Dr. Steve can be contacted at drsteve@chiropracticmastery.com or by visiting: www.chiropracticmastery.com
Complete transcript (Click here to download this transcript):
Dr. Hoffman: Hi, everybody. This is Dr. Steve Hoffman from chiropracticmastery.com. I’m delighted to be here today. I just want to, before we get into anything, thank Dr. Stu Hoffman – yes, he’s my brother – and ChiroSecure for doing what they do, not just to protect docs but for the profession itself. It’s easy for me to recommend my clients to ChiroSecure because, as I tell them, he’s an honest insurance guy. It’s a rare commodity these days. He goes to bat for the people that are with ChiroSecure, and he takes great care of them. So if you’re not already with them, by all means, check into what they have to offer. Let them do a quote for you and see whether they are competitive, not just in price, but no one competes with them when it comes to service.
Okay. That’s it. And truly, Stu, thank you. I want to talk to you about something today that I expect will be extremely valuable for all of you, and it’s this: As a consultant, as a coach in chiropractic, I have people come to me on a regular basis, and the one thing they all seem to have in common is that they’re stuck. Whether they’re new in practice and stuck, established in practice and stuck, they’re stuck. Because they’re stuck, they’re looking to get unstuck, or, if you would, looking to get to the next level. It really depends on what level you’re stuck at that determines how I can best help you.
For example, as a startup in practice, relatively new in practice, where you’re not quite making ends meet, you’ve got to market, and you’ve got to market and market and market and market. There are groups out there that will encourage you to market and market and market. It’s necessary. The problem is, you have to know when to stop knocking your brains out every single weekend marketing because if you continue to behave like a startup, once you’re established in practice, guess what? You get stuck. That’s the problem. So you market to build a base. You market to get known. You market to survive, but once you’re past startup, it doesn’t mean you stop marketing. It means you stop knocking your brains out marketing every single weekend.
From personal experience, my first three years in practice, I attracted over 2,100 new patients in a town of 10,000 people. That’s almost 25 percent of the population. We grew. We grew great. We went from zero to nearly 500 visits a week in three years. It was wonderful. However, I got the message a little bit late. I was way past startup when I stopped behaving like a startup because I realized I was going to run out of people. I was going to run out of folks to attract to my practice. I also realized I had this revolving door going on, that I had to attract an average of 15 to 20 new patients a week to maintain my volume. So I shifted gears. I shifted gears from procurement to organic, sustainable growth. You’re going to want to know how I did that, so I’m going to talk to you about that in just a little bit.
The problem is compound. Number one, if I ever want to get to a waiting list practice, if I ever want to be full, I have to recognize what full is, and I have to also recognize that I’m going to take different approaches as a startup than as an established practice than as a waiting list practice. So problem number one is docs don’t recognize when they’re no longer in a particular phase of practice. As a startup, you have to attract and accept as many people as you can possibly attract and accept. As an established practice, you need to know where you are on the playing field and where you want to be, where you want to grow to, where the end zone is so that you can then determine how many new people you need to attract in order to get where you want to go but at the same time, how to increase the level of awareness of the people within the practice so that they stick around, so there’s not this endless churn of people through the door and then out through the door again.
So step number one, has to stop looking for more. Look for enough. What would be enough for you to be in the end zone so that you could spike the ball, so that you could have a party, so that you could celebrate? At the same time, why does all of our marketing have to be an outside-in approach? It’s not a sustainable way to do things. In today’s day and age with the internet and social media, certainly, you could set systems up to accomplish that, but the real magic in my mind and in my practice was to educate my folks so that they wanted to stay, that they wanted to stay, that they wanted to refer, that they wanted to bring their families in. So before I go even further, I want you to know a couple of things. First, the website is chiropracticmastery.com. Feel free to visit. Two, I promise at least three solutions to this problem as we progress in this Facebook program today. Three solutions is necessary because I’m going to be providing you with what we call a battle plan. A battle plan is where if any one of the three work for you, you win. If you engage in all three and they all work for you, massive inside-out growth. Fair enough?
