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– [Woman] 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, Doctor Randi Ross, as she talks about tech tools and transitions. And now, here’s Doctor Randi.
– Well, hey everybody, welcome to today’s show. I am Doctor Randi Ross and I’m gonna be your host, wanna make sure and give a big shout out to our friends at ChiroSecure who sponsor these events, make sure to go visit their website the, Facebook page, watch these shows and check them out. They’re a really great crew, very supportive of the profession and a great team, they’ll help you any way they can.
So, today we’re gonna talk about, kind of, there’s this, you know, big pink elephant in the room and everyone’s going through this whole coronavirus pandemic and, listen, it’s affecting different people in different ways. Some of you listening might be drastically affected by it and some of you might be minimally affected by it, but I wanna try and kind of, you know, give you some tools that can be helpful as far as your business to get through this and maybe even, hopefully, when we get on the other side of this, you’ll actually even have some things in place to make you a little bit better off, so we’re just gonna go through some tools that I’m using with my clients that we manage their marketing. And also, just to show you everyone affected by this in the middle of all this, myself and my business partner Doctor Matthew Davis. We formed a partnership with a long term chiropractic practice business broker, Doctor Tom Morgan, and now this happened. So, we’re going back and we’re doing things with our clients that I’m gonna share with you that we hope will help you a little bit, along the way.
So, one of the biggest things that we’re having everybody do, and some of you are good at this, and some of you not so much, so this will be a good tip for those, is that now is a really great time to take advantage of some of the lows. Now, some of you are only off by, you know, maybe 10 or 20%, and other clients we have are actually off by, you know, 60, 70, 80% so whatever your free or downtime, however you wanna phrase it now is, let’s take advantage of that. And one of the things that we start with with everyone, whether you’re a marketing client that we manage, or you’re someone that we are brokering the sale their practice is, let’s get all your stats up to date. You know, kind of get your financial house in order. And so often, that’s something that kind of gets pushed to the backburner, or maybe lags a little bit in where you should be with anything, just simply because you don’t have the time and you always go, you know, “I’ll do it when, I’ll do it when, I’ll do it when,” now is a really great time. Get all your numbers up to date and I don’t mean just the numbers to give to your accountant to file your taxes. Even though we’ve kind of got that pushed, hopefully you’ve gotten that in line and for those of you that go on extension and don’t do your taxes till like October 10th or something like that when it’s due on the 12th and get that phone call from your accountant, now’s a great time to get all those financial things in order, and especially your stats.
You know, you all have different stats that use depending upon how you manage the basics that we always ask for is over a month and then the year, new patient, patient visits and, you know, services billed and services collected. Those are like the very basic ones to kinda get a good feel for what’s going on in the practice and then you can compare those numbers to previous years and, you know, see how you’re doing. Now, we understand these last month or so, give or take, and we’re not sure how long it will last for some of you, is gonna be a little bit of a snapshot that we’re gonna almost remove from the equation. So, go back, make sure all your 2019 numbers are done and up to date, and you’re taking a good look. Don’t bury your head in the sand, if there’s something that’s off. It’s a great time to address it, you know, give too much in your accounts receivables, you know, get with your staff member whoever handles that, now is that good time. Let’s go over what’s outstanding and what the status of things are.
All right, so here’s where we take this kind of time that we’re all just, you know, waiting for the patients to start flowing in again and make some positive, use of it. Another tool that we’re using is this is an amazing time to do training with your staff. Now, I understand some of you might be totally shut down, some of you might have minimized your hours and all that. If you can’t, or for whatever reasons won’t do it in your office, there is just as we’re here, you know, in a Zoom meeting or on Skype or Google has a meeting now, Microsoft has Team if you use that. You know, take an hour a week, pick a topic, whether it’s something that’s, you know, lagging in the office and maybe that’s collections or something to do with financially or maybe it’s, “Hey our new patient numbers are down,” or, “Our patient visit average is down.”
