What does leadership have to do with new patients and economics?
In your area there are 6 DCs and they all do different things. The ‘good ole boy’ Dr. Fred has been around for decades and his office can best be described as sleepy. There are a couple of rehab offices, with all kinds of modalities, nutrition and sports stuff going on, a DC/MD integrative practice, a new age, spa type of office and finally a family wellness practice.
Their income varies as much as $80,000 a month! How can this be with all doctors having the same degree? The key to your practice is matching up what you want to do with having a purpose with helping people. Too many DCs are either doing great financially or struggling mightily. The issue these DCs face is that their hearts just aren’t in it. This is not a sustainable strategy. Its okay for the first few years and then this lack of congruence and leadership takes its toll on your life, both professionally and personally.
In the world of Chiropractic, there are many easier, more socially accepted paths to follow. The question is and always will be: will you allow those who don’t know what Chiropractic really is to determine and decide who you’ll be? Or will you fiercely and proudly protect, communicate and educate our true purpose.
Leadership can be a real predicament at times. Isn’t the real purpose of Chiropractic to just make lots of money any way you can? For some, this is their truth: good luck and have at it. Many MDs, dentists and lawyers live this way. For others with leadership skills, they are in the service of humanity…and being successful at it! They are not mutually exclusive of each other. Some DCs fail to realize the highest good of your patients includes the highest good for themselves as well!
Who will stand up for the rights of patients? Certainly not more beaurocratic and administrative politics, or insurance minutia and EHS. You have to find a way to attract patients who have had it with no results, no hope and only a string of failed treatments and ominous diagnoses.
When your office has the leadership to take a stand with an unpopular opinion something magical happens. People start to embrace it and come from places you would never imagine. Driving by 10 offices to get to your office is the sign of leadership and a DC just loving the identity of their office. It attracts the right kind of people and repels people who are not able to put forth the commitment necessary.
Matching up your purpose with what you really want to do is both challenging and requires thermal levels of courage. Face it, most of your patients want to come in for one visit and pay you nothing. You will find it difficult to make a practice run with this as your purpose. It takes leadership to change this.
Some of the ways DCs skimp on leadership and let patients tell them what to do:
- Constantly negotiating recommendations
- Pain relief only
- Letting patients set their own care frequency
- Not having some type of weekly Health Awareness Seminar
- Adult only, no kids allowed
- Completely insurance dependent
Those familiar with my blogs know me by now as training DCs to become once in a lifetime DCs. There are enough ‘cooks in the Army’ and not enough Navy type seal DCs. Not only are they in service to humanity and love Chiropractic, they are very successful at it. A year one DC who joins our group looks forward to 3,5,10 folding their practice by learning how to practice their way. It really comes down to some DCs are okay with being ‘bullied’ by patients in order to scratch out a living and others are willing to get the leadership training in order to practice, successfully, the way they choose to.
