6 Essentials of a Legendary Practice- Convenient Hours and Raising Your Fees

Hello everyone. This is Dr. Bob Hoffman from The Masters Circle, and today we’re gonna continue to discuss the Discovery Form and the contradictions that hold practices like yours from succeeding. These contradictions in practice, in our thinking are never intentional. But nonetheless, they’re sabotaging your ability to grow, your practice, your impact, and your income.

If you missed our other podcast when we discussed a few points of friction and contradictions that all practices have and suffer from, and where we cover the six essential strategies, that link is in the description. And if you want to complete the simple but really important Discovery Form to discover your contradictions and your point of friction that are holding you back, that link is in the that section as well.

Let me point out that if the rate of change outside your practice is greater than the rate of change inside your practice, at best, your practice will underperform. And at worst, it won’t last very long. So let’s go to a form we receive from a doctor whose practice has been flat. In fact, his practice has been flat for a very long time and clearly shows serious.

But common contradictions today, I’m gonna point out just two of these. Believe me, there are many more, and there are probably many more in your practice as well. I pointed out these contradictions to him and helped him resolve these challenges and his practice started to grow again.

So let’s go look at that and review that together, and then we’ll come back and discuss this in a little bit more detail and a little bit more focus.

As you could see here, this form, the Discovery Form is the 6 Essential Strategies. And the Masters Circle Global is where Legends Are Made and Legendary Practices Are Built. We ask doctors in each of these 6 Essential categories to answer just a few yes or no questions. It’s really that simple. So just quickly, the categories are Friction, both for the doctor and for the office.

There’s Pricing. Your fee should be based on the value you create, the time you spend, and your clinical outcomes.

3 is Clinic Operations and Implementation. Every successful, profitable, and growing business should have a chief operating officer to carry out the CEO’s vision standards, and mission.

Number 4 is becoming a Passion Brand. If you’re not familiar with that term, A, you should be, but B, Passion Brands attract invigorate people who are passionate about you and your services. Passion brands consistently deliver an emotional benefit.

Number 5 of the 6 Essentials is Persuasion. That’s the ability to effectively communicate and influence how other people think and behave.

In today’s world, your ability to be persuasive and influential has never been more important.

And finally, number 6, is Getting Inside the Head of the Decision Maker. Identifying the real influencer so that you can con, effectively communicate with them. We all know, we’ve all had the experience that you’ve done a report of findings, as an example with a patient and felt like you really knocked it out of the park.

You hit it right in the bullseye, and then you hear, let me go home and speak to my husband or my wife about this. They’re the ones who make the final decision. Because you weren’t speaking to the decision maker.

I didn’t tell you before, but Friction is anything that slows down, disrupts or prevents the organic and natural growth of a business.

Friction also causes your patients to question or resist your care.

So here’s one point of contradiction. One of the questions from the patient’s perspective is, are your clinic hours convenient for patients with a busy schedule? And this doctor said, Yes, my clinic hours are great. They’re very convenient.

And then the very next question is, can patients make change or cancel appointments online without having to call you or your office? And he writes, No. I hope you could see that’s a contradiction. In today’s world, yes, we take phone calls, but the majority of your patients should be able to book change, modify, add appointments online.

This is a contradiction. Now, of course, every doctor thinks that their appointment hours are convenient, and yet some of them are only open three days a week. Some don’t start until 10 or 11 o’clock. Some don’t work at all through lunch, many close by four or five o’clock. They’re convenient for the doctor, not necessarily convenient for patients.

Here’s another example of another contradiction. Do you tend to give your services away or reduce your fee to attract more new patients? This doctor said, No. That’s a good answer. We like seeing that answer, but then the very next question is, have you raised your fees? In the last six months and he said No.

I gotta tell you, if you are paying attention, everybody’s been raising their fees, nothing stays the same, and no one even notifies you about that. Now there’s a science on how to properly raise your fees, so you get no resistance and no pushback, but you need to learn how to do that.

So once again, this form is just about learning what the 6 Essential Strategies are, how they show up in your practice and how to utilize them to grow your practice, your income, and your impact.

In my view, the biggest problem facing our profession is simply the failure to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Patients want things different. Our fees need to be different. How we communicate needs to be different. How we find hire and trained staff needs to be different.

So I mentioned about this doctor who completed this Discovery Form, and I’d like you to complete the Discovery Form, but I also want to tell you that I literally just got off a phone with a coaching client who,

as a doctor before he became a member, was averaging single new patient digits each month, less than 10 because he had failed to adapt to the change in world, the changing marketplace, and what new patients are looking for today. He also didn’t understand how to brand himself as an expert or an authority in his community.

As you can imagine, it’s very difficult to grow your practice with a monthly attraction of just two or three or four new patients month after month, year after year. So once we resolved these issues and inspired him to make just a few simple, painless, but yet significant changes, his new patient attraction greatly improved, and as a result, as you can imagine, so did his visits per week, and so did his income.

And, this is just an example on how to find certain contradictions by filling out this Discovery Form and then having solutions on how to correct those contradictions, and when you do you gain traction, growth, progress, productivity, and profitability.

I hope this conversation helped you, most important, I hope you’ll fill out that Discovery Form so that we can help you. You have yourself a great day, everybody.

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