Click here to download the transcript.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.
Hello there and welcome to this week’s show Growth Without Risk. My name is Dr. Janice Hughes, and I’m excited to be your host for today’s show. I really wanted to title this about the mid-year business review and it’s exciting because here we are at July 6th and I hope and trust everyone just had wonderful long weekends, July 1st, if you’re in Canada and July 4th, if you’re in the United States and United States, and I actually chose to celebrate both of them. So I recognize that coming off of celebration, sometimes it’s challenging for someone like myself, a previous coach and business consultant to say, take a look at your numbers, but it’s in a really important time of year to do that because what starts to happen a lot. And we all know this almost like our practitioner mindset is that one of the things we feel really good on the days where we feel busy, where we have patients coming in and lots of great things happening.
But then on the days when we don’t have a full schedule or we’re feeling like we’re struggling, that’s where we can’t help, but we start to beat ourselves up. So one of the things I want you to do is stop and recognize that your numbers or statistics are just simply a measurement. And we can’t compare one person to another. Each of you, your model is going to be slightly different. So for example, I can show you and talk about a successful young practitioner that actually maxes out because of the kind of care he delivers really specialty functional neurology care. He maxes out at 12 visits a day, but recognize the feed that he charges the time that he’s with the client, the technology he has in the clinic is very different than for some of us like myself, where I’d almost call it where we put someone on a great care plan.
And then a regular visit is more, just a course corrected, you know, course correction where we’re adjusting someone. So those models are very, very different than numbers will be different. The statistics look different, everything’s good, everything’s fine. You know, decide and, and almost delivered the model, the kind of care that you feel excellent about, but it’s still important at the mid-year point to take a look at your numbers and really ask yourself the question what’s been working really well. And then if there’s some things that haven’t been working so well, how do we course correct? You have an incredible amount of time to really make this a year from a statistical perspective. So I wanted to talk today from that coaching perspective and share a few of the things that I like to have someone look at for their practice. So it’s not necessarily your visit numbers that I’m going to ask you to take a look at.
I’d like you to start to look at your total billings, your total services. Some of you will have a couple of different categories in the practice. Maybe, maybe you actually sell supplements or you have products for sale, even pull those numbers and separate those out from say your serve your other services, maybe your hands on adjusting services. I want you to begin to track all of that. I don’t want you to start to get into that habit of compare one month to the month before the month after, because of things like holidays or holiday weekends. Now there’s some other ways from a coaching perspective that you look at a month that has a number of, you know, days less in the clinic slightly differently. So if you’ve been doing this for long enough, I like you to more compare the same month, you know, this year to the same month last year and watch those kinds of trends.
If overall, we look at the last six months, I like you to look at things like your total billings. I’d like you to start to calculate things like your ova, which is your office visit average. How much are you filling in or billing in for the services that you deliver? The problem. And I, the example I gave you at the beginning of a young, like a partitioner that doesn’t take a lot of visits because they have a very high office visit average or ova. But if you have those number of visits and you have a very low overhead, yay, that’s a bigger problem. The reason I even also like you having a look at this term, the ova your office visit average is because it’s really important for people to recognize that it costs you a certain amount to deliver an adjustment. So what starts to happen if somebody builds out at $50?
So your office visit average say for a regular visit is $50, but it costs you $45 to deliver that adjustment. Now that becomes more of a problem. So this is why I like comparing or using this idea of your office visit average. I also really liked that leads into things like your case average. When you have a new client come in and you put them on a call, it a, uh, an appropriate clinical care plan. Some people get really caught up when we say that idea of a care plan, but what is your, your overall diagnosis and review of their case, and what is that going to take to help them move in the direction of their goals? You know, so how many visits or what is that total dollar value that a new client represents or a reactivated client represents to the clinic? Those are important numbers because that’s a stronger way to then review the kinds of marketing events, or even if you’re going to do a Facebook ad and you put that ad out there and you generate a certain number of clients from it.
