A Lifestyle Practice for Chiropractors

A Lifestyle Practice for Chiropractors

When Rich and I started our first Chiropractic practice (wow, almost 10 years ago!) we had a very clear vision of the type of practice we wanted to create. We wanted to build a practice where we would work together, in an inviting and comfortable atmosphere, treating the friends we made in our community, and their friends, families, and neighbors. We wanted to be able to bring our kids to work, as well as, schedule our work around trips and other important events in our lives. What we wanted was a solid Lifestyle Practice.

So, what is a lifestyle practice?  It’s a practice that compliments your life instead of controlling your life. At the time, we didn’t realize that’s what we were building, but looking back at it now, a true, solid lifestyle practice is exactly what we were building, and lifestyle practice didn’t just describe our end goal, it described the entire journey we took to get there. We also believe that building this type of practice allowed us to stay engaged with our patients and practice without feeling overworked or burnt out. We always went in feeling refreshed and ready for the day!

Commitment

There are so many important points about all of this that I’m going to share with you, but one of the most important is to know that we had just as strong of a commitment to our practice and patients as we did to the people and activities in our lives. It’s not possible to build a SOLID lifestyle practice without the commitment to your practice and its growth. By utilizing awesome systems in your office, like we did, and having a relationship based approach to patient acquisition and treatment, like we did, you can create a SOLID lifestyle practice too. A practice that will continue to grow so that at some point you have the freedom to hire an associate and give yourself more free time, or allow you to expand offices and grow exponentially. Our lifestyle practice gave us the freedom to move to another state and start another practice!

Freedom

The reason we both got into Chiropractic in the first place was so that we could have a career that allowed us more freedom – to work the hours we wanted, the days we wanted, and to have more control over how much of our lives were dedicated to working. At the time, when we started our first practice, Rich had a 7 year old son that he wanted to spend as much time with as he could, and I wanted to travel home often to visit my young nieces and family. For us, there has always been more to life than working, and as much as we love Chiropractic and spreading wellness, we wanted the freedom to enjoy our lives because we value friendships, family, vacations, and time spent together doing other things we love.

What is Right for You?

Maybe you’re unsure if a lifestyle practice is right for you, because it isn’t right for everyone. It’s important to assess where you are at in life, what are your priorities, what are your values? A lifestyle practice isn’t right for everyone. If you want a huge office with a gorgeous build out and lots of staff within a few years of graduation, then you need to be willing to work 50+ hours a week marketing, managing, and treating. If you’re looking to build your practice around the freedom to enjoy your family, hobbies, or other activities, then it's definitely for you! We’re all at different places in life and want or need different things.

When we were starting our practice, we moved to Colorado to be closer to Rich’s son and we wanted to spend as much time as we could with him, so it was important to us that we not be dictated by our office. We took lunch at a time so that we could both pick him up from school. We took mornings and afternoons off in the summer to be at the pool. We took Spring Breaks, summer vacations, Thanksgivings, and Christmas trips out of town to be with family. We weren’t willing to miss out on these experiences!

Growth?

Don’t get me wrong, a lifestyle practice can certainly grow to a larger scale, but it takes time. We were able to hire an associate and move away from our practice after just over 5 years. At the time we did this we were also looking at buying our own office space or expanding to have satellite clinics, so the opportunity is there, it just can be done much faster with other systems. Faster isn’t always better though. What allowed us to step out of our practice and have it run so smoothly was that we had built a solid practice that could withstand bringing in a new person. What makes our approach so solid is that we built our lifestyle practice using a relationship based approach to patient acquisition and treatment. We will talk more about this in another blog, but for now remember that the two aspects, a lifestyle practice and relationship marketing, go hand-in-hand and both play a major role in avoiding burnout, which we'll talk about in another blog!

Go All In…

Maybe you feel like you don’t have what it takes to do what we did. We visited successful Chiropractic offices during school and felt that way too when we first graduated. We weren’t sure if we would fail, we feared the long-term commitment of opening our own office, would we get patients, would we know how to treat them and talk to them, would we have the money, would we be able to market effectively, and would we end up being financially secure when it was all said and done? These were all things we asked ourselves too. We were both moving to a new community, almost 700 miles from where we had been living while in Chiropractic school. We didn’t have any friends or family in the area. We honestly didn’t know a single soul. It was a small town just North of Denver that appeared to be growing, but it was January 2009, the stock market had been crashing, housing prices were plummeting and we were scared AF. We weren’t sure we stood a chance, but we were ALL IN!

Rich and I found it within ourselves to move beyond all of that. We had confidence in everything we had learned up to that point and we found the resources we needed to take the first steps. After a few trips to the area we found our office location. We talked to each other endlessly about our vision of the practice and what the steps were that we would need to take to get it open. We made checklists and shopped for everything we would need. Then we diligently researched marketing materials, websites, etc. We utilized whatever information we could find to learn how to market, communicate, and treat in such a way as to continue growing, and eventually succeed at running a solid lifestyle practice.

