Hi, I’m Dr. Frank Sovinsky, CEO of DC Mentors and co-author of The E-Myth Chiropractor.

I’ve got a quick math quiz for you don’t think about it too much.  A bat and a ball together cost a $1.10.  The bat is a $1.00 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?  We could go on and on thinking about that but I want to tell you that 50% of M.I.T. students missed it and 80% of other University students when asked that question missed it.  The answer is five cents.  Think about that later, most people build an answer around $1.00 and they miss the mark.  They missed the mark because the brain is actually kind of lazy, the brain looks at things like the law of least effort, sometimes we do that physically, sometimes mentally.  I’m telling you this because your patients often times have a cognitive depletion,  they are in a stressed state.  You’re asking them to build a logical formula from all the information you’ve dumped on them.  Step back for a moment and remember in Care-tactics which is a term DC Mentors coined over a decade ago for our chiropractic coaching clients, your job is to make the decision process easier.  Understand that it’s not just about the facts, just about the facts, just about the facts.  It’s about relating in a way that they get.

So appreciate that if you’ve missed that quiz or even if you did nail that quiz understand that the patients may make decisions based on their understanding of things past not in this new information that you are giving them.  So take a lot of time to prepare, take time to understand and appreciate exactly where they are and they’ll get the quiz which will change their life, which is the decision to continue with chiropractic care once they’ve begun.  A bat and a ball is the way to play the game in your head and in their mind.

When you’re setting goals for your chiropractic business make sure your goals are congruent. We have chiropractic coaching clients that say I want to see 400 people a week.   I say, “OK, how do you do that?”  Well, this afternoon we’re going to talk about what we call the 2.5 hour rule, so I’m not going to go into all the mechanics of it but when I say congruent goals I mean your goal has to be aligned with your philosophy and your belief system.

You say you’re going to see 400 patients a week, the logical mind says I’m going to see 90 on Monday, 90 on Tuesday, 90 on Wednesday, 90 on Thursday and that it’s going to be disbursed evenly throughout the week.  It doesn’t work that way.

In order to see 400 patient visits in a week you have to be able to see about 125 on a Monday and about 110 Friday and about 100 Wednesday and about 40 or 50 on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.  It never figures out exactly the way we like it.

I had this conversation a few months ago with a client – I want to see 400 people a week.   Well then you have to do this, this and this.  You have to have your new patient numbers match your retention numbers and all of those things have to work and then we have the fine print.  And he says,  “Well, I don’t want to give up my ten minute adjustment time.”  Seriously?  We just had this conversation about your goals and you’re telling me that you need to spend 10 to 15 minutes with every patient, can you do math?  This is easy 60 minutes in an hour, 15 minute adjustment that’s 4 patients an hour, that’s all you can see an hour and you want to see 400 people a week.  You don’t have 400 hours in a week.  You have to have congruent goals.

So when you’re setting goals for your chiropractic business or setting your practice markers make sure the math works otherwise you’re deceiving yourself and you will never attain what you say you want to attain.

MySpineApp

How many chiropractic assistants are in the room, give me a show of hands?  How many of you have had the scenarios where someone in the reception area comes up and says, “I see children getting adjusted in here, what are they doing?  Do they have a sore back?”  Did anybody ever ask you that?  Would you like to be able to have a way to explain to the mom, “You know what? There’s actually a vertebrae in the body that if you get that corrected your sons earaches might go away.”  Would you like that ability?  Yes?

Did you know there is an app now,  it’s called My Spine.  It costs a $1.00.  Give your patients a dollar.

Can you imagine if you had this sitting at your front desk Techs?   You could say to the mom,  “Ya, here it is, C1, right here (presses the screen on the iPad), here it is C2 – allergies, earaches, right there.”  Can you imagine if you could show that picture?  Don’t you guys think you all need an iPad at your front desk?  Are we trying to get the message out or what?

How simple would that be as opposed to, “Oh ya, little Johnny over here, he got adjusted and he’s better.”   It’s just boom, boom (presses the screen on the iPad).  Guess what?

And it shows that this is common knowledge – it’s an app.  It’s so cool.  And, you don’t have Loonies . . . in Canada  I suggest you all put a Looney at the front desk.  Give a Loonie to your patient to go buy the app or a dollar bill.

I’m Dr. Frank Sovinsky , CEO of DC Mentors and the co-author of The E-Myth Chiropractor.

Have you heard of the term Affective Neuroscience?  Well, let me give you a story to show what that really is.  As a high school student I worked for Kentucky Fried Chicken and one day when I was at the drive up counter I asked the patron if they would want some mash potatoes with their bucket of chicken and they said, “No, I don’t.”  I was devastated. I collapsed on the floor. I started to cry, “You don’t want potatoes?  Everybody wants potatoes and gravy.”

OK, a little stretch of that story, but here’s the thing, if we do not develop neural scaffolding and appreciate that our emotions often times buy us our actions and our movements in our chiropractic business’, then we take rejection from patients so personally – You don’t want potatoes and gravy, you don’t want the care plan, you don’t want to continue with chiropractic?  And it is our reaction to those things that creates the next problem and the next problem and until or less we grow through that and appreciate that it’s not about us.  It’s an unanswered question, or a challenge that they’re having or the way that we said what we mean.

