A lot of the work that I do with Chiropractors involves troubleshooting the problems in their practice. I have a business solution that applies to every single practice I work with, but it’s still necessary to identify unique and individual problems. No matter how good the system is, there’s still need to do this because every practice is unique. However, by approaching this question (what’s broken) in a systematic and comprehensive way, we’re able to troubleshoot fairly quickly, get to the root of the problem and fix it.

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My goal today is to give you my framework for looking for these problems

I use the concept of “The Five Pillars” quite often, and this is what I will be using to conceptualize my troubleshooting process today.

For those that are not familiar, the Five Pillars of every practice are Admin, Attract, Convert, Deliver, and Scale. Now, I suggest a practice goes through the process from beginning (admin) to end (scale) and in that order while they are working on improving their practice. It’s important to look at The Five Pillars in both a macro and micro way. Each pillar should be examined with extreme detail while also looking at how all five of the pillars function together. It’s these five pillars that are the support system for every practice, and if even one of them is weak, then it can negatively affect the practice as a whole.

Here’s a quick rundown:

Admin:

Admin is the very foundation of your entire business. Having a solid Admin pillar ensures that your practice runs on sound business principles. The Admin pillar is about having a practice that is run by Data-Driven Decisions, manages staff properly, and manages practice finances properly. If your practice administration is not set up the right way, it WILL harm every other area of your business.

Attract:

This is your marketing department, which should be consistent, scalable, reliable and automated. A good marketing department will essentially run its self once it’s set up and give a high return on investment- consistently. Good marketing will also have a solid referral strategy that brings in prospective new patients without spending any money.

Convert:

This pillar is all about patient communication and well-packaged care. How well are you converting your prospective new patients? Are you offering the right packages for your practice demographic? Great practice owners know that they need to put a lot of work into refining their conversion skills and have well-packaged care.

Deliver:

The Deliver pillar is how you deliver your care and your practice culture. A great practice aesthetically fits their target demographic, has a staff that is impeccable with patients, and delivers very effective and efficient care.

Scale:

The last pillar is about how you scale your practice. There are very reliable and proven strategies for scaling your practice- once the first four pillars are solid. When you’re ready to scale, you need to make sure that it doesn’t break any of the other pillars, which requires proper planning and attention.

So, there is a quick way to conceptualize and understand the five pillars; now we’re on the question of “What’s broken?”.

Here are a few scenarios I hear often:

1. “I have a decent amount of prospective new patients coming through my doors, but I can’t seem to convert many of them into patients.”

So, with this problem, we would go down the list starting at the beginning. It’s probably not an admin problem- at least not directly. It’s probably not the attract pillar because you have people coming through the door, although it might be due to HOW you’re marketing to them.

I would say that this problem starts with the “convert” pillar. There can be a few issues here. Maybe your care packages don’t make sense. Or, maybe you have a problem communicating the value of your care. A successful practice has a conversion rate of at least 80% with prospective new patients- if you’re not at 80% here, then this definitely needs work.

When you have a problem in the “convert” pillar, it will negatively affect everything else in your practice. You will deliver less care. You won’t make as much money so the staff morale will be lower. You won’t be able to scale your business, and you’ll be wasting money on marketing because you’ll need to have more people through the door just to convert a handful of patients.

2. “I have a great practice, but I can’t seem to get enough prospective new patients in my practice.”

This one is VERY common, and I think we all know what pillar this would be- Attract.

There can be many reasons for this, but one thing I know for sure- if your marketing system is broken, then your practice is broken. If you haven’t figured out a sustainable marketing system that produces results week after week, then that needs to be fixed immediately. Here’s the really unfortunate thing about this problem, it negatively affects every single part of your practice; your income, time, energy, happiness and staff moral all drops. My recommendation for this is first to address your Admin pillar because you can’t build a skyscraper on a weak foundation, and then focus on the marketing one hundred percent until it’s working. Once you’ve done that, focus on strong conversions, then delivery, then scaling. It will take some time to perform all of this, but with a little bit of professional guidance it can be done more quickly- instead of years, it can be done in months.

3. “ I can’t seem to find high-quality staff, and when I do find someone, after a while, their performance starts to drop.”

This problem is VERY common as well. Many Chiropractors got into this profession because they wanted to help people and make a decent living- they didn’t realize half of their career would also be running a business and managing staff. This problem would be the Admin pillar because it’s essentially a structural problem. You need to be able to set your practice up in a way where every single person involved knows EXACTLY what is expected of them. Then, your practice needs to be built on a data-driven philosophy where everything is measured- including staff performance. When you measure practice and staff performance, then it’s easy for everyone to know what works and what doesn’t, and also what is expected of everyone in their roles- numbers don’t lie.

So, there are a few scenarios to help you look at your practice in a more formulaic and systematic way when troubleshooting. Once you can address the structural problems in all five pillars, then each success will start to bleed into another area of the practice. Eventually, over time, you will have a practice that runs like a well-oiled machine because every system works well independently and in conjunction with the others. This optimized practice is where you have that where you can work 30 hours a week, increase your income and actually take nice vacations without the practice coming to a stand still.

That’s all for today!

Until next time! Wishing you the best in practice and life!

More private practice growth strategies…

This post has been adapted from the Nexus Executive Academy VLOG.

About

Dr. Jonathan Hyslop is a practice strategist and growth expert to chiropractors.

After a successful career as a practicing chiropractor owning multiple practices, Jonathan helps fellow chiropractors succeed in the areas of administrative strategy and management, marketing, sales, and stable scalability.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter at @nexusexecutive. We welcome your comments at jonathan@nexusexecutiveacademy.com.