Retention Based Practice™ with Dr. Jamie Richards

If you're a Canadian chiropractor, you likely know about the recent hit piece regarding chiropractic in the Globe and Mail.

It's just one of many over the past couple decades and it definitely won't be the last.

What that means to us at Life By Design For Chiropractors, is that lessons can be learned from these articles...lessons that can help us design our practice approach in ways that deliver the impeccable level of care we imagine and keep us from risky behaviour all at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive ideas.

Many chiropractors think that to see enough new patients we need to liter social media with ads and offers for low price examinations or other hooks to lure potential prospects close enough to snatch them up!

On one hand proponents would say "but they work!" and while I'd agree, I would also add in the caveat... "but at what expense?"

Is a stream of new prospects worth risking your license? Your reputation?

On today's episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors we explore the article's tenants and tease out which are completely false and which would could actually learn a thing or two about in order to protect us in the future.

What We Covered

• The basic argument supporting the Globe and Mail article.
• The 3 areas from the article we actually agree with. It's important we don't just to a defensive position...maybe we need to accept the hard truth that many chiropractors are doing and saying things they shouldn't be (and don't need to be).
• What steps you can take in your practice to transition into a third paradigm model of chiropractic. The model that will keep you safe and enable to practice chiropractic successfully and without compromise.

For full show notes visit:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/risk/

I received a special email in my inbox last week…

It was an email I look forward to getting regularly and one I rarely, if ever delete without consuming.

Most often this email is more than just a "good read", it's an email that instigates deep thought, introspection and in some cases a change or modified plan of action.

You can thank marketer extraordinaire Dean Jackson for today's podcast topic…

What's the type of practice most chiropractors are operating?

If we're honest (and I've seen the stats time and time again to prove it), most of the profession is aiming to see as many new patients as absolutely possible.

Now that's not a bad thing if you have the infrastructure to keep them and deliver an exceptional experience.

Unfortunately, in most cases that's absolutely not what's happening!

The majority NEED as many new patients as possible to make up for the lack of retention, the dilution of their fees and ongoing devaluation of their care process.

Retention seems harder until you know more about what it takes to build and grow a RETENTION BASED PRACTICE.

Once you get past the scary unknown and accept what you're currently doing is unsustainable and tiring… (not to mention stressful and less profitable!) you can begin the transition to an easier, less expensive and far more profitable and enjoyable model.

On this episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors we talk about why the Retention Based Practice is the way to go and how you can get started moving towards the "light".

Enjoy!

What We Covered

• Why pining for more new patients will wear you down and rob you of the joy chiropractic practice has the potential to bring to your life.
• The cost involved with running a revolving door practice.
• Don't fool yourself…stats don't lie. What type of practice do you honestly have?
• How to start the transition to a Retention Based Practice.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

Click below for more information and to register for the Life By Design Training Camp:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/tc

Click below for the full show notes:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/retention/

Now matter how wonderful you think your practice is, there's always room for improvement!

In some cases, you'd be very pleasantly surprised at how fixing, modifying or updating a deficient area of your business will massively impact your bottom line.

Recently we made a staff change at the team leader position. It wasn't due to poor performance...it was a change we made to stay ahead of the growth curve. We saw an opportunity that matched our values and quickly changed course.

In the process of training our newest team member we started an audit of our systems and realized a few key areas were being missed...we made the necessary changes and without having to increase our new patient volume we saw a 10% growth in visits per week in less than 14 days!

I was honestly shocked. Where did all these visits come from without having to attend a spinal screening or run an ad for the $27 exam?

They came from our team holding patients accountable to the visit schedule we originally agreed to and the majority of the contact was through the phone.

Old school right?

The take home point is not only that an accountability system is necessary but that every system in your office matters.

On today's episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors we recount the entire experience and the lessons I learned along the way.

What We Covered:

• Why making changes ahead of a crisis is a far better growth strategy than waiting for the disaster to happen.
• How to start auditing your practice and uncover deficient areas that could yield 1000's in increased profitability.
• One major system that regularly goes missed and why your staff hates doing it.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

PS. Click below for the full show notes:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/grew-my-practice

There's an abundance of emphasis placed on delivering a strong day one experience and rightfully so… you only get one chance to make a first impression!

What about day two? That's the close right?

Establishing a solid agreement on the second visit is a cornerstone to future retention and of course the obvious, if they don't start there's very little chance they become a lifetime client.

