216 Are you a Chiropractic Innovator or Imitator?
Jun 01, 2025Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.
This week’s topic: Are you a Chiropractic Innovator or Imitator?
The KC CHIROpulse Podcast is designed for Chiropractic professionals ready to elevate their practice to new heights. This week, the show is hosted by Kats Consultants’ coaches Dr Michael Perusich and Dr Troy Fox, both seasoned experts in Chiropractic business management. This podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why being an imitator may be nothing more than herd metality
- Why breaking out and doing things differently can benefit your business
- How being an innovator really doesn’t have to cost you money
- Why it’s a great time to innovate your way to success
- …and so much more…
In each episode of KC CHIROpulse, we delve into crucial aspects of building a successful Chiropractic practice, covering topics such as establishing a strong foundation, adopting a patient-centric approach, mastering marketing techniques, achieving financial fitness, fostering effective team building and leadership, integrating technology and innovation, and navigating common challenges in the field.
Whether you're a seasoned chiropractor or just starting your practice, the KC CHIROpulse Podcast offers a wealth of knowledge and personalized practical advice to help you navigate the intricate world of Chiropractic business. Join us on this journey as we explore proven strategies, share success stories, and connect with industry experts to empower you in your pursuit of building a thriving Chiropractic practice.
Don't miss out on the latest insights and expert guidance. Subscribe now and unlock the secrets to taking your Chiropractic practice to the next level. Your success is our priority at Kats Chiropractic Business Advisors.
DISCLAIMER: The information presented in this broadcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to offer legal, investment, accounting, or medical advice, and represents the opinions of the speakers. Seek the consultation of a professional for advice in those areas. And remember…your results using this information may be different than described.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
Chiropractors, are you an innovator or a follower? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast, brought to you by Kats Consultants and Chiro Health USA. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich, and I'm joined by my ho co-host. What are you, my go. My co-host? Yeah, your co-host Dr. Troy Fox. Hey, Troy. We were talking about the the old herd mentality in the profession, which it's a pretty big, it's a pretty big herd.
Dr. Troy Fox:
It is and it happens a lot. And we see it a lot and we have people come to us wondering sometimes why they're not doing a little better in practice. And this is just one aspect of it, but in a lot of cases, your buddy down the street is doing a. X, Y, and Z and you try to mimic that thinking that's gonna boost your practice rather than becoming, or rather than creating your own niche in practice. And I think that there's so much opportunity to create niche in practice now. That doing. And when I say a niche in practice, lemme tell you what my niche is old school adjusting. Now, I know that may sound silly, but there's so many people that are doing functional medicine or that's just one example, but they decide to really focus on that and they're not seeing that many patients for adjustments. Yep. I'm I'm obviously I'm older, but I. I I use what my strength is, and that's the fact that I've been adjusting for 30 years. And so my strength lies in adjusting technique. And so I feel like that's a strong suit for me. Sure. And that will create patient retention. And, I look at those things as, so sometimes a niche is not the newest, coolest, latest thing. It just may be different and it may be what your forte is in
Dr. Michael Perusich:
practice. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I've always said this, if you're a follower, you're never a winner. And so you've gotta get out from behind the pack and quit trying to do what everybody else is trying to do. Some of you can be successful at certain things and some of you can't. It's just the nature of the beast and because chiropractic is such a high personality based. Business. You gotta let your personality lead your practice a little bit so you know, if you're a great adjuster, excellent. Be confident in your adjusting skills and go out and through your personality, promote that. But you may be a former athlete and so chiropractic, sports medicine may be a better route for you, but. Anytime we fall into that trap of trying to follow the herd, to me at least this is the biggest problem with that. You also start taking on other people's bad habits. And just because your buddy down the street's doing great in practice, it doesn't mean it's right. And I'm not suggesting that just because you're doing well, you're breaking the rules or anything. But there's, almost a spell that can be cast upon you if you try to do what your buddies are doing down the street. And, we've all heard this saying, but seek out good mentorship because there's no need to make the same mistakes other people have made. And if you're just talking to your buddies in the profession are you making the same mistakes that other people have made? That can actually hurt your business.