You know, you want to say, is that successful or is it not? If you have a very low case average, well, then it’s going to take you a lot more people to then more than compensate or generate four or five times the return of what that ad cost. That if you have a really high case average, a really strong case average, you can see that in many cases, like one new client is at, particularly in a social media world is going to more than, than give you that four or five, or sometimes even a 15 or 20 times return on the investment that you just put into that promotion. So these are the kinds of numbers I, you notice. Um, I kind of call it, embracing your statistics. What are the things that you can review consistently to determine the kinds of results that you’re actually getting?
This is what I mean, where I like to talk about the opportunities you have, because the clearer you get on those numbers, then you can start to say, well, now what are some actions or what are some things I can do to start to improve those business numbers? So that example of a case average, it may be that you realize that you, you know, are very strong clinically, but you don’t communicate clearly and put people on a really strong care plan. Some of that is just getting more organized and training your team more effectively so that the team helps schedule out an actual care plan for people. Like I said, this is a no judgment zone in that there’s all types of models for practice. And it’s just really important that you start to say, okay, what is your model? And how could you enhance it the middle point of the year?
I like you to ask yourself these two important questions. I’d like you to ask, what would I love more of? And then the flip of that is what would I love less of and more of the business or reviewing the numbers can be incredibly powerful because it can give you less stress. And I know that sounds crazy because some of you say, well, I don’t like looking at my numbers or I don’t like, you know, going over, I start to beat myself up instead. Could we just say, what are those numbers telling us? So a coaching approach is constantly asking yourself, what is my next simplest action step to make change. So to increase your ova, that is most likely going to be cleaning up your fees quite often, increasing your fees. If you haven’t had a fee increase in a long time, then starting to work with someone, there’s some incredible coaches out there.
I’m happy to help direct you to some good coaches, coaches, or coaching groups that can help you really gain the confidence and the communication skills to increase your actual fees. You know, that’s important. It may be that you add other products or services that clinically are relevant, that are really going to help your patients. And they also increase your office, visit average your, your fees that you’re charging. So this is just an important time to say, what actions can I take to increase these business metrics, to look more effectively at the results I’m getting? Otherwise, it’s very emotional. Otherwise, like I said, at the beginning, we feel really good if we feel busy, if we’ve had lots of people in, but it’s more important to say, what are the business metrics behind it? Likewise, it’s a great time of year to say, are there ways I could deliver some of the services I’m delivering for less?
Are there things that we can clean up? Sometimes that means you or the team getting more effective and efficient, taking less time to do something can often clean things up. You know, it may be that one of the ways to enhance your ova, your office visit average is to take a look at how much time you’re spending with someone. It might be that your fees are, you don’t feel ready to say, increase the fees for a specific visit, like, you know, say an adjustment. But if you recognize that a lot of the things that are happening and keeping people longer in your clinic often that’s us as the chiropractor or our systems that aren’t processing people as effectively, sometimes there’s tools or technology that can make things more efficient. The billings could be more automated, you know? So there’s a whole bunch of tools and technology.
You might need to invest in some of that to better increase your efficiency and ultimately take less time that your, your staff, your team takes. So there’s a lot of ways to take a look at how do I enhance or increase these numbers. The other thing is a lot of times people like any of our clinics, if I look at someone’s statistics, it’s often costing you a lot with say, you know, additional supplies or your expenses are far too high, a percentage of the billings themselves. Now I understand that there’s what we call actual expenses versus what we report, where we sometimes build some other things in books or things that we’re, we’re continuing to grow ourselves. In our knowledge, of course, you build that in that even some of the actual expenses, often we want to start to say, how could we trim things?
How could we cut things that it can be really daunting to say at the middle point of the year? Well, wait a minute. I want to cut my expenses by 5%. Versus if you turn around and say, well, are there a couple of categories that I could cut my expenses by a half a percent or 1%? So there’s often some ways that you can break this down into much smaller or more tangible approaches. Now, I think it’s important too, that I bring up. There’s a real mindset around the numbers and the business metrics. So often we set these goals and sometimes they’re really ours or other times it’s what we think we should be doing. Well, I’m going to increase my practice by this percent over the year. And then if we’re not careful, we start to feel like we’re tracking behind. This is another reason though.