So if you’re still with me, and I hope you are, here are the recommendations. Number one, you have to get results. If you’re not getting results with folks, you could do all the marketing you want and it’s just not going to help because word spreads. Whether you’re in a little town or a big city, the word spreads about you. People talk about their doc. They want to brag about their doc. The only way they’re going to brag about you is if you’re getting massive results with them.
At the same time as getting results, you need an effective, efficient and elegant means of delivering that service. Otherwise, you have this massive speed bump in the middle of your practice that will slow you down. That’s where MC2 comes in. Most of you know me from Mastering Chiropractic with Certainty, MC2 technic. The thing that attracts most people to MC2 is when they recognize that they’ve got way too much SALT in their practice. When I say SALT, I mean we’ve all been taught, all of us, from a philosophical standpoint, we’ve been taught that the body is a dynamic, constantly evolving, self-healing, self-regulating organism in tune with its environment and able to adapt in a timely and appropriate way. At the same time, what is SALT? SALT is same as last time. I know. Don’t scratch your head. It’s same as last time. If they’re the same as last time, what kind of progress are you really making with them? Adjusting them over and over again creates a dependency. You can build a massive practice on dependency, but how about building a massive practice on enlightenment? So MC2 will help you find people different rather than the same. I encourage you to engage with it.
That brings up number two. Number two is communication. You’ve got to create understanding in your public, in your practice, amongst your practice members in order to have the growth that you want to have. In order to break out of being stuck, you have to create understanding along with results and a fee system that people can truly afford in order to have the kind of growth that I know all of you guys want.
Number three, business development. Business development is the thing that we don’t get in school. Maybe we get it through hard knocks. Maybe we get it through our colleagues. Maybe we get it through a coaching program. I know my clients get it, and I hope you do too. Business development is how do you create fees that are both fair to you and fair to your public? I hear all the time that docs love the patients but hate dealing with the business. The business is your vehicle to deliver the service that you deliver. You can’t hate the business. You’ve got to love the business as much as you love the patients. Here’s the key. Most of you are running your business the way your patients are running their health. So you wind up putting out fires all the time. You wind up in a reactive mode, rather than a proactive mode. No one grows their health by trying to avoid being sick. No one grows a viable business by trying to avoid the next firestorm that happens in the office. So the point to you: Do all three. Engage in MC2. It’ll help you deliver a more effective, efficient and elegant service. It’s more honoring to you and more honoring to the patient and allows you to build a practice based on enlightenment rather than dependency.
Grow your communication skills. Chiropractic Mastery is full of communication strategies and programs and courses that will help you in your quest to be a better communicator. Most people know me as a Socratic fanatic. How do you communicate to people by asking them appropriate questions and not have them perceive that it’s an inquisition? Asking questions out of your interest in them, rather than, it’s test time, folks, and so many people make that mistake. In business development, you have to have, you have to, you have to have a way and means of sustaining the growth of your practice so that it not only serves your public but it serves you too.
Okay? Simple stuff. Most people don’t think of it, but the important thing is all three of these will be a catalyst to help you break out of the box that you may find yourself in. So how can we play together? One way would be get MC2. Get to an MC2 seminar. It’s available on video on the website. Go to the product section of chiropacticmastery.com. Get the video. If you mention that you saw this Facebook program, then I’ll give you a year of resources that we normally sell for $99 a month. That’s $1,200 worth of stuff, which is already a dramatic discount from its item by item cost. It’s a gift. Consider it a gift from me to you. Consider it a gift from ChiroSecure to you. Or if I’ve whet your appetite, maybe coaching with this guy might be okay. I encourage you to do one of two things. Either on the website, you can get a half-hour coaching call with me. No charge, no obligation. Or if you spend $50, I’ll give you an hour of my time. And if we engage in coaching, I’ll give you $500 off the first month of coaching with me.
I don’t think there’s a fairer, let’s see if we’re good for one another approach out there. Of course, if you have questions, please feel to email me drsteve@chiropracticmastery.com. Thanks for watching today. I hope you all have a great day, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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