Chiropractic Practice: Why Planning to Succeed Always Fails

Welcome to this Week’s Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Bob Hoffman for The Masters Circle Global, where legends are made in legendary practices are built through chiropractic coaching. And today I want to discuss why planning to succeed always fails. In my forty-five years as a chiropractor, I have observed that most chiropractors have a plan, and by far the number one plan I see and hear from my colleagues is this, I need more new patients, more new patients, more new patients. Now I am and have always been a new patient advocate, attracting and creating new patients. But this insatiable need and singular focus on more new patients has not produced a growing, expanding, and profitable business model. For the vast majority of our profession, new patients is just one part of the success formula. What is left out is the second part of the plan is how to keep your new patients coming back and being fully compliant with your recommendations.

As all successful business models in our society are based on the concept of repeat business and because ongoing care to neutralize ongoing stress, all forms of stress, physical, chemical, emotional, and electromagnetic is just good doctoring. So here’s the rub. Without a specific and targeted strategy, no plan will work. And this is why so many of our colleagues are not flourishing and not thriving. What makes a plan work is a strategy. A strategy is what you have to do to make your plan a reality, and you must select the right strategy and consistently implement and work that strategy to produce the predictable, positive results you want and you deserve. Since the majority of doctors don’t have a strategy or have the wrong strategy or don’t follow through with their strategy, and everyone knows that the so-called gurus keep trying to sell you more new patients and more new patients after that.

And because you don’t have your own strategy and because your practice hasn’t met your expectations, you by theirs hoping against hope that their plan will work for you first. As you’ve become painfully aware of the guru strategy of more new patients, hasn’t worked for you, it hasn’t worked for most. And for the few of you who might’ve been successful in attracting more new patients, there is still another big hurdle to overcome. Neither the guru or you don’t have a proven strategy to keep the new patients coming back. And unless you develop or learn one, the patients never will. So allow me to share with you the only strategies that consistently work to have your patients choose to keep coming. Number one, you have to be laser focused on making the invisible visible for every patient as often as possible, because the only thing that is visible when they start care is some pain or problem. And when you reduce their pain or problem making it invisible, but fail to document and show them the subclinical abnormalities that the patient is unaware of and can’t see, feel, taste, or touch on their own. 

Number two, you have to have patients choose to continue with on ongoing care. You must consistently follow the six essentials. Recognize that a new patient starts care because they feel they have to, and your job is to get them to want to continue care because they want to. You do this by eliminating practice friction, by creating tremendous value for your care, by streamlining what’s best in class in your clinic operation and systems, by becoming a passion brand for your patients, by mastering the art of persuasion and by learning how to get inside the head of the decision maker.

Number three, the third thing you do to create long-term patients who want to continue with your care once their pain is gone, is stop doing what everyone else is doing because what everyone else is doing isn’t working and isn’t so great. And finally, number four, they all follow a formula of functional chiropractic care, plus functional lifestyle intervention plus functional modalities or technologies for true healing. For most functional chiropractic is some form or variation of brain-based chiropractic, which we’ve been advocating and teaching for almost 15 years. Functional lifestyle intervention is helping your patients with stress management, dietary and nutritional recommendations, how to achieve more restorative sleep, customized exercises and brain balancing interventions. And finally, functional modalities or technology is accomplished with amazing technologies like specific lasers, frequency specific microcurrent, PEMF, NanoVi Rezzimax, heart rate variability, and the list goes on and on. 

They all spend an enormous amount of their time, energy, and resources finding training and holding accountable their team to consistently perform with excellence and to be service focused. They’re all focused on making continuous progress. They have all trained themselves to become master communicators to consistently influence how others think and then behave. They get that persuasion is the most important skill and they work on it all the time. They’re committed to constant never-ending improvement, and they get that the status quo is their greatest competition and their biggest enemy.

They all charge a fee ad or usually well above the most common fees in the profession and realize that their fees are related to their self-confidence, their self-respect and their self-worth, and they don’t negotiate giveaway services and recommend only what the patient needs and continuously customizes their recommendations for each and every patient for each visit to help each patient get the best, the fastest, and the longest lasting clinical outcomes. Remember to have what only 5% of what the best in class in our profession has. You must be willing to do what the other 95% in our profession has been unwilling to do. Quite frankly, the six essentials should always be part of your daily and weekly training. If you’re really serious about making an impact and moving in the direction of becoming best in class yourself. If you’re not familiar with these strategies, then start scanning the QR code on your screen and learn much more about the six essentials.

Once you do that, it’ll show you how to make the invisible visible and what you can do that no one else is doing. The six essentials are a critical piece of the future of your practice, especially if you aspire to grow and expand your impact and your income. That is why we’re inviting you to scan that qr code right now and learn so much more about this essential information to help you refine, modify, and improve what you believe and what you take action on inside your practice. On the screen again right now is that QR code, and if you take it out, it’ll take you right to the six essentials. Take out your camera and aim at that code, and this information will help you see your blind spots or show you how to rapidly improve your practice or what you should focus on to generate rapid and predictable growth. 

The fundamentals have changed. The focus has changed, the business model has changed, and the ability to influence how your staff and how your patients think and behave have changed. You need to know what these changes and refinements are and how to implement them properly and effectively. So take action my friend. Make sure you check on, click on and take the picture of that qr code and follow through. It will change your practice forever.

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