July 2009

If your business is going up and down, find the horizon

by CJ Mertz, DC

Many years ago, my dear friend Carl challenged me to a dog fight, literally. He told me about Combat USA, a new program designed to quickly train amateurs to fly Italian jets. One month later we were at the San Jose airport receiving a half-hour of instruction from two top gun pilots who would fly with us.

As we were flying out over Santa Cruz to the Pacific Ocean, the pilots challenged us to try and fly "in formation." Carl was first lead and as he looked out at my plane, it kept going up and down. Carl yelled at me through his helmet phone, "Hold it steady CJ!" The next thing I heard was unbelievable. His own pilot came over the line and said to Carl, "It's not CJ that's going up and down boss, it's you." He told Carl to fly his plane to the horizon rather than trying to react to my plane. As soon as he focused on the horizon, we were in formation and what an awesome feeling (we did dog fight, but I'll leave that for another time).

All too often, when I see chiropractors' practices going up and down, they're reacting to business results, rather than leading with timeless principles. For example, DCs market most intensely only after they've felt a lull in new patients. They re-engineer their patient education process because patients are dropping out of care plans in reaction to lowered conversions. There are other actions that always result in an up and down trend in your practice.

The hardest part of focusing on the horizon is looking out beyond your current situation. There's a gravitational pull to simply look to the practice challenges right in front of you. So much so, they can become the driving force of your decision making. Chiropractors who are no longer on the up and down merry-go-round have had to learn and trust a new set of principles. So what is the horizon? It's what's supposed to happen. Doing what you are supposed to do is completely different than reacting to results.

What you do in practice today is building the practice you'll have eight weeks from now. Generating leads today harvests new patients tomorrow. Studying today builds skill for tomorrow. Getting more discipline today brings more organization tomorrow. Simply doing what's on your schedule book is an obsolete strategy. You deserve better and so does your town. Ask yourself what you're supposed to be doing today that will make you the headquarters of lifetime family wellness in your town tomorrow? In the last quarter, our clients experienced best days, weeks, and especially months in practice. How did they do it in this economy? They stuck to a winning game plan, and never veered from it.

The profession isn't changing. Chiropractic's flawless principles are being fulfilled through on-purpose DCs, who challenge themselves to continually get better. A big mistake is letting chiropractic take second place to rehab therapy, message, nutrition or anything else in your practice. Invariably, this leads to lower referral numbers, lower retention -- and lower profit.

By definition, anytime your practice is struggling with up and down, the chiropractic principles are being drowned out by some other message. Ironically, the vast majority of patients aren't motivated or driven by short term solutions, but they will follow you there if that's how you lead them.

It's estimated that nearly half of the US population has been diagnosed with a chronic disease. Most medications people take today are functioning as a lifetime prescription whether for pain, inflammation, infection, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression or any number of other conditions. The more you lead your patients toward the chiropractic lifestyle of a healthy nerve system, your patients experience less up and down in their health, and you prevent up and down in your practice.

The body hasn't changed what it needs to heal and chiropractic hasn't changed in its ability to help the body do just that. So, what has changed? The chiropractor's focus. Gain the courage to look beyond your immediate circumstances and you will be richly rewarded with a prosperous and growing future.

Now, more than ever, it's important to have a seasonal coach successfully navigate these waters with you. Call me and I'll send you a complimentary DVD that your team can implement to re-establish the right focus and vision for your practice. Together, we can turn up and down to up and away.

(Dr. CJ Mertz is the founder and head coach of the prestigious Waiting List Practice Chiropractic training organization. See current WLP opportunities on the back page of this issue. For seminar tickets and information on WLP coaching services, please call The Waiting List Practice at 877-TEAM-WLP.)