You know, pick a topic and now’s a great time to kinda get everyone on board, come up with a plan and get people trained on that and get everyone on the same page. Remember, when we get on the other side of this, we wanna be ready to hit the ground running. So, if you get a few of these items, you know, protocols, whatever words you wanna use for it in place and everyone in the team is educated, informed, understands, if you use scripts, you know, the scripts that go along with some of these things. I think that this is a great tool because some of us are good at team meetings and kinda educational things about our office and what’s going on and where we are where we need to be or where we just want to be. So, this is a good time to do that. And the other thing is now is a terrific time to build your marketing campaign.
So, I guess the first question you have to ask yourself is, “Do you even have a marketing plan?” I’m gonna say that close to 50% of people that I meet with, maybe I’m actually being generous in that, do not even really have anything. They know they they participate in a particular event that’s hosted in their town every year or, you know, maybe there’s a golf outing with their chamber or something like that, you don’t really have a clear marketing plan. The easiest way to start with that is do a six month and a 12 month. Now, understanding, right now, you might not want to include in that six month ’cause there’s not a lot you can do but I’m actually gonna give you some tips on that if you stay around on what you can do now.
So, create a calendar and look at the things you can do. What are the things you can do in your office? what are the things that you can do outside of your office? And, again, some of this depends on your community. What type of things go on in your community, what’s still on the calendar? A lot of things are canceled. Maybe you’ll get more into this virtual forum to educate your patient and things like that instead of if the outside community events have been canceled for the remainder of the year, which many of them have been. There’s the, you know, it’s the Serenity Prayer, you can’t control what, you can’t control, you can only control what you can control. So, you know, make that plan. Take a look at your community. If there’s nothing for you to really get involved in and it’s gonna be a little difficult to do any kinda outside marketing in groups, you may want to look at this more virtual platform. And you can even, a lot of times, if you would be approaching a business to bring, you know, a lunch and learn or something along those lines where you bring an educational platform to a company or a corporation, you can provide that same system, virtually we do it all the time, the international clients that do workshops and things for groups and organizations here in the States. So, it’s very doable today and everyone is pretty much prepared for it now.
So, start making some type of plan to get marketing so that this lag time in your practice, you can expand upon what you had before it started. Now, we’re gonna talk about one of the ways you can do that. Make videos, make videos, make videos. Did everybody hear that? I need to say it again, make videos! If you’re not making videos, I can almost guarantee you, you’re losing money, some way, somehow, some form. Okay. Very easy today to make videos, you have a phone, you can use a phone, you know, you have a computer, you can connect a type of external camera to it and make videos or you can use what’s built in there, some technology things if someone’s not sure how to do that, I’m happy to answer your questions. You can email me and I’ll talk you through that. So, you can make videos that are specific to the services you offer in your practice, you can make videos about pretty much any health topic that would come up, we like them somewhere a little beyond three minutes, probably less than five that kind of, you know, people’s attention span. The easiest way that I always coach people when you’re gonna make a video for your office, is I say, “Give me an example of, pick three things “about a topic and make that the video.” so, if you’re talking about vitamin D, pick three things that you’re gonna share and explain to people what are the benefits of vitamin D, or you might pick three things that are kind of an effect of not having enough Vitamin D or if your vitamin D levels are low. Keep it simple, you can still educate people without using, you know, $10 words. That’s fine, and you could literally make a slew of videos, think about all the downtime you have right now. If it takes you five minutes to make a video, if you made, you know, a couple of videos a day over the next few weeks, you’d have a whole bunch of them in the can that you can spit out throughout the course of a year. And when you create the right content within that on your YouTube channel, you can share it anywhere and it is an incredible way for people to connect with you, ’cause now they’re not just seeing a static image on a website, they’re actually seeing you, like you’re engaging with me right now, we’re building a rapport, we’re developing a virtual relationship. That’s the same thing that happens when you make videos about you, about your office, about different services, and so on and so forth, make sure everything’s positive don’t ever be negative. One of the other things that we’ve been talking about with some of our clients is, how about a little makeover? So, if you’re one of those that has a lot of downtime right now.