But, as important as those first two major practice visits are, they pale in comparison to "The Second Buying Decision".

The review visit that occurs after the initial stage of care is the most important single visit for building your practice.

At this visit, all the smoke and mirrors are gone, no more bells and whistles, just an understanding from the patient that any CORE PROBLEM with the spine and nervous system is a problem and spending time and resources addressing it is a valuable pursuit.

On this week's episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors, Dr. Kreso and I breakdown the highlights of the Life By Design framework for this critical patient interaction.

Enjoy!

What We Covered:

• The appropriate psychology to help you feel prepared and not stressed or anxious about this conversation.
• Too often we position the first phase of care as the final intensive period followed by "maintenance". The purpose of your first stage of care is to set the stage for FUTURE RESULTS. Learn how to start this process in your practice.
• The golden question you must ask every patient before agreeing to the next step in your process.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

PS. Click below for the full show notes:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/building-your-practice/

It rare to find someone that has worked their tail off (even when doing just about everything else incorrectly) for an extended period of time and not had some level of measurable success.

Hard work is very often a missing ingredient and in the absence of knowing what to do, can be a replacement until the proper knowledge base is developed.

Now, imagine if you worked ridiculously hard and nailed every requirement for success as well?

That would be the ultimate success formula for every single area of life...

(Time + Consistent Action) to the power of Correct Principles = Extraordinary Results.

As a chiropractor we're told a successful practice comes down to "telling the story" and "delivering the goods".

"You too can soon work 1 day and have 500 visit per week practice with only 8 hours."

What is not often promoted is the incredible amount of effort it takes to truly excel. The jump from good to great is massive the gap between great to extraordinary is monumental.

Hmm, that sounds like a lot of work. LOL.

In a profession where good is almost always good enough to not worry about money or other stresses that plague most others, you're left with a decision...

What does success look like for you?

Is it just getting by or is it leaving a massive impact?

In today's episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors, we share our raw, unedited opinions about the work volume it takes to reach the peak.

What We Covered

• How your work load makes it far easier to fake it until you make it.
• How do you begin increasing your productivity and build up to the effort it's going to take for high levels of success.
• What we do when times get tough and we're ready to give up.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

PS. Click below for the full show notes:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/success/

ABC.

A - Always.

B - Be.

C - Closing.

To paraphrase this famous scene from Glengarry Glen Ross..."Always be closing."

The concept of closing haunts chiropractors for a long list of possible reasons from poor self-esteem to misunderstood semantics.

It seems much easier, with far less stress and pressure to just "hope" for a working relationship to emerge from being a good doctor, "telling the story" or in many cases, good luck.

The problem is, and I'll be as blunt as possible...it doesn't work.

Aside from the reality that I tried it myself for many years with little success, the research on consumer psychology verifies people don't just fall into a purchase, it's a complex decision making process.

If you want to the end result to be a win-win working relationship, you'd better be involved in helping your prospect make a choice that is in their best interest today and for their future.

Instead of "closing" and all the negative attachment you may have to the word itself, go ahead and replace it with "getting an agreement". You'll feel an immediate ease and a clearer view of the goal during your sales process (we'll save your attachments to the word selling for another time).

On today's episode we cover the need for authentically closing the loop and getting strong agreements with your potential clients.

What We Covered

• The 5 false beliefs chiropractors have about closing and why they are absolutely crushing your conversion and retention statistics.
• One massive shift in mindset that, if you take away nothing else, you apply this thought to every new case that you have.
• The painful truth of not closing. It may feel good now, but it's guaranteed to sting in the future and linger until you can fix it once and for all.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

Click below for full show notes:

https://lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/closing

It's often assumed that once day two is complete and the agreement has been made, that you're "in the clear."

You can finally stop with the stressful ongoing education and no more selling the benefit of future care is required.

What a relief!

Unfortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth…in fact, in this instance it's completely the opposite.

Once you've build rapport and confirmed a strong agreement at your Review of Results, the long term communication strategy begins. This is what we like to call your Core Curriculum.

It's all the information a patient NEEDS to know in order to pass the tests at the end of each stage of your care and make a new decision going forward.

In a past episode we discussed in general, what the components your core curriculum were and how to potentially implement them.

On this episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors we highlight in great detail, one very important strategy for sharing your core curriculum…email.