Dr. Troy Fox:
And unfortunately we see that where somebody says this is what I'm doing. And we're like, where in the world did you get that from? Yeah. And it's oh, I've got another friend down the street that's doing that. And he says that, you know this is how Medicare works, or this is how you know, this is how billing to insurance works or whatever. And it's yeah, not so much. And that's not all we see, but that is a little bit of it. And that's concerning when we see that because some people are hesitant to make change because they live in an area where everybody does that. And if everybody's doing it doesn't always make that herd mentality grade. And sometimes it's hard to break away. I have dealt with a little bit of that over my career where somebody says I went to another. A chiropractor that billed for this and I didn't have to pay for it. And I'm like. Yeah, that doesn't work that way. And so I'm very quick to protect not only myself, but my practice and my staff that work for me. So part of breaking that herd mentality is making sure that what you're doing is something that you can go home at the end of the day and be happy
Dr. Michael Perusich:
with and feel good about. Yeah. Ethically. Yeah.
Dr. Troy Fox:
Absolutely.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
Absolutely. Yeah. And unfortunately we see far too many docs get in trouble. That's the flip side of what we do is we hear a lot of the good stories, but we hear the bad stories too. And there's recently been a couple of doctors who are in the country who are facing jail time because of things they were doing wrong, just because they didn't feel like they were making enough money. And so somebody along the way probably told them, Hey, do this in your practice. And yeah, made'em some money, but. It wasn't compliant. It was illegal.
Dr. Troy Fox:
Yeah. And if you don't, if you don't want end up like P Diddy, because here's the deal, and I say that jokingly, but at the same time, insurance companies now are, and those folks that are in trouble and facing jail time right now, they have utilized the RICO Act against them. Yep. So it's a they're using what they use with organized crime against individual doctors. And so you have to be really careful about what you're doing and make sure that you are following all the rules and not just saying everybody else is doing it, so it must be okay. It's kinda like speeding on the highway. I could be driving over the speed limit, which I mean, maybe occasionally I do. No, my wife would say most of the time, but I also am aware of the risk. Yeah. I know that I could be in a herd of cars or a pack of cars driving down the road, and I could be the one to get pulled over. Maybe the officer getting ready to pull me over sees me. Accelerating faster than someone else, or maybe he just doesn't like the color of my car. Or maybe you're
Dr. Michael Perusich:
the one in the back of the pack and you're the easiest one to get to.
Dr. Troy Fox:
And then, yeah, that's the
Dr. Michael Perusich:
problem with being the follower. You're easy prey.
Dr. Troy Fox:
And so when it comes to practice, it's very easy to get caught up in the comfort of that and just go on. It's no big deal. I get concerned about that for folks and it gets frustrating at times because you see people that just don't listen to you and you worry for'em. But, on the flip side of that, on the good side,'cause we've talked about that bad side enough. Creating your niche in practice is something that sets you apart from the rest of the crowd. Yep. Whether it
Dr. Michael Perusich:
be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna park you right there. Yep.'cause we need to take a break, but there, there's a great segue here. So everybody we're gonna take a quick break here, a word from our sponsors. We're gonna come back and we're talking about being an innovator or a follower and kind of the herd mentality that sometimes we see in the profession. And we're gonna have a debate over whether it's niche or niche. We'll be right back.
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Dr. Michael Perusich:
All right everybody. Welcome back to the KC ChiroPulse podcast. We are talking about being an innovator. Or being a follower in the chiropractic profession. Troy, you opened the door to the importance of building a niche in your practice. I know I didn't go there. Niche or niche?
Dr. Troy Fox:
From what I understand the higher your iq, the more you lean towards using the word niche instead of niche.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
So if I call it niche, my IQs like off the chart.