How ’bout something to spruce your office? Now, if you just redecorated your office, you can ignore this tip. But if not, a lot of people, you know, we forget. Maybe a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Now, that’s a DIY you can do it yourself, you can go pick up a can of paint that you can have it delivered today, you know, for 25 bucks or whatever, and just put a bright fresh coat of paint. Even if you just did it in the waiting area. It’s something that people will notice and be like, “Oh, that’s nice, that’s fresh, it’s something new,” maybe move some of the pictures around or add some kind of happy pictures, people are gonna need kind of an uplifting after this, even just mentally and emotionally. Buy a few new plants. That’s always nice to give something a bit of a fresh room.
I always tell people, one of the things that I think I’ve said it here before, on a class that I hosted, is sometimes sit in your waiting room and look around. Is it a little like dark-ish, or is it bright and does it make me feel happy? So, we’re gonna need to give people a lot of happy when they start flooding our doors again. So, that’s something that you can do, really inexpensive. And if you want to support your community, maybe during this time hire a local painter, that can come in on your off hours and give your office, a fresh coat of paint, okay. Stay connected virtually. Listen, you’re gonna have some people that whether you agree or disagree, it doesn’t really matter, they have certain reasons why they’re not gonna come into your office during this time, maybe some of the, especially, if they’ve been patients for a long time, stay connected with them virtually, you know, do some type of, you know, virtual call with them or FaceTime with them from your phone and you know, let them know you’re thinking about them and your hope they’re doing okay and sometimes even just reach out and see if people need anything.
I had my financial advisor, was about 30 minutes from where I live here in Florida, call me up, this was actually kinda funny, and they were calling everyone to see if they had enough toilet paper. So, it was just, it was a bit of a funny thing but I guess if someone needed that, they happened to have a client who was supplying it but it was just nice to be thought of in that respect. And, one of the last things that I wanna mention, and I think this is so important, so please, you know, just bear with me on this. Don’t be tone deaf. And what I mean by that is you have to realize that your experience with what’s happening with the corona virus is your own experience and how you’re gonna feel about it and react to things is unique to you. Just like all the other people out there, everyone has their own unique experience of what’s happening to them during this time. So, again, some people, especially if you’re in certain parts of the country, are very minimally effected.
For those people that are, you know, in the areas where there’s a high concentration. There’s a lot more palpable feel to what’s going on. And when people read things, you know, on your Facebook page, not all of you, I’m just saying some of you, kind of minimizing all of this, or just making it seem like it’s not that big a deal that, you know, more people die from the influenza virus, that really makes people uncomfortable. And that’s what I say, what I mean, don’t be tone deaf. You know, again your experience is yours.
Listen, my family’s experience changed two weeks ago when we have an aunt and an uncle, a married couple, in Queens and both of them died from the virus within a couple of days of each other. So, my family’s perspective on this whole experience is very different than it was before that happened. They weren’t old, they weren’t sick, they, you know, they weren’t young, I mean, they were like in their early 70s but, you know, they didn’t have the risk factor so to speak. So, you know, I’m just asking that you be sensitive to what other people are experiencing because you don’t wanna kinda scare someone off thinking that you are, I use the word, tone deaf, to what someone else might be feeling or someone else might be experiencing.
Well I’m gonna kinda tie it up there for today. I do want to offer something just for kinda being here and sharing here, as I said, we now have, or joined forces, with Doctor Tom Morgan for a chiropractic practice brokerage firm if anyone during this time, it’s really kinda kick them over the edge, maybe you were thinking about moving on or something, if, you know, we’re here, we will do a practice short valuation for you. No charges, mention ChiroSecure, and we’ll see if it makes sense for you at this time to move on. You can reach me anywhere on Facebook.
Well, I wanna thank you for being here, please everyone, stay safe, and we will get on the other side of this. I’m really confident that chiropractor’s will come back from this even stronger than before, people are gonna be looking for care, they’re gonna be looking for the comfort and the services that you offer. Well, make sure to tune in next week when Doctor Cathy Colby will be here, and she is gonna bring you some amazing tips as she always does. Thank you everyone, be well.
– [Woman] 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.
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