Category Archives: Motivation

Using the Power of Simplicity to Develop Your Practice

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“The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising– it all comes down to this: let’s make it simple, really simple.”     Steve Jobs  (Walter Isaacson) 1.

If you could simplify your business even more than it is, you would make more money and have less stress.

There is a direct relationship between simplicity and productivity, and an inverse relationship between complexity and productivity.

The most successful businesses have capitalized on this fact. This was one of Apple computer’s unique selling propositions – to focus on the simple and eliminate what wasn’t essential.

From its inception, the Apple Macintosh computer was designed with simplicity in mind.  Other companies have focused on simplicity: McDonalds order via drive-through, Ikea with its simple design, and Amazon with one-click ordering.

Simplicity Pays

Siegal-Gale is an international marketing firm that has studied simplicity in business and has been able to profile and rank businesses according to their simplicity. They call this the Global Brand Simplicity Index and have found that those companies that rank the highest, also outperform companies that rank as more complex. Their report states (2):

  • 214% – How much a portfolio of the world’s simplest brands has beaten the average global stock index since 2009
  • 69% – The percentage of consumers who are more likely to recommend a brand because it provides simpler experiences and communications
  • 63% – The percentage of consumers willing to pay more for simpler experiences

What Does This Mean for Your Practice?

You want to simplify the experience your chiropractic (or other) patient has in your office. From the first phone call, first appointment, examination, report of findings, patient finances, and scheduling, discover ways to simplify your procedures.

Your intake forms may be redundant or complicated, there may be too many rote statements or “scripts” for your staff to say to patients, or there can be extra pathways that your patients have to travel, like so many rabbit trails, where they can get confused and the flow slows down.  Staff, or doctors, may have too many decisions to make at each visit.

For example – what extra therapy should the patient receive? Not knowing, I have heard support staff simply ask the patient what therapy they wanted today, as if they were ordering a latte.  And as we know, there are definitely too many codes and documentation rules to follow for the doctor. Going total cash is one solution, but intelligent software, dictation, and scribes are other solutions.

Many, if not a majority of the more profitable offices that I have worked with over the years practiced what could be called “straight” chiropractic.  The straight practice (no additional modalities) works well, when it does, because its procedures and flow are simple. It is usually more profitable because extra overhead hides in the complicated.

Focus: Eliminate All but The Essential

Steve Jobs again: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”— Steve Jobs, WWDC 199(3)

I am not advocating no supplements, no exercise physiology, no electrical therapy. But to be honest, how much of this gets used in your office? I know offices — right now, and have known hundreds more, that have equipment lying around unused or bottles of vitamins collecting dust on overlooked shelves.

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You have to embrace first only those unique outcomes that you can deliver. Work backwards and add only the most critical steps. “Begin with the end in mind”, as Stephen Covey observed in high producers.

For the Chiropractor – Adjust

For a chiropractor, this means adjust. (For other professions: what is your core function?) One of the first doctors I worked with when I moved to Wisconsin in 1988 worked closely with Clarence Gonstead. His license plate read: I ADJUST. He had a full practice, chuckled a lot, and seemed to make a nice living.

Start with this first, and then add additional services carefully – if you want.

Educate – In and Out Of The Office

Secondly, educate. Educate your patients, your team, and your community.  But your education has to be simple.  Your message has to be concise. One doctor we have worked with over the years has a waiting list practice, with nonstop patient, and even some MD, referrals.   He doesn’t do a 4-day report of findings and he doesn’t do a 2-day report of findings on new or reactivated patients.

He just very intently adjusts and talks about the adjustment and what he is adjusting.  From there, he then also gets into other health topics such as toxins (vaccinations), nutrition and weight, and exercise.

This is a good model: start with your core service and move out from there. For chiropractic education, you can use simple metaphors like “pinched nerve,” “garden hose,” “rusty gate hinge”, and how the body fighting toxins creates heat (inflammation), etc.

And keep educating your patients with care classes, lending library, table talk, movie nights, special speakers, case histories, and testimonials.

And do this first and continually with your support team.  This is not done enough!

One method to discover what to simplify is to regularly practice your procedures. For example, do a rehearsal of what happens when a new patient comes into your office on their first day, 2nd day, 3rd day, etc. You will flush out confusions, redundancies, and extra motions that complicate the patient experience.

Outside of your office, the same applies. Educate your community on what you do.  What is your simple selling proposition that people want?

