you?
If you get nothing from this presentation that I’m giving today, but this, you need to figure this out for your. Success. My idea of success is going to be different for you only. You can define this for you. It’s unique to you and what you desire. And not only that it’s going to change for you.
It’s evolving. What you think is success. When you come out of school will not be success. Five years down the road or 10 years down the road. When you come out of school and you start practice success might be. Bringing in new patients you did a marketing event and you got five people to come in as a new patient from that marketing event.
Success. Heck yeah. Then your success story might change. It might be five years down the road that your close rate with care plans is not that good. And you’re trying to earn more income for your business. So success at this point of your life might be, I’m now converting eight out of 10 people where I was doing five out of 10 that’s success and good for you.
Right then as you have children, you get married, your success story is going to change. It might be, I need to hire an associate and I did it, and my practice was still profiting. Success. So it’s going to change. So this is something that you will need to sit with and ask yourself these questions.
And do it often because of this will change your success story and you can create it for yourself, set your goals, your action steps, and then you can set up your practice around it. So that’s a very important tip. And then of course, last but not least regarding. Creating your own success story, not someone else’s is to pick a mentor that suits your desired goals for success.
And here’s a very important tip for the females. Listening since this is empowering women in chiropractic. If you’re a female, you may want to consider a female coach Y not that we can’t learn from male coaches. I’ve learned a ton from my male coaches over the years. I wouldn’t be where I’m am today, if it wasn’t for that.
But I encourage you to think about this, that our physiology is designed to operate. On a longer cycle, 28 day cycle. Whereas a male is designed to do a 24 hour cycle and that hustle and grind of the mail cycle is day to day, every 24 hours a female. We have certain times of the month that we push and we drive and then we recluse and we nurture and we don’t want to be as social.
And that’s how we function. That’s how our physiology works. So it’s important that. When you get to a certain point and you’re multitasking, cause you have babies and a spouse and you’re wearing a bunch of different hats besides just your practice that you keep that in mind. And that has been huge for me to really honor that part of being a female and realizing.
What my male coach has said to me was not always the best thing for me. And that’s okay. So that’s just a tip for the females. So there you have it. I’ve given you some tips that hopefully help you keep the love alive for your business so that you can continue working on that because it comes down to the.
I love this quote by Theodore Roosevelt far and away. The best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. I know that a successful chiropractor. Successful chiropractic business is definitely worth it. And if you find ways to fall in love with the business side of it, I know you will feel that it is work worth doing as well.
Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you tune in next week to our show here on ChiroSecure, empowering women in chiropractic. Have a good day, everybody.
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