Our Values…

When it comes to our success, it isn’t any one thing we could pinpoint that got us there. We had both been to different Chiropractic coaching group seminars, but ultimately we didn’t join a program because we didn’t feel like we aligned with any of them. From what we understood coaching programs pushed long-term treatment plans, writing off deductibles and copay, sales scripts, etc. All of these things were a huge turnoff to us. We didn’t want to be bound by contracts, and tell every patient that they needed the same treatment plan. Rich and I didn’t want to barely push on someone’s back and tell them they would be all better. We were committed to our relationship based, referral practice approach, and to enjoying our lives outside of our practice.

Chiropractic is a second career for both of us. Rich had previously been in sales and banking, and I had worked as an office manager in a Chiropractic clinic and in restaurants. We both took what we had already learned from our personal experiences and what we learned in school, and combined it with the resources we could find to build a business. We spoke to friends and mentors about how they were doing things and we spoke to business owners in other fields. Over the course of several years we developed our own systems for efficient office management. We developed our own way of marketing that didn’t include spinal screenings(because that was something we didn’t want to do). We developed our own way of goal setting and record keeping. Rich and I went to seminars to learn more about billing, coding, and documentation. We honed in on the best way to give a report of findings and the most effective way to communicate to the patient.

Create your own Lifestyle Practice

If you are in your final year of Chiropractic school, or just graduating then these might be all of the tasks you’re stressed about when it comes to thinking about opening your own practice. You want so badly to open on your own, you want to have the freedom and flexibility to carry out your own vision of what practice should be, and you are tired of bringing in profits for someone else and you want a practice you can call your own. Maybe you want to build a solid lifestyle practice like we did, that allows you the freedom and flexibility to spend time with your new spouse, or kids. Maybe you want to play semi-pro golf, or be in a band. If this interests you then I recommend setting up a complimentary strategy call with us!

Strategy Call

After you pick a time for your strategy call, we will email you an intake to be filled out prior to our conversation. The intake will give us information about your background and ultimate goals for succeeding in Chiropractic. While on the call, we'll clarify your vision, and assess your needs. We'll also help you decide on your next best steps, and send you a follow-up email with resources we think you'll need to complete the steps. If you feel confused or unsure, this is an outstanding way to gain confidence in your decisions and clarity for your goals. Setup your call here!

The ChiroPlanner

We developed the ChiroPlanner three years ago as a resource for students or new chiros, an extra tool to put in their toolkit. It’s an extremely inexpensive guide to getting started. It will help you clarify your vision of what you want your practice to be, as well as, help you develop a plan for getting started. It will keep you on track as you make decisions and meet people in your community. There are resources in it that will save you money, time, and heartache by shortening your learning curve on the how-tos of starting up. You can incorporate some of our systems, it took us years to develop, at the beginning and possibly be profitable within a first few months.

We didn’t create the ChiroPlanner as a get rich quick scheme. We developed it because we see so many students plagued with the same questions. The ChiroPlanner is our way of answering some of those questions. Opening a successful practice isn’t rocket science, however, there are certainly better ways of doing things depending on the results you are looking for. Although we didn’t join any coaching groups, we still talked to mentors, colleagues, and friends. We had many years of combined experience in sales and working in and being around Chiropractic offices. We also didn’t succeed at every turn. Lots of things didn’t work, but we evolved, and changed for the better. We created better systems, better ways of treating, of communicating, etc. The ChiroPlanner is a valuable resource that guides you through many of the processes it took us years to clarify.

Lifestyle Practice Builders Podcast

Maybe you already own the ChiroPlanner, you've already setup your complimentary strategy call, and you want more...then I recommend listening to the podcast. We've recorded over 100 episodes and counting. Some of the episodes feature Chiropractic guests, others feature business owners succeeding in their own fields, and others feature us talking about different topics regarding starting and running a Chiropractic practice.

We are getting ready to release more podcast episodes for 2020 and would really love your feedback! If you have any topics you would like us to cover more in-depth, then we would love to hear from you. We would also love to interview chiros who are doing well in practice, so drop us a line if that’s you!

Contact Us

Thank you for taking the time to read through this post. If you made it this far then it’s clear you are dedicated to succeeding at this, and we want to be apart of that. Please let us know how we can help you. We will email you back!

Follow Our Journey

Like what you read here today? Take a minute to:

• Follow us on Instagram @lifestylepractice!
• Subscribe to the podcast (Spotify | iTunes) or many others like YouTube, Amazon, etc. Wherever you listen to podcasts. Search Lifestyle Practice Builders!
• Join us in our free Facebook Group for Chiropractors!
• Receive updates about podcasts, new resources, and when we share about what's working in our practice, by signing up for our newsletter!