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Any business owner can attest to the fact that there are times when you need to find some help. This can be particularly true in the field of chiropractic because most chiropractic offices are run by chiropractors-most of whom have no business training or experience.
Let's face it, chiropractic college does not prepare its graduates for owning a business. This is not a negative statement against chiropractic schools, because the job of a chiropractic school is to prepare its graduates to be doctors of chiropractic, not necessarily business owners. It just so happens that most chiropractors work in private practice and therefore, if they own the clinic, they must also wear the hat of business owner. This is the reason we find so many chiropractors hiring chiropractic coaching such as business consultants, or practice mentors-not because they are struggling with their hat as the doctor, but because they are struggling with their hat as business owner. If you give this some thought, nearly every pro athlete has their own coach to help maximize their talent, so chiropractic coaching can be viewed in the same perspective: to maximize your talent.
So, how do you find the right help that will fit your needs? Well, although there may not be a perfect way to find the right chiropractic coaching help, there certainly ARE very specific actions you can take to find the right consultant for you.
Chiropractic Coaching Check-up
First, it is helpful to realize that almost every chiropractic consultant out there has successful clients. This is due, in part, because, there are some chiropractors that will be relatively success no matter what chiropractic coaching consultant they use. This same doctor who you might consider "successful" may also do a heck of a lot better if he had the help of a different chiropractic coaching consultant. So, the fact that a consultant tells you about a client that they have who has a big practice may not mean that you'll also do well with their program. You'd also want to find out how that client was doing prior to joining the chiropractic coaching program. Nonetheless, realize that a few big hitters mean little. What you'd want to see is a general trend of success from a majority of clients.
One of the first things to check into when investigating a chiropractic coaching company is what exactly are they going for as an end product of their program. Some consultants specialize in a specific area, such as marketing, or insurance billing. If the chiropractic coaching consultant you are considering is a specialist in one area, you'll want to make sure that they specialize in an area where you want help.
Secondly, with regard to the end product of their chiropractic coaching program, you'll want to see what kind of office their program creates. For example, some coaching programs are geared to create a cash practice, others an insurance practice, while other programs create an owner doctor centered practice that is personality driven-compared to another program which creates a staff driven office. You may or may not want any of these types of practices. Therefore, be sure to determine exactly what kind of office you will end up with if you do the program.
A look around the chiropractic coaching world today reveals the fact that most chiropractic coaching consultants focus on "head space" or philosophy, marketing, insurance billing, or niche practice (such as decompression, etc). There are a few consultants who offer a wider range of help, and quite a few that claim to offer a wider range, but fail to deliver. None of these consultants are wrong to deliver only a specialized area, but you must know what you need and what they offer before making a commitment.
The best method to use when looking to determine what a practice looks like once a chiropractic coaching program is implemented is to speak with current or past clients that have used that program. You can ask the consultant for names and phone numbers of current or past clients and they will most likely give them to you.
Specifically, you want to speak with successful clients. The reason you want to speak to successful clients is because those are the people who obviously benefited from the program. This means that those clients must have utilized the program, and probably implemented the material that they learned. Assuming that you plan to implement the material that you learn, these are the type of people you want to talk to.
Sometimes when a chiropractor is looking to speak with past clients of a chiropractic coaching consultant, they try to find an unhappy former client. The strange logic used in this case is that the doctor wants to "hear both sides of the story" or "wants to see what an unsuccessful client has to say about the program." The reason this is not logical, or helpful, is two-fold.
First of all, obviously someone who did not do well with a chiropractic coaching consultant is not likely to say anything positive. So why bother calling, you know what the answer will be. Even if an objective view of the situation reveals that the reason the client did not do well was that the client never implemented any part of the program, it might be 1 in 100 people that could actually confess that fact. The other 99 out of 100 would blame the company.
Secondly, if a chiropractic coaching company has many successful clients that attribute their success to the program and this can be verified by speaking directly with those clients, then any unsuccessful clients probably failed to apply some aspect of the program, or ran into some unique problem either personally or in practice which they failed to overcome.
The point is that a chiropractic consultant that gives bad advice which doesn't work would soon find itself out of business. Therefore, if you find a company which has a long track record of many happy, successful clients who recommend the program, then you can be fairly certain that some aspect of what that consultant teaches must have been very helpful to those clients.
Implement your Chiropractic Coaching Strategy
Once you have chosen the chiropractic coaching consultant that fits your needs, be sure to implement the strategies that you learn. Of course, you must do your due diligence with regard to making sure that any procedure changes, or marketing strategies, etc are, in fact, legal where you practice-- and, you may find that you need to tweak some things to make them legal. However, those things are usually few and far between.
Make the commitment to yourself to use the material that your chiropractic coaching consultant gives you to help build the practice of your dreams. The world needs more successful, affluent chiropractors. If you deliver a health care service that you believe in, than why not share it with more of the world! When you succeed, the chiropractic profession succeeds, and more patients get to live healthier lives. There's nothing better than that and chiropractic coaching can help you achieve more of that and faster than just learning from trial and error!
To learn more ways for effective chiropractic marketing and practice building, be sure to attend one of our chiropractic seminars. To learn more about our effective chiropractic coaching services and programs, give us a jingle at the Chiropractic Business Academy at 1-888-989-0855 or visit us online.
Dr Eric Huntington, DC is a national chiropractic speaker, ICA State Assembly Representative, Maryland Chiropractic Association Board Member and President of the Chiropractic Business Academy
