You may be overlooking your biggest bill. Most chiropractors do.
What is it? If you are in the upper Midwest or Eastern part of the US in the winter of 2014, it might be your heating bill. It has been pretty cold.
How about personnel or marketing? Your lease? Staff benefits? How about your pay? (Probably not, I would guess.)
In running a chiropractic business, many doctors try to maximize the profit of their business by reducing expenses. They often get this idea from their accountants, and, from a certain perspective, it is a good idea. But accountants are trained such that their primary function is reporting income for tax purposes and not managing business finances.
You definitely need to review your Profit and Loss and Balance sheets regularly. Sometimes you can get carried away with expenses, not noticing that things are getting out of balance when you have 4 x-ray units, 15 computers and only 1 staff member.
But what your financial statements don’t show you, and what your accountant isn’t trained to see, is your ROI – your return on your investment.
And what is your biggest investment? (Pause while you consider this question….)
It is YOU.
And what is your biggest bill? What is your biggest expense?
It is the income that you could and should be making that you aren’t.
Your biggest bill is the amount of money you could be making if you were operating at your full capacity but aren’t.
Here is an example: Let’s say you are relatively healthy and are capably of seeing 200 patient visits per week comfortably. This excludes new patient visits. This averages out to about 860 visits per month. Let’s drop it down to 820 visits for vacation days, etc. Now, let’s say you collect only $40 per visit, average. This would mean you would be collecting $32,800 per month.
Let’s leave aside the possibility you could collect more per visit and imagine that you are seeing 150 visits per week, or 645 visits per month, or 605 if we take out a few visits for vacation days (40 visits per month). At $40 per visit, this leaves you with $24,200 per month, or $8,600 LESS than you should be making each month.
In other words, if you could and should be making $32,800 per month and you are only making $24,200 per month, you are essentially writing a check for $8,600 EACH MONTH, payable to “Inefficiency, Inc.”
You are wasting that much each month as a negative return on your investment on yourself.
This is so brutal to face that most doctors would rather look the other way. But whether you squint at it, or not, the reality is there: you are wasting your hard earned cash each month that you are not operating at full capacity. You are throwing away a portion of the time, training, and sacrifices you have made to get to where you are now.
It is as if you are writing a check, each month, for the amount of money you should be making, but aren’t.
Savvy CEO’s and large corporations understand this. They need to get the full measure out of their investments. As a result, they invest heavily into solutions that improve production and services so their business can achieve full capacity.
One investment that shows the greatest return is corporate training and coaching. This is a huge industry: corporate training grosses $138 billion yearly in North America and executive and business coaching is at $9 billion a year and growing.
Various studies show that executive coaching brings back a return of 5 to 8 times the investment.
Obviously this speaks to our services, but beyond us, coaching and team training help you get the most out of your biggest investment – you.
Read a book, go to a seminar, watch a webinar, participate in 4 Mastermind groups, and get an executive coach to help train and guide you. Invest in yourself so that you can take the necessary actions to reach your full capacity.
In today’s economy, you need to get more out of what you have.
Quit wasting money. Invest in yourself. You can afford it.
Ed Petty
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References
- https://www.trainingindustry.com
- http://www.ibisworld.com
- https://exec.actioncoach.com/industry-statistics.php