For example, someone asks you “what do you do?”: “Well…

we help to improve your health, we relieve your pain,

and we increase your game – naturally!

No drugs, no surgery, and we guarantee you have fun in the bargain.”

How’s that? A simple and a desirable unique selling proposition (USP). (You can use this in all your marketing communications – no charge!)

Make it Fun – and Have Fun

Lastly, there is fun. You can and should have fun doing this. And so should your patients and support crew.

Patients will mostly remember how they feel after leaving your office.  Was it a pleasant, enjoyable experience? Was it fun?

Practice life can often bring about a kind of serious hue over the office. Administrative errors, missed appointments, a dissatisfied patient, a staff member out for the day, too many bills – all of this can create an extra layer of anxiety or seriousness in the office.

Fight this by being grateful for all the wonderful outcomes of your patients.  Work on having a “the gratitude attitude.”

And as you simplify your processes, you will find that everyone’s attention becomes freer to enjoy helping each other — to help the patients.

Simple is more fun and profitable.

So here is a question for you: Which comes first, the fun or the smile?

Well, you can kick things off right now… right now with a smile.  Actually, smiling is simpler and requires less muscles than frowning.

Frowning is complex, so start right now by smiling.

Try it.

See? Already your business and life is simpler and better – and funner.

-Ed

MAGNET003

(To help you keep things simple, you can order two magnets of the above image for your office, courtesy of PM&A while quantities last. Click here to order.  We will mail them to you at no charge.)

For a printable copy of this article click [The Power of Simplicity]

Extreme Chiropractic Practice DevelopMENT! California Jam®, 2016

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Go Cal Jam

I am standing on a beach by the partially ice-covered Lake Michigan, sometimes referred to as part of  the “Third Coast.”   It is a good day!

Once a year I send out a promotion for the wildest and most unique chiropractic seminar I have seen in 30 years.

“Out-of-the-box” is a cliché that doesn’t really do Cal Jam justice.  Like extreme sports, Cal Jam pushes the boundaries of what is customary and conventional.

But isn’t that chiropractic?  Isn’t that you?

Chiropractic is unique (and wild) because it has purpose and soul.

Purpose and Soul, plus plenty of… Rock and Roll.

At Cal Jam!

Hope to see you there!

Date: March 18-20, 2016

Link to site: California Jam: www.CaliforniaJam.com

Tent Poster – The Parable of Responsibility

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Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody were members of a group

There was an important job to do and Everybody was asked to do it.

Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody would have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job.

Everybody thought Anybody would do it, but Nobody realized that Anybody wouldn’t do it.

It ended up that Everybody, blamed Somebody, when Nobody did, what Anybody could have done.

(abridged version of a poem by Charles Osgood)

Shaw

Printable version of the tent poster The Parable of Responsibility

Tent Poster – Mr. Rodgers Responsibility

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“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility, it’s easy to say  “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problems”.

Then there are those who see the need and respond, I consider those people my heroes.”

~Fred Rodgers

Shaw

Printable version of the Tent Poster  Mr Rodgers Responsibility

How to Create a Wondrous Practice Life

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FORTY ONE YEARS AGO, around this time of year (August 7), a twenty four year old managed to sneak up to the twin tours of the World Trade Center, shoot a cable to the other side, get it rigged up tight, and walk across it to the other side. Actually, he made 8 passes, performed dances and entertained an audience a 1/4 of a mile below. He finally came in when it started to rain.

He was arrested, but the the charges were later dismissed if he performed for children in Central Park, which he did.

I recently had the opportunity to listen to Philippe Petit (on August 7, 2015), now 65 years old. He gave a stirring presentation in San Francisco to chiropractic health professionals at the Wave, a seminar put on by Life West Chiropractic College.

Philippe was born in 1949 and still very active. He considers himself, among all things, an artist. But he also juggles, climbs rocks, fights bulls, fences, builds structures with 18th century tools and considers himself an accomplished equestrian.

He explained that he learned early in life to follow his passion and his intuition. But his creativity seemed to be overlooked or given little importance when he was young and so he felt that it must be illegal.

In his book Creativity, Philippe writes: “The creator must be an outlaw. Not a criminal outlaw, but rather a poet who cultivates intellectual rebellion.”

In his talk to us on August 7th, he offered some tips, or precepts that he thought might help us as they have helped him in his life.

He began by talking about his passion to pursue his goals. But right next to that, he emphasized the importance of tenacity. This was a word that included determination, discipline, preparation, and training to do what was needed to be done to achieve those goals about which you are passionate.

