Dr. Bill Davis of surveyed the most effective practice building behaviors of upper cervical chiropractors and found that the three best strategies used by your colleagues in the last year were: Professional Referrals, Internet Marketing, and Health Care Classes.
 
Who you are, what you know, and a splash of chance combine to dictate your success with any particular tactic. Whatever strategy you chose to build your practice, success will only come by intelligently giving it your energy over an extended period of time.
 
As you consider integrating some of these strategies, remember that as a profession our actions reflect on each other; all of your actions should increase your professional reputation as well as be good for your profession, your community, your practice, and yourself.
 
Have fun while you build your practice, increase your profits, and enjoy your life!
Dr. Jeff Scholten


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Now that we have defined our Public Relations subcategories, we can begin to consider what we want to be engaged in: marketing or public awareness?

In a practice that has a waiting list for new patients, the focus of your PR should be public awareness campaigns; these type of campaigns can simmer and wait for the right time to be turned up by the right practitioner into a marketing opportunity. In our practice, we have both a headrest and a concussion campaign that serve this purpose for us. See www.payitaheadrest.com and www.concussionconfusion.com to see this in action.
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If you are trying to grow your practice and want to invest in a marketing event, be sure you determine an appropriate ROI. If the average patient spends $2000 in your practice during their initial care plan, how do we use this information to understand how many people we need to be able to screen per hour to achieve our desired result?

As an example,...
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Public Relations is a central part of your practice, and for the sake of organization and understanding we break this topic down into public awareness and marketing. Whereas public awareness activity doesn’t have a clear ROI (return on investment), marketing activities should be done with a particular ROI in mind. What is your office’s profit percentage from last year? If you know this number, it will allow you to make improved marketing decisions in 2018.

To state what should be apparent, in any business the revenue you end up with as profit is the amount that you didn’t spend on anything else. One of a number of things you can do with your profits is to invest in marketing activities to help grow your business.

For example, if you choose to spend a dollar on an event and expect 50% profit (50% overhead), you need to make at least two dollars to pay back that dollar you’ve invested. Using this same thought process, if you target a 10% profit margin after all expenses (90% overhead), you have to make 10 dollars to recover that dollar you spent.  In this 10% scenario, if you don’t make at least a 10x return on your marketing expense you’re just spinning your wheels. This is a complicated concept, but one that is fundamental; if you’re struggling with the math, or aren’t sure about your profit percentages, target a 10x ROI for any marketing activity and you’ll be fine.

Have fun while you build your practice, increase your profits, and enjoy your life!
​Dr. Jeff Scholten

What are targets, and how can they help your business? Targets differ from goals; goals need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound), while a target is a general direction in which you want to be heading. Targets don’t have to be SMART - they work by keeping you moving in the right direction. A goal might be to speak with 3 professionals that are co-caring for patients you see this upcoming month, whereas a target would be to increase your involvement with professionals. One is SMART, and the other indicates a direction you would like to move in.

In our practice, targets are part of our 3-5 year plan. Targets can also be side effects of other things, such as revenue; for me, revenue is a fortunate side effect of patients that are well cared for and a business that is well run.

The biggest reason to utilize targets is to keep you focused and on track. You should only have a few goals in the areas that are top priority to you, and the rest of what you identify (but aren’t going to move mountains to achieve) can sit as targets.

Have fun while you build your practice, increase your profits, and enjoy your life!
​Dr. Jeff Scholten


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To gain access to weekly PIQ's, Level 3 Membership is required. The weekly PIQ is just one of the many benefits of membership. View membership opportunities HERE.

Although it would be wonderful to have success just land in your lap, it wouldn’t be as satisfying as creating something from nothing and making it work; real success takes effort! Your dreams are more likely to become reality when they are anchored by an active plan. Once you’ve determined a goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound), or a target (a more general but still specific destination you’re heading towards), you need to work on it consistently.

If you aren’t currently having daily, weekly, and monthly meetings, it’s time to start! Daily meetings should include a focus on smaller components of the targets or goals you’ve identified and are working towards. 

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My wife told me about a blog she read that outlined a formative moment in boxing great Evander Holyfield’s mental development. It spoke to the moment he recognized the difference between a goal and a dream. Read about it here… http://thoughtsaboutnothing.com/dream-or-goal/
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Dreaming, and using your imagination, are wonderful and often underutilized skills. I encourage you to develop both; I received this link from my cousin and it may help you understand how powerful this can be: http://www.proctorgallagherinstitute.com/6179/develop-your-imagination

In business, however, dreams and imagination have to...
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Let’s talk chiropractic algebra for a moment. Don’t be scared; math can be fun and using basic metrics with the right equations can help ensure that your success is not accidental.

Revenue = NP x OVA x PVA
NP – The number of patients that receive a first adjustment.
RPV – Return Patient Visits
OVA = Revenue/RPV
(Office Visit Average) How much people spend, on average, on each visit in your office.
PVA = RPV/NP
(Patient Visit Average) A measure of retention indicating the average number of times a patient returns to your office.

To grow your revenue you can increase new patients, your prices, or your patient retention.  I recommend that you have at least one defined practice-building strategy for each area, but at the very least monitor these numbers and share them with your team regularly.

Have fun while you build your practice, increase your profits, and enjoy your life!
​Dr. Jeff Scholten

How much is a patient worth? Putting a monetary value on each patient is very important in the event that a practitioner leaves the practice and takes some patients with them.
 
The calculation itself is quite straight forward:
(Revenue in a time period) / (# of individual patients in a time period) = Average value of a patient
 
Example (for a one year time period):
($1 million revenue) / (2500 individual patients) = $400 spent per patient on average
 
This number is important to keep in mind...
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To gain access to weekly PIQ's, Level 3 Membership is required. The weekly PIQ is just one of the many benefits of membership. View membership opportunities HERE.