What We Covered

• How having a core curriculum helps your patients overcome preconceived ideas about chiropractic and solves the challenge of quality table talk in a higher volume practice setting.
• You can't be perfect all the time, even if trying to be is worth the effort…a curriculum helps to fill in the gaps in your education process that may be missing if you depend completely on your memory and what each practice member has been told.
• The 3 biggest challenges you'll face creating your curriculum and how to overcome them.
• The exact 7 step process we've used to build our own email curriculum that yields open rates of 61%!

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

Click below for full show notes:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/core-curriculum/

Click HERE to learn more about ConvertKit.

Click HERE to learn more about having your Email Core Curriculum built for you.

Communication is at the heart of everything from marketing to conversion and retention. There's really not a single interaction on or offline that isn't improved by strengthening your abilities to communicate.

What I find interesting is that very few doctors actually practice this fundamental component to their practice success.

Outside of some coaching that only 'sort of' gets implemented or on the Monday following a spizzed up weekend at a seminar, those notes with strategies for improvement all end up packed away collecting dust and your practice never changes.

Today's episode is about the Feynman Technique for learning...

Dr. Feynman was a world-class, Nobel Prize winning Physicist but he was also famous as someone who was an expert in many different topics.

In his pursuit of knowledge, he was able to develop a method that was also developed into a technique for others to learn even the most complex of concepts as quickly as possible.

This is of obvious value to you, the chiropractor, as learning to simplify your communication to a population that understands very little about the benefits of your service could be just the catalyst you need for growth.

What We Covered

• Where to begin. The 4 step process Dr. Feynman used that you can apply to boost your communication abilities.
• How teaching your material in ways a child would understand can exponentially increase the amount of information your market consumes and acts on.
• What if you're already a great communicator (or think that that you are)...would this still benefit you?
• The specific multi-step process to apply this to your practice. We leave the guessing out of it and tell you exactly what to do.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

Click below to visit the show notes page and download your copy of the Communication Tool:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/table-talk/

I feel your pain.

You get the dreaded reply to an appointment reminder, call or even Facebook message...

"I need to stop my chiropractic care...."

"How dare they!"

"Don't they know how much time I've invested in them?"

"Subluxation is bad, how will they survive?"

"What did I do wrong?"

You know exactly what I'm talking about and you know it's shortly after every dropout that you find yourself reinventing your practice.

New forms, new coach, new website, new technique and none of them make a single lick of difference.

What will make a huge impact is understanding why they left and what, if anything you can do to minimize the chances it happens again.

On today's episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors we explore the mental side of practice dropouts and give you a system you can activate right away.

What We Covered

• The number one, absolutely most important thing to remember that will ultimately set you free from the pain and struggle of new patient dropouts.
• Why a patient drops out and what part of the rationale could be about you and something you did.
• The fundamental starting point for every piece of practice and life success.
• How my experience playing college football prepared me for managing my mindset and surviving new patient dropouts (eventually).
• A top level overview of the LBDFC System for managing dropout requests. Having your system in place will not stop every patient from following through but it will help you sleep a heck of a lot better at night.

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

Click below to visit the show notes page:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/patient-dropouts/

The majority of business owners get excited about the thought of a thriving business…

Success, personal growth, profits, freedom and all the other "stuff" that comes along for the ride.

And it's the fulfillment of the requirements of a successful business consistently over a relatively long time frame —> leadership, team, systems and communication that makes that success a reality.

But what do you do when it actually works? When growth is happening right before your eyes? When growth begins to outstrip your ability to keep up.

You'll need to make the decision, "Am I happy with my practice the way it is or do I want to scale my practice."

That's exactly what this episode of Life By Design For Chiropractors is all about – how to scale your practice!

What We Covered

• Do you want to grow your business? It's a legitimate question and one you really need to answer prior to putting in the ridiculous amount of work it's going to take in order to see it through.
• What forms of scaling a business is there? It doesn't just mean more visits! What if you could have the same number of visits but more profit, or less days of practice?
• What are the mental precursors necessary to manage this growth? Nothing can stop your growth faster than not being mentally prepared. You'd better deal with this issue long before investing cash flow and time into your project.
• What are the physical and tangible steps that need to be completed? When you do hire more staff? When is it time for an associate or to expand your space?
• What NOT to do that most Chiropractors are notorious for doing first!

Enjoy this episode!

-- Jamie

Click below for more information about the Success Surveillance System:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/sss

Click below for more information about the Chiropractic Productivity System:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/productivity

Click below for full show notes:

https://www.lifebydesignforchiropractors.com/scale-your-practice/