May 2003

The builder's secret

by Jeff Smith

One of the insights the world's most successful doctors are coming to is that building an ideal practice is much like building a dream house.

Let's say you're ready to build your dream house.

You wake up on Saturday morning, hop in your pickup or SUV, and buzz down to the local Home Depot or lumber yard. You zip through the aisles grabbing everything that strikes your fancy. An hour later, your truck is filled with a bunch of 2x4 boards, a couple sacks of concrete, a few gallons of paint, maybe a window or two, and 10 or 12 boxes of nails.

You cruise on down to the property you've picked out for your dream house and start building. You nail together the boards, throw down some concrete, stick in a window or two, and throw some paint on the whole mess.

Your next step is to get on your cell phone and call all your buddies and say, "Hey, come on over, I just built my dream home -- party's at my place tonight."

Yeah, right.

There is NO way you'd consider doing something like that to build your dream home, yet many doctors are following that same "system" every day and then wondering why they don't ever seem to be able to create their ideal practice, much less their ideal lifestyle.

They're making "the builder's mistake."

Here are three simple steps to determine whether you're unconsciously doing the same thing.

1. You've never created a "Life Plan."

In the dream house story, what steps did our well‑intentioned builder skip? It's quite obvious: to build a dream home, you would start with a clear vision of what you wanted to create. Then you would go to a professional, an architect or builder, and have them help you create a blueprint for that home.

The process the world's most successful doctors follow is no different. They start with a blueprint of their ideal personal lifestyle, called their "Life Plan."

Why life plan and not business plan?

Because they realize that the true purpose of their practice is to fund their ideal lifestyle. If you don't know precisely what lifestyle you want to fund, and how much it costs to fund it, there's no way you can determine how big or how profitable your practice must be.

This is a key point.

Our dream home builder can't answer questions like how long it will take to build the home, how much it will cost, and what materials are needed until after the blueprint's been created.

You can't accurately determine how much volume you need to do or the best ways to grow your practice until AFTER you've created your own Life Plan. Going to practice management programs, reading books, and listening to tapes that talk about how to grow your practice are irrelevant until you've created your Life Plan and know precisely what kind of lifestyle you want to live -- and precisely what your ideal practice would look like to fund that lifestyle.

Trying to implement a bunch of practice growth strategies before you create your plan is like trying to build your ideal home with no blueprint. You might end up with what you're dreaming of, but don't count on it. If you don't start with the right Life Plan, you're probably going to end up with a mess.

2. You are constantly busy.

Doctors frequently make the mistake of equating being busy with being productive (or profitable).

D.C.s who have a Life Plan and are clear about what they are trying to create have the huge advantage of being able to say "no" to anything that doesn't fit into their ideal lifestyle or ideal practice, even if some other "guru" or fellow doctor tells them it is important or profitable to do.

This ability to say "no," frequently and without guilt, is a skill most doctors have never been taught. When you get it right, you become extremely productive, but rarely, if ever, busy.

In other words, you are like a laser. Everything you do is done for a purpose. You know exactly why you are doing it and how it helps you create your ideal lifestyle. And you've said "no" to anything that fails to meet those criteria.

3. You are focused on increasing the volume in your practice.

This is one of the most common mistakes doctors make. They have been told to "serve, serve, serve," and so they equate more with better. They are not the same.

In fact, in many cases, increasing the volume in your practice leads to LESS success, not more.

Why?

Let's say it costs you $100,000 per year to lead your ideal lifestyle (remember, if you had a complete Life Plan, you would know this off the top of your head). You say your spouse and kids are the most important thing in the world to you.

This means it will take about 100 adjustments per week to fund your ideal lifestyle, depending on how much you charge and what your overhead is.

So, once you have reached this figure, focusing on more patients actually leads to less true success because it takes you away from your number one priority, your family. It also causes you to be less present and less focused for each of the patients you do adjust, which as you know, can affect the quality of care you are giving to them as well.

Bottom line: "More is better" is a myth. Successful doctors avoid groups and systems that focus on increasing volume without understanding the relationship between their practice and their personal life. They replace the "more is better" idea with "The purpose of my practice is to fund my ideal lifestyle. Therefore, success means how well I am creating my ideal lifestyle, not how much volume I am doing in my practice."

"Outside the box"? Certainly. Effective? Profoundly.

(Jeff Smith is the Executive Director of the World Chiropractic Alliance, and an acknowledged authority on "outside the box" success strategies for chiropractors. As a non‑chiropractor who's been a patient of chiropractic since he was 17, his unconventional ideas have revolutionized the lives of an exclusive group of D.C.s in "The 2X+1 Chiropractic Mastermind," his private by‑invitation‑only community of the world's top doctors. Smith is the author of dozens of books and courses, including "The Stress‑Free Chiropractic Success System." You may e-mail specific comments or questions about this column directly to Jeff Smith at stressfree@lvcm.com)