Dr. Troy Fox:
Oh, off the chart. Way up there. That's like a French version of it.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
Yeah. Putte goo on it. See, I took French in high school. I love it. Yeah I think having a niche is incredibly important because here's the problem with finding yourself in that herd mentality is you're no different than anybody else. Doing, having that same kind of practice. And so I think this is sometimes where our profession gets people confused a little bit. And you brought this up earlier, you had a patient that came in and said the last doctor I went to build for that service, so the last doctor I went to, did a 17 minute massage after the adjustment. How come you don't. This is where our profession gets trapped in this. We're all the same kind of idea because we're afraid to be innovators. And being an innovator is a good thing because it makes you stand out. And part of that is having a niche in your practice, whether it's a. Dry needling or your adjustment skills or your therapies that you do in your practice, whatever it might be, maybe your pediatric practice. Having a niche and marketing that niche is incredibly important and you may have to continue
Dr. Troy Fox:
to be innovative because in a lot of cases, whatever you're doing five years from now, everybody's doing exactly. You may have to create a new niche or you're just the top of the heap and you're the best at, and you ref you first to market with it. Yep. And you're where you need to be. But sometimes you do get in that situation where it's time to reinvent yourself again. And I look at that all the time. I'm constantly evaluating my practice to determine are there services we need to add? We look at it from a standpoint of not, and being innovative sometimes is not just the techniques that you use in your practice. I have had a phrase that I've used forever and my staff knows it inside and out. Because it sight smells and sounds. Yep. When you walk into my practice, I want the practice to look very professional, but also I want it I want it to look, homey. I want it to look like something that you want to walk into and it's comforting and reassuring. The smells, we use essential oils all over our office. Yep. I want it to smell good all the time. I don't want it to smell antiseptic and I don't want there to be no smell. I want there to be some sort of aroma because I have patients all the time to, oh my gosh. What is that you're doing in the diffuser today?'cause we change all to get that
Dr. Michael Perusich:
too. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Troy Fox:
And then the sounds for me. They could be anything. You could play a soft rock station. Something that is agreeable to everyone. You could play jazz music. You could play like a KLO radio, positive enough lifting music. I vacillate between Jazz and klo. And the reason I do is any of you that have used klo, they have a fundraising drive at different parts of the year and it's more talk than it is music.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
So you have to say, or
Dr. Troy Fox:
I get to a point of where their top 40 songs that they play over and over again.'cause they're really a top 40 Christian station gets to be where like. I know the words to every single song. It's time to go back to jazz for a little while.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
It's kinda like the Christmas station at Christmas time. Yeah. Yeah,
Dr. Troy Fox:
sight, smell, sound. So for me, I feel like I am innovative when I do that because I'll walk into other offices and it's not the case. Maybe there's no aroma, maybe there's no music playing. There's no sounds whatsoever. And maybe their staff is super cordial when you walk through the door. But to me it's eerily silent because I like to hear music. And so basically I want it to look like and smell and sound like. What I would want to walk into in an office. Yep. And I get good patient feedback from that, but that's a very small thing, but that's still being innovative and removing yourself from the pack. My waiting room looks more like somebody's living room with a fireplace in a TV up above playing Chiro tv rather than a bunch of waiting room chairs. I actually went to a consignment store and bought somebody else's furniture outta their living room. Sure. Put it in my waiting room and people love it. They go in and lounge in my waiting room, get themselves a cup of coffee or hot cocoa. Yeah. If I'm not ready for'em. Yeah. But some of'em were like, darn, I was gonna get a cup of hot cocoa today and you were ready for me, too quick. So ours,
Dr. Michael Perusich:
ours was like a bookstore. We had this huge bookcase just full of books. Yeah. All kinds of books. Books on health, books on, raising a family, whatever. And we would let patients actually check books out. And they loved it. People would come in with a cup of coffee and sit down and they'd stay there for an hour. Yeah. Just to read on their book
Dr. Troy Fox:
like a library. But that's a niche for you because what other office can you think of that has a large bookshelf with a bunch of books, right? Where you can come in and just check things out? I'd be fascinated by
Dr. Michael Perusich:
that. So are you out there? I'm just gonna pose this question. Are you an imitator or an innovator? Are you looking like the same old chiropractic experience that anybody can get in your town? Or are you being an innovator in a way that is attracting people to a brand new experience? And I want to come back. We need to take another break. I wanna come back and I wanna talk about how being an innovator helps build that great patient experience.