He exhibited this nearly a half a century ago as he pursued his goal to walk from one 1,300 foot tall building to another on just a wire. He started planning the walk when he was only 17 living in Paris. The Towers were not yet built. Certainly, the walk itself took immense focus at the time. But it lasted only less than an hour. The real work was in the planning and preparation and training. This took tenacity.

He stressed to listen to your intuition. When you have a question or a problem, listen to your gut and an answer, sooner or later, will visit you. But you do have to listen.

He emphasized simplicity in all that you do, but still be elegant. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes. This is how we learn and move forward. All this, of course, takes courage.

You have to believe in yourself. (Or as Dr. Jimmy Parker used to say, you have to have “FCB – Faith, Confidence and Belief.”) In your role of doctor, provider, and as a professional team member, you have to have faith in yourself and in the services you provide.

In our 3 Goals System of Practice Development, the Third Goal includes your greater purposes. These go beyond financial demands (Goal 1), which are necessary, or profession and business competence (Goal 2), which should be sought. But above it all are your Greater Purposes, your highest values — professionally and personally, that we really seek and that make life worth living.

We learn at an early age to quell our passions and creativity and to fall in line with convention. Obey and comply. And, to some extent, this is necessary for a society and a business to function. But in the bargain, we often lose our spirit. Our creative aspirations, our sense of fellowship with each other, and the outrage at the wrongs that we see — these gradually lose their importance. Our greater purposes become blunted — or even forgotten.

Certainly, this has happened to many people in your community as they “report in,” zombie like to the local drug store for “health care”, especially if it is promoting “free flu shots.” (Average drug prescriptions per person in 1993 was 7.1 In 2014 it was 12.2 And watch out for anyone over 50 where the average prescriptions used are 19, and over for those over 65 – 27. That’s right – 27 prescription medications per person. Average!2)

It is important to keep your greater purposes in sight and to respect them enough to keep them alive. They can and should be integrated into your professional life as you do not work in a factory assembly line as your parents or grandparents may have, or as those who produce your cool t-shirts and running shoes do now. For example, if you like children, have pictures of kids on your walls and have a special “Kids Day.” If you like running, put up pictures of runners and get your patients to join more running clubs. If you want to help the homeless kids in your town, promote a donation program for the local shelter.

Back at the seminar: I noticed that some of the presentations were held in ballrooms that had special, but temporary names. For example, there was the “The Reggie Gold” ballroom, the “Frank Sovinsky” ballroom, and the “Lloyd Latch” ballroom.

In the mid 1980’s, I worked for several years directly for and with Dr. Lloyd Latch. Though he didn’t promote it much, I am sure that he did have the largest chiropractic clinic in the world. While his personal production was high, the total office saw over 2,000 visits per week. The key was that he had created a wonderful team of doctors adjusting patients in 28 adjusting rooms and supported by a dedicate team of professionals.

And what was a key to his success? Over and over I heard Dr. Latch tell his doctors, and others who would visit, that success was “an inside job.”

I think this is exactly what Mr. Petit was getting at.

Success doesn’t come from the latest marketing procedure… it comes from deep inside. It comes from your heart, your passion, your imagination, and the tenacity to work and train daily.

Mr. Pettit says that there are –
“qualities inside all of us, that we are rarely encouraged to recognize
but that are essential to make our dreams come true, to plan, to construct a wondrous life.”3

IMG_1390 copy

Successful people learn from others, but ultimately take their own counsel.

As Philippe wrote:
“Observation was my conduit for knowledge, intuition my source of power.”3

So, follow your greater purposes and integrate them into your professional and work life. Allow your team members to also pursue their greater purposes – and you will see your practice become more creative, productive and wondrous.

Carpe Diem (seize the day),
Ed
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  1. Generation Rx How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies by Greg Critser (https://danmurphydc.com/Critser.pdf) , also http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/retail-rx-drugs-per-capita.
  2. www.imshealth.com/deployedfiles/imshealth/Global/Content/Corporate/IMS%20Health%20Institute/Reports/US_Use_of_Meds_2013/Percent_population_prescriptions_per_capita.pdf
  3. Creativity, the Perfect Crime. Philippe Petit

“Ichi-go Ichi-e:” The Springtime Secret to Improving Your Chiropractic Practice

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The best chiropractic businesses excel at the basics.  Too often we can take the fundamentals of practice excellence for granted and go off to chase the “shiny” things, forsaking the powerful potentials right in front of us.

