Here's the catch corporate owners already know and most independents don't: none of this works without dedicated management. The practices that thrive as groups aren't the ones that got lucky. They're the ones that built management structure on purpose. That Shift — from a personality-based, one-doctor practice to a business built on goals and led by a team — is exactly what I cover in my book from 2001, The Goal Driven Business.

Increasing Engagement Look at yourself and your team as athletes playing in a health care conference. Are you winning? That's the question Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz asked when they studied elite athletes for their book The Power of Full Engagement. Their conclusion: performance depends on managing energy, not just time. Like athletes, people perform best by alternating focused effort with deliberate recovery. Recovery time for your office could include:

No one decides one morning to lower their standards. You never wake up one day and say: “Patients are going to get just a bit less of me today.” Or, “the business performance will drop over the next month.” It happens one degree at a time — an exam abbreviated and rote because the schedule was tight or a report of findings that never quite landed.

Too often, doctors are distracted by the condition of their business...And, as a management coach, I often discover that their performance covers up their pressing concerns about their business, staff, and or overhead issues. It is not that they don't care about their patients, but their business needs as much "adjusting" as their patients. On the other hand, I have seen doctors take time to focus on their notes, on the x-ray and then on the patient in front of them...Happy p

Full capacity is when you are serving as many people as possible, given the available space, equipment, and staff. In other words, what is the maximum number of people you can see in a day – comfortably – given full support? This number will vary, of course, depending on how you practice. Full capacity is a vital goal for financial survival. You are already paying full price for your space, equipment, and team. With lower production, your overhead rises and your profits dec

56 delegates from 13 colonies got together in 1776 in a sweltering building in Philadelphia. Reports indicate there was a lot of bickering and that the delegates were pretty much a bunch of radical nonconformists. I can't help but see the connection between what these brave men fought for and what the brave men and women continue to fight for today in chiropractic and independent, integrative health care professions.

What the heck? What is wrong with people nowadays?? No… “Howdy partner, what brings you into town?” “You from these parts?” Is everyone scared or angry? So, this takes to me to the point of this newsletter... your Front Desk.

Scaling is keeping the basic proportions of an object the same but just increasing its size through multiplications. “Growing,” as opposed to scaling, is just adding things. For example, you may add more new patients, but you also add to your expenses.

Communication is the operating system that allows all the other "applications" in your practice to function. When patients feel understood, trust grows. And when trust grows, recommendations are accepted more readily, appointments are kept, referrals occur naturally, and relationships strengthen. The same principle applies inside the practice. When the quality and quantity of communication in your practice improves, the practice numbers will go up.

A practice is a network of relationships – created and sustained through communication and service.

Whether you have an ADHD brain or not, you are still an entrepreneur, and some of these traits just come with the job.

Having a scoreboard can help your team be more engaged in the business. A great example is keeping a line graph of the percentage of kept appointments. This helps the front desk team manage themselves by objectively showing how they are doing in keeping patients on track. You can miss the good things -- as well as the coming crash. Numbers help you predict what needs fixing before things get ugly and what needs reinforcement to keep the good times going.

Get Off the Internet and Into the Neighborhood This Summer. Send this email back to us with a Please send screening form, and we'll send you a form that worked well for us. I may host a short webinar on this later this month, just because it is such a simple and potentially rewarding marketing procedure. It has a very good ROI. A well-run screening can generate 5 or more new patients in an afternoon. Let me know if you'd be interested for your staff.

A sport is an activity you play to win. The keyword is PLAY. Not fight, not stress —but play. When work becomes too serious, mistakes multiply and stress fills the room. In a chiropractic practice, patients feel that. Trust me — I've seen it work both ways. A too-serious office, and numbers go down. A focused but playful office, and numbers go up.

Trust in medical doctors has collapsed — from 71.5% in 2020 to just 40.1% in 2024. (See my earlier newsletter.) Patients are looking for something else! That would be YOU! The M.D.'s whom I listened to and briefly talked with this last weekend described how practical remedies to COVID were suppressed, and how they saw patients unnecessarily suffer and die. They touched upon how, as highly regarded doctors, they were vilified, fired, and slandered for their work using safe b

There are plenty of examples of these two success drivers in business and in sports teams. But these elements find their parallel in physics. When everyone (or everything) is moving in the same direction for the same reason -- a "flow" state is achieved. You may have felt it before. But it doesn't usually last. Staff change, you change, computer software needs to be updated, backlog found in insurance, and so on. Issues crop up. But with consistent leadership, you find new

But when you are "dangerous" — when you stand firmly for the truth that the body is designed to heal, not to be a lifetime customer of the pharmaceutical treadmill, you become a beacon. Patients today are not looking for more of the same. They are looking for a doctor who stands for something real, regardless of the P.R. cost. Being dangerous is your greatest marketing asset. It builds a level of trust that no institution can break. The patients who are waking up to this rea

On the other hand, I see doctors too often become focused on scripts, office policies, or promotions. While these need to be addressed, they are not the purpose of the practice. That is why I always stress the importance of getting one of your team members trained as a manager — even part-time. This allows you to delegate much of your management and marketing work so you can focus on results. If you focus on the quality of your care and get great results....your numbers

As chiropractic and natural healthcare professionals, you’ve always stood outside the medical matrix and big pharma oligarchy. In marketing terms, that’s positioning: you are positioned in the marketplace as providing natural, honest wellness for the whole family. In this climate, trust is your strongest marketing asset.

There are many approaches to effective marketing. But all of them start with the right attitudes. How's yours? How about your team's? I think we all need an attitude nudge or adjustment now and then. (Coaches can help!) The good news is that your attitude is something you can control. It is all yours. When needed, check and adjust those attitudes, and help more people. Cowboy boots are optional.