Dr. Troy Fox:
And we're gonna give you a really good quote from Ricky Bobby when we get back. If you don't know who Ricky Bobby is, watch Talladega Knights. We'll be back.
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Dr. Michael Perusich:
All right everybody. Welcome back to the KC Pulse Podcast, brought to you by Cats Consultants and Chiro Health, USA and Ricky Bobby, apparently yeah. So we're talking about this idea of are you an innovator or an imitator? And, being an imitator is just making your practice look like every practice in town. But being an innovator is what creates a different patient experience. I use this example ad nauseum, but Starbucks. Starbucks took a, an old, bland, traditional coffee shop and turned it into something that people, I. Wanna be a part of. They want to go, they wanna see how they gonna spell my name today. Are they gonna remember me when I walk in the door? That kind of thing. It, they created an energy around coffee. And so what kind of energy are you out there, are you creating around chiropractic care? I'll give you another example. I don't know if you out there, you're familiar with this, but look'em up. The Savannah Bananas. They're minor league baseball team. They're basically a off season college team, but they have totally turned a baseball game on its ear and done something totally different. And here's the cool thing about it. They are sold out every game, every season for years in advance. Because of how they've just changed people's idea of baseball. People talk about going to these baseball games. They didn't like baseball, but they go to see the show. So what is your practice? Is it put, are you putting on a show? Are you creating something innovative that creates a patient experience that people absolutely wanna be a part of?
Dr. Troy Fox:
Yeah, that is really what you're looking at and my quote from Ricky Bobby, I'm sure those of you that have seen Talladega Knights thought I was gonna say, I'm on fire. I'm on fire as I roll down. Perception is reality. So Ricky Bobby was right. He was on fire'cause he thought he was, but here's the quote, you're not first, you're last. And quite frankly, if you're just riding in the middle of the pack and you're really not trying to be innovative. To me it's a more dull experience for your patients when they're walking through the door. And, most of you say to us, I don't wanna do sales. Sales is such a dirty word, right? I don't wanna do sales. One way to not do sales is to create an environment in your practice where people want to come back.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
That, you know what the funny part of that is? That is part of sales.
