Let's Chat

104: Chiropractic Success Starts Today

chiropractic business managment Jan 01, 2023
Kats Consultants
104: Chiropractic Success Starts Today
13:51
 

Hi everybody. Today I want to talk to you about your New Year's resolution and how it affects today. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich, your host for the KC CHIROpulse Podcast. 

I want to welcome everybody. Wow. Can you believe 2022 is gone? 2023 is just getting underway. 

And so today I made a few notes. I'm sitting here in the studio, in my office today just thinking about 2023 and where the chiropractic profession is today.

And, and I have a couple of questions for you and I just made some notes here. I don't normally have notes or a script or anything like that in front of me for these, but today I want to talk to you very specifically about when does today start? Does it start tomorrow? Does it start next week? Next year?

You know, we often make New Year's resolutions and that's great. You know, New Year's resolutions are kind of fun to do sometimes, and sometimes we follow them and sometimes by the end of the first month they're dead and gone, but, What's your New Year's resolution going to be this year? Is it that you're willing to make the commitment to get started now?

Does today start right now, or did you already make the commitment to getting today started maybe a month ago, a year ago, or when you first got into practice?  You know, it seems like many business people procrastinate on the whole idea of success, and there's several excuses and we hear these all the time.

I don't have time or I don't like change, or I need to evaluate, or I need to think about it. I never win, so therefore, what's the point of doing anything different? And I tried that before and it just didn't work. 

And I'll be honest, blah, blah, blah. I hear these all the time. There's so many. 

Here's the thing…At the end of life, when you slide into home base, would you prefer being able to look back at your life and say, wow, I can't believe I did that.  Or do you want to hear yourself self say, gosh, I wish I'd have done that better. 

You know what? If your ship hasn't arrived, it's okay, because sometimes you just have to swim out to it.

Chiropractic success doesn't have to be elusive. It just doesn't have to be, but it is something that you have to plan wisely and work hard for. Chiropractic success never comes by accident, and it never comes without a little bit of elbow grease. Bob Nardelli, who's the very famous, very successful CEO of Home Depot said, and I quote, “I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.”

And it's so true. But if coaching is so valuable, why do so many Chiropractic doctors think maybe they don't need it? 

I've got a whole bunch of theories on that whole idea, but I think Tom Landry kind of summed it up in a very famous quote of his. And I quote, and by the way, Tom Landry was a very successful coach of the Dallas Cowboys - Go Cowboys…

Here's his quote. “A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see. So you can be who you've always known you could be.”

It's a great quote.  And yet so many doctors, and I think this is a lot of why they shy away from coaching….sometimes they don't want to hear that maybe what they've been doing isn't the right thing or the right path to success for them in Chiropractic.

They don't want to hear what they may have been doing is wrong. And there's a lot of things that you can do in healthcare these days that could be wrong, and actually get you in trouble or prevent you from being successful. So why not find about those so you know how to combat them? 

Or they don't want to look in the mirror and admit the path they put themselves on just isn't working and they don't want to put in the work to make it change.

And so that's when the whining and the excuses start coming out. Whining and those excuses all suggest that you can't be successful in chiropractic. 

Well, to that I say hogwash. 

Yeah, that's the Texan coming out in me. I say absolute hogwash. And in 2023, I implore you to put aside those crazy excuses and move yourself forward to Chiropractic success.

You know, there's this ever widening gap in the Chiropractic profession these days. There are docs out there who are just absolutely killing it. Super successful Chiropractors building these huge Chiropractic practices and living the life of their dreams. And then there are those who are barely getting by or even considering closing their doors.

So what's the difference between the two? We're all chiropractors, right? 

Well, it's simple. One is willing to hear about new ideas, except that change needs to take place and they're willing to look in the.  and they have the passion to do whatever it takes to be successful. The other is comfortable with excuses.

They lack the fortitude to work for success, and they become resistant to change. So I'm going to ask you, which one are you recently? A doctor told me, and I'm going to quote, had I been told in chiropractic school that I would have to market, sell myself and go find patients, I would've never gotten into. 

What did you think was going to happen?

You know, we have to wake up and realize we're business people, we're entrepreneurs. We get the joy of going to work every single day and using our hands to help people get healthy and asking for a fee for that service to pay us in return. And that fee is what helps us build successful Chiropractic practices. 

So what do you think was going to happen - you just opened the doors and people would flood into your practice?  Did you think just being a great chiropractor would bring patients in the door? 

You have to be a business person and do all that it takes to be successful in the Chiropractic business. 

So I'm going to ask you a question here. Why did you get into this?  Well, I'm going to tell you, you got into this for two reasons, and I don't want anybody to try to tell me that it's any different than these two.