So here is an organic reminder that you, and all of us, can immediately put to use to help us keep growing and groovin’.

Most of us enjoy spring…flowers blooming, birds singing. It is new. It is creative. It is a beginning.

Life goes in cycles – everything has a beginning, a progression, and an ending. Some cycles are longer – every twelve months the tulips come through the winter mud. Some are shorter – each day the sun comes up and we have a new cup of coffee. But nature endures through cycles.

Unfortunately, we don’t always follow nature in our offices.

If you are like most of us, you don’t really start your day.  It sort of happens and you just go along.  You walk into the office a see what the appointment book offers you. Based upon the urgencies of the morning, you make your way through to the afternoon until you can leave to go home in the evening.  But do you really end your day or does it linger with you as you go home, or even stay with you till the next morning?

Most of us are stuck in the blur of stretched out cycles that are blended one moment to the next so that there is never any real beginning or never any real ending. One phone call in the middle of a busy afternoon is very similar to the one you had in the morning…everyday for the last three years.  This adjustment to this patient is just too similar to the one you gave…3,000 times before. One moment blurs to the next.

Jim Parker, of Parker Seminars, used to talk about “PTC”, Present Time Consciousness, as a key element to practice success.  A practice can suffer because, over time, our consciousness gets stuck in past moments, strung out so that we have less consciousness in the here and now. When you greet your patient, you are not as “here” or as conscious in the present as you might have been the first month you were in practice, or the first week you were on the job.  And your patients know it, at least on a subliminal level. They can have a sense that you are disinterested in them and so end up leaving and looking for a doctor who is.

Each encounter with each patient should be new. It should be its own cycle. Each phone call, each adjustment should be unique, separate, as if it has never happened before.

The Japanese have a name for this: “Ichi-go Ichi-e.” Roughly, It means “one time, one meeting” — that this one time will never happen again. It is its own time. It is special.

What would happen to your practice if each day – today – was brand new?  Like spring. If this week was the first week you were finally able to see patients after years of preparation?

First of all, you wouldn’t be bored. You wouldn’t be burned out, worried, or angry. Why? Because you are just starting and you have a chance to create the practice anyway you want.

So, what causes us to lose our “PTC” and fall into doldrums? How can we stay in the “now” and be creative each moment we are with our patients, each other, and our loved ones outside of practice?

First, watch out for the backlogs. They are energy dumps. Try to complete your work when you are doing it. Patient notes, insurance reports, filing…try to get it all done as soon as possible. You see, when you start to put your consciousness into a cycle you don’t really get all of it back until you complete that cycle. So, every pile of paperwork and partially completed job that is lying around the office will gradually draw your attention into the past.

Spend a weekend applying the 4 D’s:  With each task: Get it DONE, or DELEGATE it, or DUMP it in the trash can. Not all jobs can be completed now, and so some can be DELAYED with a time noted to complete it.

Here are some other steps to make each moment new:

  1. Early to Rise. Begin your day a little earlier… with a walk or a book, some music, meditation or prayer.
  2. Morning Group Planning. Begin your day in the office with a case management meeting, reviewing who is coming in, what special actions need to be coordinated. Maybe add a joke to keep things from getting serious.
  3. End Each Encounter. After each patient contact, end the meeting in your mind.
  4. Interest. With each new patient contact, genuinely find something interesting and new about them – their appearance, their week, something about their story.
  5. Business Coach. Meet with your business coach and review your business and make plans for the next month.
  6. Get Away. Get away on a vacation with your spouse, or a sabbatical and seminar for yourself. ( I’m heading out to Cal Jam this week. Hope to see you there!)
  7. Un-Serious. Do things in your office that are different, fresh, and new. One office has a “fruity Friday” and offers fruit to the patients.   Avoid the deadly disease of “seriousness.” Tell a joke, be silly.
  8. The Four D’s (again): Do it, Dump it, Delegate it, Delay it. Avoid backlogs.

Some of this takes discipline and creating rituals to help ensure these actions take place

But you are part of nature and spring is already in your heart. You just have to let it out, like a song that is ready to be sung or a jig ready to be danced. You already have the creative spark of newness inside you.

So just breathe.. and let your spring happen today and each day.   And help others to do the same.

Carpe Diem and Happy Spring!

–Ed

Was Darwin Wrong? Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Was Darwin wrong? Let’s find out.

