October 2007

Company Profile:  Cunningham Financial Group

One-on-one coaching -- The last piece of your success puzzle

by James Cunningham, MCEP, RFC, CSA

Founder and CEO, Cunningham Financial Group (CFG)

Right now you have an "ok" practice. It's challenging enough and you're certainly not getting wealthy, but you're earning a living in your healing profession. Still, somehow it's not as satisfying as you thought it would be. And, truth be told, you're a little concerned about your retirement. Once you're out of practice and the kids are out of college, will you have enough money for the retirement you'd like?

Perhaps you simply have a feeling that you haven't been able to achieve your fullest success. In those rare moments of reflection you're allowed in the course of a busy personal and professional life, does it seem like something is holding you back? My experience over more than a decade of working with hundreds of chiropractors, tells me that the two largest hurdles to practice success and personal growth and fulfillment are:

***  A failure to set goals or establish a plan

***  If a plan exists, an inability to stay on track to achieve goals

Whether discussing practice management goals, personal or professional financial goals, or long‑term personal life goals, more than 80% of doctors fail to achieve their dreams and desires simply because they don't have the time, energy, or expertise to establish effective goals and to continually track progress and achievement.

Can you remember when you last had uninterrupted time to even think seriously about the future of your practice and your life, let alone come up with a plan and the time to implement it?

Even a disciplined, educated professional often cannot establish effective, do‑able goals and make progress toward achieving them without the help of outside objectivity and accountability. You need someone outside the practice who can talk you through the goal‑setting process and the many challenges and monitor the progress. In the daily crush of seeing patients and practice administration, without that sort of accountability, it's just too easy to let things slide.

The bottom line is, you need a coach. For the same reasons that elite athletes benefit from coaching, so will you. With a coach, you establish a plan and tactics to achieve your goals. Once the plan is in place, you can concentrate your energies on achievement.

A coach supports you in the achievement of your goals with goal‑setting, positive reinforcement, guidance, and by serving as a sounding board. A coach holds you accountable, motivating you to fulfill your plan. And as you know, "what gets measured is what gets done."

Coaching is a learning process. A professional coach helps you identify both personal and business goals, then develop strategies, tactics and action plans to achieve those goals. Together, you will evolve and modify the plan to best suit your needs and circumstances. You will learn specific insights and skills to ensure the achievement of your goals.

In the CFG Professional Coaching Program, we help our clients develop an immediate action plan and then work with them to implement and expand the plan to achieve their goals. Many doctors tell us that they were able to achieve more than they ever thought possible by following intelligent strategies and systems, backed up by built‑in self‑accountability.

CFG's "Council of Coaches," which includes health care, marketing and management professionals ‑‑ including DCs ‑‑ with more than 150 years of collective experience, ensures that our coaches provide real‑world, effective guidance. At CFG, convenient phone consultations with a professional coach help clients sort out what they want to do, what they have to do, and how to accomplish it.

A coach should partner with you in an open, creative process that inspires you to fulfill your personal and professional potential, as well as your dreams. At CFG, coaches are trained to listen so that their approach and guidance are customized to each client's needs and situation. They can pull solutions and strategies out of the client that have just simmered below the surface because of a lack of time. We believe that doctors can be naturally creative and thoughtful. Our job as a coach is to nurture and enhance those skills, allowing you the time to address your personal, family and professional responsibilities, secure in the knowledge that you have a plan in place to achieve your largest goals.

A good coaching program should be able to help you address pressing needs in many areas of your professional and personal life, including: Goal‑setting and follow‑up; retirement planning; streamlining operations; financial analysis and planning; debt elimination; keeping more of what you earn; effective, affordable marketing; personnel management; best business structure; strategic planning; and finding more time for yourself.          

At CFG, we have identified three fundamental elements of a coaching program that ensure its success:

1. The Practice Assessment Intake Tool ...allows our coaches to gather the basic information which is critical for future coaching success. From the very first coaching call we utilize a strategic, accountable and comprehensive process. The key to a successful coaching program is measurable progress toward goals. Establishing the goals to track as early in the process as possible is the driver for the success of the coaching.

2. Goal Tracking ...is the driving force and reason for each phone contact. Reporting and discussing the progress toward the goals since the last call is followed by recommendations and discussion of next steps, adjustment of scope, current challenges, and positive reinforcement.

3. Senior coaches ...are always available to work with coaches to develop plans, tactics, next steps, etc. for clients for the next coaching call appointment. Our Council of Coaches, which includes health care, marketing and management professionals ‑‑ including chiropractors ‑‑ is always available to help coaches and clients address even the most seemingly complex challenges.

All CFG coaches undergo a rigorous training program in every element that can impact a doctor's dreams ‑‑ management, finances, marketing and personal growth. They also learn the specific challenges and parameters of the professional practice, which are vastly different than those of standard business enterprises. Through lectures, reading and listening to other coaches' phone consultations, coaches learn what advice to give and how to best give it. Because of our focus on results, CFG coaches are able to customize their guidance to best fit a practice and a practitioner in order to ensure achievement.

And the training for our coaches is an on‑going process; they never stop learning and gathering the knowledge they can use to assist their clients. Whether it's a new financial strategy or a new marketing technology, or even the latest research in psychology, we bring it to our coaches so they can apply it to their consulting.

A reputable coaching program will also offer a satisfaction guarantee to ensure that you don't waste time in a program that isn't working for you or your practice. At CFG, we guarantee that, by following your coaching plan, you will increase your net income by at least 25% in the first year or your coaching is free.

The first rule of professional coaching is that when you change behavior, you will change results. At CFG, we use proven and scientifically validated strategies, tactics and processes to change self‑defeating behaviors by building on the relevant personal aspects of our clients: Thinking, beliefs, values, motivation, emotion and self‑awareness, among others. Multidisciplinary coaches can bring a variety of techniques to bear on a client's challenges in order to customize a solution.

Many coaching programs today teach old practices and offer few new generation methods or technologies to create real change. That's why, all too often, nothing happens. Achieving measurable, sustainable progress toward goals isn't a matter of simple phone conversations and cheerleading. It requires the skilful use of validated, proven behavioral change strategies and tactics.

There are a number of organizations that provide certification systems for personal and business coaches. In North America the terms "certification" or "certified" typically refer to an individual who has achieved certain standards, and the terms "accreditation" or "accredited" typically refer to an organization or school that has achieved certain standards. CFG coaches receive certification from the National Council of Business and Professional Coaches.

When you take advantage of the collective experience of a responsible coaching program, you get your practice on track and keep it there. I know it because I see it happen in our own coaching practice every day. As we help doctors build patient flow and increase revenues, we help them reduce stress, accomplish more, and enjoy their practice on their terms.

Just as with elite athletes, doctors don't achieve their highest potential without the guidance of the right coaching. Through an innovative, results‑focused coaching program, you really can establish ‑‑ and achieve ‑‑ financial goals you couldn't even dream of before!

(Cunningham Financial Group is helping health care professionals all over the country. The company offers national monthly seminars and educational tools to business owners, which are available by calling 480‑443‑0455 or by visiting the Cunningham Financial Group website at www.cunninghamfinancial.com )