You see “take rejection” doesn’t mean building calluses, it means putting them into perspective.  Affective neuroscience says that we all have traits, that we all have a style of emotion, and if we don’t have resiliency or we aren’t able to put an event in context then we don’t win.  The next time there is not a win-win relationship with a patient.  Affective neuroscience is now your new term of the week.  Get in there.  It’s just potatoes and gravy,  don’t take it so personally.

This sphere is the chiropractic entrepreneur, your business, and this bridge is to the rest of the world.  Here’s the thing, the chaos really isn’t out there. Is just looks like it is.  Chaos is where?  In you.  And your business is the opportunity to bridge that gap between a world that looks chaotic.  And when you organize your business and your thinking you are having a global impact that’s not just us sitting around looking at lava lamps and meditating and going,  “We’re going to change the world one vibe at a time.”

We’re going to change the world a lot vibes at once.

So, that’s what your business is. Whatever you thought it was before we’re downloading a new virus that’s not what your business is anymore.  Your chiropractic business is this bridge between the world of chaos and your part in that is to get organized, to get clear on what you do, to get clear on that.

Just like health your business is natural in its growth.  We talk about businesses that are infants, businesses that are adolescents and businesses that are mature.  Most chiropractic practices are stuck in adolescence.  Some of them never get out of the terrible toos – we’re too busy, we’re too blah, blah, blaah – the terrible toos.  They never get out of it, they stay in adolescence and then get burned out. If you’re burned out it’s because you’re not letting the thing grow and change with you.  Self-developing.   Self-healing, your business heals itself.  Have you ever had a bad thing happen and your business heals?

Guess what?  Interference is getting in the way.  It could be systems, could be you, could be you’ve never trained your chiropractic assistants because a chiropractic office is a school where your people with will, drive and determination come to learn about life and to have an opportunity to do something ordinary and make it extraordinary which creates meaning.  Do you feel like that?

Your business is an organic process.  People don’t need to grow your business, you need to grow with it.  You need to work on yourself and your business at the same time.  What a beautiful, beautiful thing and that’s the whole idea here, growth is natural.  How big does a tree grow?  It throws down roots, it builds all the leaves it needs, it grows to the genetic height it’s designed to grow.  We’re the only sentient organism in the universe, that I can see, that interferes with its own growth, and therefore, you interfere with your business’ growth.

Dr. Sea was showing you this morning about the flow experience.  You want to push yourself this week?  Stack an hour.  Stack an hour and see where your business’ stretch marks are.  Grow some purple striae.  I want you to feel this.

You’re trying to control.  Your habit of control is the most costly habit you have.  Control is your most costly habit . . . and it’s an illusion anyway.

One of the things we talked about at the Revive chiropractic seminar this time last year was building a Code of Honor in our offices, a benchmark or a system that we’re all going to live by and operate under.

This is our Code of Honor that we always operated in our office. This was our mantra.  And what it says is, “We can never be too busy, too inefficient, too tired, too distracted, too understaffed, too doctor centered, too staff centered, too anything to see one more patient.”  So at our peak capacity of 744 patients in a week in one office with one chiropractor and three chiropractic assistants we never turned anyone away, whether they were a new patient or an existing patient, whatever the case was.  Waiting list practice is an enigma.  It is a doctor centered practice and is an abomination to taking care of your patients.   If you’ve got your own stuff in the way you’re not serving your patients.  My opinion.  We called it the terrible toos.

A key element of chiropractic practice success for me was having a little fun.  We call it serious fun because there’s something very serious about what we do.  As soon we put our hands on a patient we’ve entered into a sacred bond with that patient.  Chiropractic techs, do not interrupt your doctor when s/he is with a patient.  There’s nothing that is so important or so pressing that he or she needs to be interrupted with to ask a question until they’ve completed that circle of influence with that patient.  If the office is on fire let him finish his job, her job.  Don’t worry about it, it’s only going to take a couple of minutes.  Don’t interrupt them to ask about when you need to schedule an appointment for somebody or the x-ray supplies need to ordered.

It’s a sacred bond, but it still can be serious and it can still be very fun and enjoyable.  I took this so serious when I was in the growth stage of my practice that I coined my own lexicon.  I called it the “fun factor.”  Everything I did had an element of fun in it.  This activity that I’m entering into, what’s the fun factor of this event?  Is it a 6, is it an 8, is it an 11?  I went so far as creating a fun account, not the fun accounts in the Seven Accounts System from Brain Spa,but an actual fun account that when I was having too much fun one day, seeing a lot of people, I mentally took  a step back and said, “I better make a deposit into my fun account because I’m having to dang much fun today. I might not have enough tomorrow and I can withdraw that fun tomorrow.”

Just change the whole game.  Some of you have no fun in practice and you wonder why people don’t come and see you.   It’s because you’re so stoic, you’re so serious, you look like you’ve been baptized in lemon juice and you don’t understand that people don’t want that in their life.  They want to have a little fun.