Evidence-Based Business Practices for Evidence-Based Chiropractors

When I first graduated from chiropractic college (Palmer Florida, 2010), I knew one thing: I wanted to open my own practice. Several professors warned us not to until we had some experience. I had different ideas, though. Despite not knowing enough clinically, and definitely not knowing enough about the business end of things, I was determined to jump into the deep end.

I reasoned that working for someone else could give me the wrong kind of experience. I didn't want to spend time learning someone else's bad habits while getting paid a pittance and missing the opportunity to start building a patient base. I figured if I could make it through the first year I would be fine. Plus, I was the oldest person in my class. I turned 40 just a few months after I graduated and didn't feel like time was on my side.

Mistakes were made. Money was wasted on all kinds of marketing efforts that didn't pay off. I learned a lot, though. Nothing forces you to learn faster than having limited funds and your back against the wall to either make it happen or lose everything. I had a few friends from school who had graduated ahead of me who were willing to answer questions. I read business and marketing books. I made (and continue to make) endless tweaks to my website copy.

I remember one of my favorite professors telling me, "when you start a practice you have more time than money, so you have to spend your time marketing and getting patients to find you. Once you've been in practice a while you'll have more money than time, so then you have to pay people to do the marketing for you."

My method was to use the extra time I had up front to create systems by which marketing happens with every patient visit so that as the money end of things increased, my marketing budget would stay the same. And it's worked.

If you're starting a practice, there are hundreds of things to consider, including things you haven't thought of yet. It can be overwhelming.

The advice you'll get from most seminar/practice management consultants will focus on concepts for patient retention from an outdated, very non-evidence based perspective. What you need are systems you can start with from the beginning that will help you find new patients, motivate those patients to stick with your (conservative) treatment plan, and then to refer their friends and family members.

There are also strategies you need to know that will help you build relationships within your community that will quickly build your credibility so that you become the go-to doc for evidence-based musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment. And those systems need to come from an evidence-based perspective, not from the land of unicorns and leprechauns.

You learned none of this in school.

This course is designed to help you with the things you don't know you don't know yet, as well as the things you do know that you don't know.

Because the reality is that most practice management groups offer the same old rehashed subluxation slayer scare tactics: "For an annual contract of 500 dollars a month we'll rah-rah you into taking unnecessary x-rays of every human walking into your office so you can show them that their spine is melting and that they need to commit, today for a discount, to 30 treatment sessions!"

That is not the way to build credibility. It is not only not evidence-based--it will make you feel sleazy. When you stick to your values and get people well without all the nonsense, you will begin to think of yourself as a doctor, and the way you see yourself will transfer in a big way to the way your patients see you.

You can do this the right way and succeed. I see around 15 new patients each week (sometimes more, and never less), and other than having a website, I do exactly zero advertising. You don't need a cheerleader telling you to save the world. You need practice advice that you can immediately implement that will help you build your business and start generating income.

This is the course I would have loved to have taken when I first started out. Instead, I spent money on a couple of different courses which were marketed in a way that wouldn't chase away a more evidence-based doc, but in reality were the same old philosophy based drivel you can find everywhere. I even spent 500 bucks on a crappily produced DVD series on how to increase my PVA (patient visit average) that was so bad I didn't even finish watching all of it.

I want you to succeed. The profession needs more solid docs out there helping people with the stuff with which we can help them. If you're reading this because the phrase "evidence-based" was used in the material that got you here: welcome.

There are more of us than you may think, and we need to turn this thing around. Unfortunately, almost all of the marketing information and blogs out there for chiropractors are coming from an old school philosophical angle, or worse, trying to appeal to everyone on the continuum. I'm not here to do that. I'm here to help the good guys rise to the top. If you're here looking for tips on using a "Subluxation Station" to get patients to commit to care, you've come to the wrong place.

In this course, I will actively encourage you to act like every other medical professional out there, including and especially when it comes to the way you market yourself to the public. Doing well in chiropractic has as much to do with your mindset as it does with office procedures. It's all important.

What you get with this course:

• Direct email access to me--I want to understand your situation and be able to advise you given that situation. This isn't just an online course that you take in isolation, this is a consulting package.
• We'll also talk on the phone when you first buy in so I can get a feel for your situation before the emails get going. I want to know you personally so I can help you get going.
• You'll learn how to write and test copy on your website that gets people to your call to action (that is, the part where you tell them to call you today while they're in pain). Writing your own material and making it actually useful is the single best way to improve your SEO situation. Testing that copy to know your audience is reading it will take you to the top of the rankings much faster than any other strategy.
• You'll also learn how to set up an email list. You want to establish yourself as an authority, and regularly emailing your list will help you do that much faster. Building an email list also gives you the ability to create passive income streams, which is something else I'll show you exactly how to do. It's worth noting here that most millionaires have at least six streams of income.
• You'll also learn what to write about in those emails. You will even have direct access to a couple of year's worth of my archives to see for yourself how I do this. You are free to cut and paste these emails all you want.
• One of the inherent issues with chiropractic is that you, the doctor, have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Creating income streams that make money while you sleep, or that can happen in your absence will enable you to have something you're not thinking about now, but definitely will be shortly: freedom. The physical nature of our work demands that we take regular breaks from that work. It's difficult to do that when you're the only one generating revenue for your practice. I want to help you avoid that.
• How to set up your hours so that you don't find yourself cooped up in your practice all day hoping patients find you. You have to have time (and a strategy) for shaking the bushes to find your first patients. Nothing is more depressing than being trapped in your clinic all day and only seeing a few patients. You're not going to do that.
• Where to go to meet these potential patients. Hint: Chamber of Commerce meetings are not that place.
• How to answer the phone.
• How to hire staff and what to pay them.
• How to dress.
• All the handouts you need for your first patient visits, including a handout that uses the rules of their insurance policy to explain why they need to stay compliant with your treatment plan. These are all yours to cut and paste. They are evidence-based and relevant. You just have to replace my logo and practice info with yours. Easy-peasy.
• How to decide which insurance companies are worth dealing with.
• Where to spend your advertising dollars (if you need to spend any money at all outside of website hosting), and, more importantly, how to track and measure the effectiveness of your advertising. Hint: you should never advertise without knowing this.
• How to set your fees for maximum profit.
• How to do a "report of findings" (which is a term I hate and never use in practice) that isn't super lame and gets people to commit to care right there and then.
• How to name your practice. What to avoid when naming your practice.
• Basically, everything you need to get a patient to find you, walk in your door, and then everything you need to know and do once they've crossed the threshold.

And more!

Do yourself a favor and enroll. You can easily recoup the price by getting profitable faster. You'll spend far less money on the stuff that's not helpful that I can warn you about, and you'll save money by doing certain things yourself that others will charge recurring monthly prices for that will eat up your bottom line. Just building your own website will recoup the price of this course, and having the ability to change the content of your site without asking someone to help is priceless. And that's just the beginning.

You can be successful in chiropractic. That mountain of student loan debt can be whittled down. You can have a career in chiropractic that makes you a great living and enables you to help people every day. Not a day goes by in my practice where someone doesn't tell me I helped solve a problem that other doctors missed, and nobody else could solve. It's a great feeling. I want to help you get there quickly, and I want you to be successful. The profession needs more good docs out there doing this right if it's going to survive.

You get lifetime access to this material, including all the items that get added to the current course in the future. And the price will never be lower than it is right now. Get started right and get there faster. Enroll today.