BUT FIRST CONSIDER THIS  WARNING:

You and your staff may have an uninspected cultural bias that is toxic to you and your office and is negatively affecting your best efforts.  This could be happening right now as you read this!

 How could this be?

Well, ingrained in our culture is the idea that to survive, we must compete and overcome others.  It is a win-lose world: either I win and you lose, or you win and I lose.

This idea had much support with the work of Charles Darwin.  Darwin’s perspective of evolution included the concept of survival of the fittest with a sort of “dog eat dog” theme.

However, recent studies suggest this is not entirely the case.

“When biologists look closely at nature they cannot help but notice cooperative partnerships that do not comfortably fit with the competitive struggle that is central to Darwinanin evolution.” (Darwin’s Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection, Frank Ryan)

This theory of cooperation in evolution was actually put forth 50 years before Darwin, by a Frenchman by the name of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarack (1744 – 1829), who established evolution as a scientific fact.

According to Bruce Lipton, “Not only did Lamarck present his theory fifty years before Darwin, he offered a much less harsh theory of the mechanisms of evolution. Lamarck’s theory suggested that evolution was based upon an “instructive,” cooperative interaction among organisms and their environment that enables life forms to survive and evolve in a dynamic world. (Biology of Belief, page 11)

But Lamarck’s ideas, which also included what is now called epigenetics, were cast aside and rejected until recently. So, instead of seeing that organisms in nature evolve symbiotically and cooperatively, Darwin saw that: “living organisms are perpetually embroiled in a struggle for existence. For Darwin, struggle and violence are not only a part of animal (human) nature but the principal “forces” behind evolution advancement.  Darwin wrote of an inevitable “struggle for life” and that evolution was driven by “the war of nature, from famine and death.” (Bruce Lipton, PhD, Biology of Belief) [my emphasis]

The idea of “survival of the fittest”, obviously, is not very cooperative. In an office, it can create brooding jealously, competitive back stabbing, fear and defensiveness, and make us objectify our patients as “cases” and statistics. It can create at a division between us and our patients — between each other.

I got to thinking about all of this as another Valentine’s Day approached. As it turns out, Valentine’s Day is observed all around the world and has been around for hundreds of years, even as early as 300 AD. And, it wasn’t always about romantic love. One legend has it that:

“… in order “to remind these men of their vows and God’s love, Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment”, giving them to these soldiers and persecuted Christians, a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on St. Valentine’s Day.” (From Wikipedia)

The Greeks had 4 different types of love:

  • Agape =Charity, or the love of Man for God or vice versa.
  • Eros = We all know this – romantic, intimate love.
  • Philia = Love between friends or family.
  • Storge = love of parents for children (Wikipedia)

Valentine’s Day is about love. Romantic love, sure but also about charity, generosity, compassion, caring – all kinds of love. And this takes us back to the notion that love, or a type of love, has been the basis for survival of all species on this planet – including mankind. Survival of life forms requires mutual support on some level – survival is cooperative and caring.

In many offices I have noticed a degree of an adversarial undercurrent. You can almost feel a sub-sub culture of “dog eat dog.”   You have experienced this, I am sure.  For example, if the mood is wrong, the phones don’t ring. Right?  When there is a high degree of compassion and care and good will for each other and for the patients, the phones start ringing.

To some degree , Darwin’s “war of nature” may be embedded in the culture of your office. Darwin was right about many things, but life evolved through cooperation and caring – not through war.

Look: Your patients want to survive better. Just find out what their goals are and help them get there.  They will need some education and coaching, sure – you have had thousands of hours of what they are just now hearing.  But care for them and do your very best to help them get to their health goals.

Your doctor wants to practice and live better – find out what she wants and help her get there. You may have to ask lots of questions and train and read and struggle at it for a while, but keep at it and you can make a big difference. In turn, this will help your patients do better – and of course, you do better as well.

And doctor, your team members want to do better and also have better lives – find out how you can help them do so – and do so.

As I mature, I truly see that this planet is getting smaller and that we are all in this adventure together, for better or worse.  Hopefully, for the better.  But there are no guarantees. If we are to get it better, it all comes down to what we can do here and now to help each other MORE than we have been.

The world can be a struggle, but we all have evolved because of cooperation, caring for each other, and love.  If we continue to do so, we can continue to evolve in our practice’s and business, and in our lives.

And have no doubt, Petty, Michel and Associates are in the mix as well. We love your patients, team members and you, and want to do all we can to help you survive and thrive.

