October 2004

A mile wide and a mile deep

by Dr. Eric Plasker

I recently attended a seminar that featured Stedman Graham, long time companion of Oprah Winfrey. The seminar's topic was how to build a brand that produces extraordinary results for your business. The key phrase Mr. Graham kept repeating was "a mile wide and a mile deep" and represents a concept that can be applied to chiropractic practices. In fact, lifetime family wellness is the ultimate "mile wide and mile deep" chiropractic niche.

A mile wide

What does "a mile wide" mean for a chiropractor? It means attracting unlimited numbers of new patients to your practice. The single best way to do that is to turn every new patient into a family of new patients. If you did this, you would leverage every new patient who walked through the door to become two, three or four new patients, depending on the size of the family. Your practice would expand, becoming "a mile wide."

Another very simple way to expand the width of your practice is to think in terms of family generations.

For example, family practice chiropractors worldwide are setting records seeing three, four and five generations of families for chiropractic care. A family doesn't have to consist of a mother, father and children only, but might include grandparents, great‑grandparents and even great‑great‑grand parents as the population ages and more and more people are living longer lives. Attracting multi‑generational families is a classic, simple way to expand your practice "a mile wide."

An additional way to broaden the reach of your practice is to target the inner circle family for each of your patients.

The inner circle family includes other relatives, friends and co‑workers with whom the patient socializes on a regular basis. An inner circle family under chiropractic care will continue to expand your practice "a mile wide," as each person refers more and more of his or her acquaintances to your practice.

You can see that exponential growth is possible if you focus on this family wellness niche. In The Family Practice we have a saying that every one new patient soon becomes five, and every five soon becomes 20, and every 20 soon becomes 50. This growth occurs when you attract a new patient's immediate family, generations of family and inner circle.

A mile deep

What does "a mile deep" mean for a chiropractor? It simply means providing everybody with lifetime care ‑‑ a mission DCs should endeavor to achieve every day. Why? Because for most of you, it's perfectly congruent with the way you live your own life.

For example, if I asked you whether you get adjusted, you would probably answer, "yes." If I asked how often you got adjusted you might reply, "once a week," "once every two weeks," "once a month," or "once every three months." If I asked you at what point in your life you planned on stopping, you'd probably say "never." Getting adjusted on a regular basis over the course of a lifetime is the essence of lifetime care.

Imagine what would happen to your practice if all of your patients chose to participate in chiropractic care the way that you and you family do! I've spoken to chiropractors in the largest personal injury practices in the world, and with some of the largest sports and rehabilitation DCs in the world. In every case when I've asked the doctor the above questions, the response has been the same. I've spoken to the largest neurology and subluxation‑based chiropractors on the planet, and again, they've all replied in the same way. All of these doctors get adjusted on a regular basis and have no intention of ever stopping. Teach your patients to do what you do and you'll change your practice forever, expanding it "a mile deep."

Unfortunately, many DCs use chiropractic as a front‑end business to make as much money off the insurance companies as they can for the first 15 to 20 visits ‑‑ anywhere between $2,000 and $5,000 per patient. They view these collections as the lifetime value of a patient to their practice. Yet, the truth is that the long‑term lifetime care value of a patient to your practice is much bigger than the few thousand dollars you might get in the first couple of months of intensive care.

What if your patients paid you $2,000 a year, every year, for the rest of their lives ‑‑ in exchange for weekly adjustments that occupy a mere three‑to‑five minutes of your time? How many people like that would you want in your practice? If you had 100 people like that in your practice you would increase your income by $200,000. If you had 100 families, you might add an additional $350,000 a year to your practice.

The secret to marketing lifetime care and filling the lifetime wellness niche is to educate people. Ask your patients and prospective patients to think about their lifestyle and future health. When somebody is suffering, it's important to explain that there is only one thing worse than suffering today, and that's suffering over the next 20 or 30 or 50 years! Lifetime care is the ultimate depth. Your practice becomes "a mile deep" when your new patients continue to receive regular chiropractic care, instead of leaving after just two or three months of care.

To best implement the mission of lifetime chiropractic care for everyone, you need to create office systems, procedures, marketing and strategies that congruently communicate the lifetime family wellness values of chiropractic care to your current and prospective patients. At The Family Practice, we've seen chiropractors greatly improve the quality of their own lives by committing to this lifetime family wellness niche.

(Eric Plasker, DC, is the founder of The Family Practice where chiropractors unite to lead family health care around a mission of Lifetime Care for Everyone [LCfE]. The Family Practice offers an LCfE Connection program with ongoing training, support and marketing, and provides all the systems, tools and resources necessary to meet the demand for family wellness within the doctor's community. For seminar, coaching, training, or product information, call toll‑free 866‑532‑3327. Or visit The Family Practice website at www.thefamilypractice.net.)

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