I like the mid-year review because often even if you’ve had maybe a couple of months that have been less than you expected, you have time. You have six months now to say, well, what does that really mean instead of, oh, I suddenly need to double maybe it’s that? Wait a minute. I could break that down into like balancing some that I want to recoup over six months. So therefore, what does that look like per month? What does that look like per week? So often I like to take people and help them break down even to double. If you wanted to double the billings in six months or 12 months, if you break it far enough down, it often actually represents one or two more visits a day or a shift. So then you can say my perspective as a coach is what are the actions I can take to be able to have the space, the energy and the time to see those one or two more people.
That’s where engaging your team, putting people on great care plans instead of going week to week with your visits, or let’s do four or six visits. Let’s get stronger with our communication and language for someone what 12 or 15 visits looks like, why that’s an important piece of care for them, how you can measure it. Even using things like the road to recovery posters or things to show the on the acute phase, and then engage your team to help make sure that people are scheduled and even all the way up to say a re-examine at that 12 or 15 visits, because now for many of you, your positively impacting your case average, and you’re also becoming more efficient. So you and your team have the time and the bandwidth to process one or two more people per day. So I want you to see that a lot of this is how do you use your numbers and not feel overwhelmed or intimidated by them?
Some people I know when I do a bunch of complimentary consultations for people, it’s them saying things like, you know, well, I I’ve had these goals or I’m so fed up with goals because I just haven’t achieved them. There are no such thing as unrealistic goals. There’s usually only unrealistic timelines or more importantly, unrealistic action steps. So that’s why everything I’m talking about looking at numbers or metrics, it really comes back then to us saying, what actions can I take? What one shift can I make? Can I get more efficient? Can I stop chit chatting with people so that I actually am standing around and realizing I’ve got lots of room and space to help more people. So a lot remember about the business is to allow you to share your skills and help more people. So I’d like you to have a vision here we are at the year.
What is the vision for the end of the year? Can you see through these schools? Can you see through the year? One of the exercises I love to assign to people is to ask you to sit down and just write a short paragraph for yourself. You know, pretend it’s December 28, third, January, first of next year, 2022. So that you’re seeing all the way through the next six months. Describe for yourself what it feels like to have had your best and most impactful year yet. Write it down. What’s that feel like? What opportunity did that give you? If you can, instead of just looking at things right in front of you, which we all have the tendency to do, or what am I doing next week? If we can start to project out to the end of the year and these numbers growing your business, growing and your impact growing what opportunity that provides you more income, what can you do with that income?
How can you help more people? How can you share that income and an enhanced, you know, say wealth with your family, with others. So I know in jam packing a lot of, of content into this idea about the business review, but I want you to see why and how it’s so important to just look at your numbers in a far more unemotional way, in a way that just tracks and gives you data and feedback about the things you’ve been doing. Is it working? And if so, great, how do we do more of it? And if not, then how do we course correct? How do we grow? How do we help more people? So I’m happy to answer any questions. I just want you to feel excited and not so many people say to me, oh, well, going into the summer and people are on vacation.
I just want you to not think like that. I want you to embrace the summer and have a wonderful and fantastic summer knowing that you’re already clear and where you’re headed by the end of the year and the actions that you can be taking. So, number one, I want to thank ChiroSecure for allowing me the opportunity since I don’t, you know, I’m not at seminars as much anymore, and I’m not coaching as much anymore that I can literally still share ideas and ways that as a profession chiropractically, and as a health profession, we can help a lot more people. I want you thriving. So I thank ChiroSecure for the opportunity to include me, to engage me. I also want to let you know that each week we have a new host, next week’s host is Sam Collins. So you’ll notice that there’s different content and ideas that are shared so effectively every week through our show growth, without risk. So thank you for the opportunity of spending time together. And may this be your most impactful year yet? Have a wonderful day.