Here are our best wishes to you that everyday – is Saint Valentine’s Day!

#  #  #

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (From the New Testament, Corinthians 13:4-8, “love” is elsewhere replaced by the word “charity.”)

10 Practice Development Strategies for Chiropractors in 2015

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[If you think that you could make more money selling pharmaceuticals, injecting patients with vaccines and promoting flu shots in front of your office, these recommendations are not for you. For those matters, you might want to ask Palmer Chiropractic College or the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association for their opinions.]

What strategic moves should you be taking now to make sure that you have a better year in 2015 and in years to come?

After reviewing current literature and statistics, and based upon my observations and experience, I have put together a report which makes a number of recommendations that can be helpful to you. I have also included an extensive list of references for your further study.

The report contains a lot of information and so it is only for the serious practice executive. It will be a useful resource for you to refer to while you implement some of the suggestions I offer. Reading time is about 15 minutes. It offers new views on practice marketing, management, and leadership, with 25 specific recommendations.  To go straight to the main course, go here:

Here is a shorter version:

Executive Summary – 10 Strategies to Prosper and Flourish in 2015 and Beyond

1. Know Your Environment. The Medical-Pharmaceutical industries are spending more to dominate the market place. Their efforts are becoming more pervasive in reach and more covert in manipulation. At the same time, wellness statistics continue to grow. More people are turning to organic foods and are focused on wellness.

2. Marketing Positioning. My recommendation is to embrace the popular movement towards natural health and own it. Be its champion. You are the Healthy Life Doctors. This is your niche.

3. Unique Selling Proposition. Stay committed to your core services, but articulate your Unique Selling Proposition to your specific market niche(s). Not everyone is your patient. Select certain markets that are already reaching for your type of services: people fed up with drugs, baby boomers who want to stay healthy, mothers who want to avoid drugs for their children, athletes, employers who want healthy employees, etc.

4. Get More For Less. Watch your economics but don’t get stuck in a scarcity mindset. Central to economics is a return on investment -ROI. Invest in yourself and especially in making your support team expert professionals. Learn and apply the Pareto Principle (how 80 percent of your results come from just 20% of your efforts).

5. Insurance or Cash? Yes! Take insurance but don’t kowtow to the Insurance Cartel. There are millions of people who want help and can pay for it and are just looking for a solution. You have to let them know that you have their solution.

6. Shift from Personality Driven Practice to Team Driven Business. The successful offices of the future will be team driven and systematized. Each team member has to be an expert as a specialist, as a team member, and as a marketer. And each should try to achieve this as well. The doctor will delegate most marketing and administrative details to others.

7. Shift from Solo Practice to Group Practice. For those of you who are ready, you should join forces with other doctors in a group practice. This has not had a lot of success in the chiropractic profession as it has in other professions, but the time is right now to band together synergistically as brothers and sisters. There are many good reasons to do this now. However, it has to be set up — and maintained — correctly.

8. New Role: CEO and Leader. Why do CEO’s get paid so much? Because they can make such a positive difference in the business. Up to now in your career you have taken on administrative and marketing projects mostly from the role of doctor, or perhaps owner. The CEO role probably has not been emphasized. Shifting to the role of CEO changes everything. Growing a business becomes easier, you have more time available, and you make more money.

9. Seek Out and Integrate Your Greater Purposes with Your Business. The power for your office, and you, comes from those things that mean the most. This would include your family and your spiritual pursuits. But our world is smaller and we live in a networked economy and culture. Your office, in its own right, has to be a leader in your community and environment and contribute in some way beyond its walls. This also includes having a voice in your professional organization. Your greater purposes also include your personal hobbies. Since you are not working on an assembly line, many of these purposes should be integrated into your work.

10. Get an Executive Coach. Why does corporate America spend over a billion dollars on executive coaching? Because the return of investment proves to be at least 7 times, and in some cases, 10-49 times cost. Executive coaching doesn’t cost – it pays.

An executive coach is different from a clinical coach. An executive coach will help you be a better CEO – a better leader, marketer and manager who builds a team driven business which allows you to delegate most non clinical duties.  He or she will help you sort out what tasks will produce the greatest positive effects for your business, and help you get those tasks done. He or she will be your partner, counselor, confident, coach, teacher, drill instructor, and friend.

The future has never looked brighter, but the challenges are not slight. This makes your success all the more important – and sweeter.

Ed Petty