Dr. Troy Fox:
Oh my gosh, we just did sales. Sorry, whisper. That's one way to bring people into your practice. Yeah. An another way to not sell, but to be different from other practices could be in your delivery with patients. When you talk about care, I had a, here's a really great example. This is a guy that had come into my practice in and out several times. Really never followed through with a whole lot, but the message remained the same. So the message was, you probably ought to be seen a little bit more often. It's good to see you, but, and yeah, the conversation, and I ended it with that at the very end. Never said another word because he typically did not schedule. He would call me, which was un. It's unusual in my practice, most people schedule to try to get the slot they want and sure. Why. He's I'll just call. So I walk out of my adjusting room. I happen to have a second to walk back to my office, which doesn't happen. Very happen very often. But I was walking by the front and I heard him scheduling and he even scheduled within the timeframe that I thought he should have. But I never gave him a timeframe. But he'd heard the message from me enough times. He knew that he knew, and that in itself. Separates me from other chiropractors in my area. Yeah. That maybe run more of what I would call a first aid practice or a pain relief practice. My goal with patients, and I tell'em upfront when I'm working with them, that my goal in practice is not only to get you well, to keep you well for the long term. When you're 75 years old, I still want you trucking around doing what you want to do. It's a really simple way to explain why long-term care is important, because you're not gonna fall over today. I know if I don't see you next week, and I told you that'd be a great idea to see you next week, you're probably not gonna die. So it's important, but is it urgent? No. Now, sometimes it's urgent because you're in a great deal of pain, but sometimes it's not. So that's another way to set yourself apart, which is just a tiny little thing that sets yourself apart from other practices in the area. So you have to really evaluate what are other people around me doing? What are we doing in our practice? If you have staff, get them involved. What are we doing that's cool? What are we doing that's not so cool? Yep. Where have we failed our patients? Your staff knows probably more than you do about that at times.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
This is a fun exercise with your staff. You guys out there, you ask us all the time, what are good things to talk about in a staff meeting? Talk about how can we create a better experience, how can we innovate some new ideas into the practice? So we set ourselves apart from everybody else and stop being the imitator. And
Dr. Troy Fox:
let's do the free ones first. Because the free ones are usually the easiest. They're also ones that aren't painful because you're not having to go out and buy stuff. I think a lot of times we try to buy our way out of complacency and practice. Yeah. Because we know we're complacent. We're, our practice is just applauding along and we're like, I want some excitement. I want it to be better. You don't have to spend a
Dr. Michael Perusich:
dime to do this.
Dr. Troy Fox:
No. You could do some crazy cool stuff in your practice. You. Patients involved. We do things that, may seem very simple, but get a lot of patient involvement. We did a coloring contest. We had people coming in off the street to get involved in the coloring contest because there was a prize at the end of it. And we told'em, feel free to tell your friends if they want to come in and do it. Patient or no patient. They can come in. And I had young kids in my waiting room. Coloring pictures to be hung in the front of the office. For us to give prizes away at the end. I love that end.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
I love
Dr. Troy Fox:
that. And that was an innovative thing. Yeah. And I could have kept it just to our patients that said, oh, you have to be a patient to do it. But I said, no, let's let the community be involved. Plus it gave an opportunity for people to walk into my office because my office, the way it's set up, the sun shines in our office really badly. In the afternoon, and so we've got the screens on the front that have our logo and our name and all that, but you can't really see into the office from the outside. You have to walk in and so it allowed people in this smaller town that are used to seeing my logo and they know where my office is at, but they've never been inside the building to walk in and go. And I heard a lot of times, wow, this is really nice in here. And guess what? I didn't spend a whole lot of money doing it. Like I said, assignment store. So that's part of the innovative process is figuring out how you can do things. But sometimes you're in a cash strapped situation because maybe your practice isn't doing as well as you want, and you're like, I don't have a bunch of money to spend on this. Start with the free stuff. Pull your staff, find
Dr. Michael Perusich:
out what should we do. Absolutely. Get out there and be an innovator. Don't be afraid of that. So you tell your patients, I'm sure to stay away from imitation foods that are bad for'em. Quit making yourself imitation. Get out, innovate, create that experience for patients. Do something unique, different, and fun, and your practice will soar because of it. All right. Great
Dr. Troy Fox:
show today. Great topic. Yeah. Yeah, it is And it's something you guys can go do today. Absolutely. And I love that we do this often. So if you haven't listened to us before, this is the kind of stuff that we're giving you is something that you can implement in your practice this week.
Dr. Michael Perusich:
Yeah. Which is fantastic. Absolutely. So if you haven't done so yet, go to katsconsultants.com, check out all the great things we're doing to help doctors really create thriving. Profitable practices. There's some free downloads and things on there. Feel free to check'em out. Make sure you subscribe and share the podcast. I, I'm telling you guys, this is crazy. I was looking at the numbers earlier. And our podcast has grown like wildfire, but it's because of all of you out there listening to us. So we really appreciate it. We do this, Troy and I do this and the rest of the team because we want chiropractors to succeed.