Number one, you got into this because you wanted to help people live healthier lives. Absolutely you did. You either had a great chiropractic experience yourself or somebody in your family did, or you just investigated chiropractic and realized… Hey, this is a great healthcare modality and paradigm, and I want to be a part of it because it's helping people without drugs and surgery.

Fantastic. 

But that's not the only reason why you got into this. You also got into this because you wanted to be self-employed and enjoy the lifestyle that that can bring. You were inspired to do something. There has to be a quid pro quo, which really means nothing more than you do something in return for something else.

So for example, you help people get their lives back, and in return for that, you get a fee for that service, right? That's the quid pro quo. 

That's the two sides of why you got into this. One is the patient side of practice. That's helping people restore their lives. But the other side is the business side. That's the fee-for-service side, and it's very difficult to do both successfully.

You know, there's almost this universal truth out there, if you will. The business advice you get from a successful coach is absolutely an invaluable investment in success. You see it. You see the ones who have the big successful practices, and they're the ones that are super successful because they've got coaching.  

And then you look at the other side and the other.

The other Chiropractors are just trying to do it alone. They're trying to find their own path, and in doing so, they really kind of drive themselves into the ground. So there's some misguided beguile out there, if you will, when it comes to Chiropractic coaching. That suggests that Chiropractors for some reason don't need business coaching.

Coaching. It's as if chiropractors somehow possess this innate ability to master business and practice simultaneously. While running a good business. In other words, we think we can do both sides of the practice and do it alone, but for this to be true, more dcs would have to be showing signs of, I'm going to call it Warren-Buffet-like success.

And we don't see that in this profession. We see this ever widening gap between pretty successful Chiropractors and not very successful Chiropractors. And there's no reason to not be successful in this profession. So let's step out of chiropractic for just a minute. And let's take a look at another industry that has also shied away from coaching over the years and how that attitude is changing.

Okay. So, I've got this here in front of me. According to research performed by Harvard School of Education, that's not chiropractic, okay? According to research performed by Harvard School of Education, and I'm going to paraphrase this. “It is essential for teachers to work collaboratively, but for more than 150 years, teachers have engaged in solo practice.”

Sound familiar? 

“It's important to acknowledge that changing the norm of autonomy to help the norm of fully collaborative work is a major obstacle on the path toward helping teachers work effectively become successful, which can be an essential component to the improvement of teachers and ultimately to student learning.”

Let me bring that full circle back to chiropractic. The chiropractic profession is no different than what they're talking about. For 127 years, we've lived in an autonomous world where we practiced alone. We created our own path, we developed our own rules, and we never had to look in the mirror.

Collaboration, on the other hand, helps us build better businesses, hire better staff, have a bigger stature in our community, and overcome inefficiencies. All the while we see the future make pivotal changes to capitalize on opportunities as they arise. That's living in the collaborative world. That's what Chiropractic Coaching is all about.

Creating a collaborative partnership with someone who has experience, knowledge, and the ability to help you have that 35,000 foot view of your Chiropractic practice and your long-term success.  You see, the side effects of collaboration are numerous. You have more focus, more profit. You're able to help more patients because you're more efficient, you have more time off, you have less stress, you have more success, and the list goes on and on.

We get pages of the side effects of having great coaching in your Chiropractic practice. So the next time you look at your P&L and think….Good grief. Why haven't I yet reached the level of success I dreamed of when I graduated from chiropractic school? When you say that, ask yourself one question. If I haven't reached the level of success, who is my collaborative partner?

Do you have one?

I'm going to sign off with this thought. 

Bill McCartney said “coaching is taking a player where he can't take himself. There's no alone path to success.”

So make 2023 the year you decide, no more excuses.  Just none. This is the year to make the changes and find the direction to unfold your path to Chiropractic success. Do it now.

Start today. From all of us here at Kats Consultants, I want to thank you all for listening to our podcasts, for being our members, for just making the chiropractic profession as invaluable to patients as it is today. That requires all of us and it requires the fortitude of all of us to make it a success.

So from all of us here at Kats Consultants, I want to thank you for listening to the KC CHIROpulse podcast all year long. The podcast is brought to you by Kats Consultants, so be sure to check us at www.katsconsultants.com

And our podcast is also sponsored by Barlow Brain and Bar Barlow Brain and Body Institute.  You can check them out at barlowbrainandbody.com. They're doing some amazing things, and if you ever thought about bringing functional neurology and other brain-based therapies into your practice, I implore you to go check them out. 

All right, everybody. Happy 2023! Happy New Year to you all.