Welcome to ChiroSecure’s Empowering Women in Chiropractic, the Facebook Live show for successful women by successful women, proving once again, women make it happen.
Join us each week as we bring you the best in business growth, practice management, social media marketing, networking, leadership and lots more. If it’s about women in practice and business, you’ll hear it here.
Now join today’s host, Dr. Cathy Wendland-Colby, as she talks leadership, community and juggling it all. Now, here’s Dr. Cathy.
Hello and welcome to another episode of empowering women in chiropractic, brought to you by ChiroSecure. I’m today’s host, Dr. Cathy Wendland, and today it’s time to spring into action. Now listen, when we came up with this title, it was starting to get warm here in Atlanta and I was thinking spring was just around the corner. Then I woke up this morning and it was 24 degrees in Atlanta. In New York I could expect that, but not here. We’re still going to talk about springing into action because it’s coming before you know it. I know it might be cold where you are, it’s freezing here, but before you know it, the flowers will start blooming. The grass is going to start popping up and turning green again. The buds are going to start popping out of those trees in your neighborhood and all around your office, and you need to be prepared.
Today we’re going to talk about a bouquet of ideas to help you meet new people and educate your community before the school year ends, because once that school year ends, they’re gone. They’re on vacation. They’re off doing their thing. They’ll see you when they get back and they’ll see you when they can, but they’re off their normal routine. There’s still time to capture those new people. There’s still time to get them in the door and establish a healthier lifestyle. There’s still time to get them under care and get through your intense phase of care or whatever you call it, your crisis care or your symptom-based care, and get them into that wellness lifestyle. Today I really want to dig into a couple of ideas that will help you really start getting out there and meeting more people that you can get them into your office to understand what it is you do and how it can benefit them and their family.
Let’s start with the easy ones, the ones that don’t even require you going anywhere, it just requires you sitting down in front of a laptop, in front of your computer, on your tablet and typing something up. First and foremost, you can start writing some articles or blogs for your website. Now you might post them on your website and then share them to your social media pages. You might print them out and hand them out to your patients. You might email those out to your patients. You might even text out a link where your patients can come read your articles.
Here’s my recommendation. If you’re going to write articles on any kind of regular basis, whether it be once a week, once a month or once a quarter, make sure you mix it up a little bit. Don’t write the same type of article every single month, meaning don’t write above, down, inside, out, above, down, inside, out, above, down, inside, out every single month, because then it’s not interesting. It’s not engaging and it’s not relevant to what your community is experiencing. Write your articles based on what’s going on that time of year. February is a perfect time to write an article about heart health. March is the perfect time to write about colon health because it’s Colorectal Awareness Month, right? Crazy thing, but it is, or you could write it about spring because March 20th is the start of spring, or St. Patty’s Day and how to put a little spring into your step and how to make sure that you’re doing great as you’re starting to do some outdoor activity.
April is Easter and some of the Jewish holidays, and it’s also a time where the flowers are blooming and April showers bring May flowers. If you’re going to write an article in April, think about what they’re dealing with. They might be outside washing their car or mowing their lawn finally, or maybe they’re planting some flowers and you want to make sure that they’re using proper positioning and proper ergonomics so that they don’t injure themselves. What can they do to make sure that their body stays healthy? Obviously they can incorporate chiropractic as part of their natural lifestyle.
If you’re going to start writing articles, think about a theme for each month, or lay out a theme for each quarter, or lay out a theme for each week. One of the things that I did that really worked well is I did weekly videos. I mapped out 52 weekly videos and the topics for each week and just recorded those videos and then sent them out to the patients. It was an ongoing educational process where they were constantly getting the information that I wanted them to have directly from me, but I didn’t have to do it for each individual person. Does that make sense? I got to record it one time and then send it out to the masses.
That’s another thing you can start doing. Listen, if you don’t know how to do videos, you want help with that and you want to know, how do you map out 52 weeks? Just reach out to me. Drop me an email, drop me a Facebook message and I’ll be happy to help you out with that because the more you get the proper information into the hands of your community, the better prepared they are to make decisions based on fact, based on education, based on quality information, rather than making decisions based on commercials, right? Take this pill, it’ll help you, but half your body will fall apart and you won’t be able to do things. That’s how most people are making their healthcare decisions, based on the commercials that they hear, the recommendations from friends and coworkers, and fear. Why not be a voice of reason and give them the information that they need?
You can write articles, you can use it as your blog, you can put it on your website, you can put it on your social media pages, and you can do videos that can help educate people. Now that’s the easy things that you could do without ever leaving your four walls. You could also do workshops in your office for your patients and their friends, family members and coworkers, and you can market it on your social pages so that you can get outside people to come in and attend these workshops. One of the workshops I like to do every spring, which is super ultra successful, is when we do a fitness workshop. It’s basically a 30 day fitness challenge where we teach them how to lose weight, gain more energy, look and feel great. We introduce some nutrition because that’s in my wheelhouse. It’s something that I do and I have a degree in. Fitness is something that I’ve been teaching for many, many years.
Think about the things that you do. What do you excel at that you could bring into your office and do a workshop on? Maybe it’s a workshop on how to be a weekend warrior. Maybe it’s a workshop on how to play a sport. Maybe you play a sport or an activity and you could do a workshop on how people can get started doing that activity and how they can incorporate that as part of a healthy lifestyle, which also includes proper nutrition, adequate and restful sleep, a positive mental attitude, a properly functioning nervous system, right? You can incorporate the five aspects of health into your talk by bringing in different topics and still surrounding it around those five aspects of health.
You can do your articles, you can do your blogs, you can create some videos, you can send them out, drip them out, you can text them out, you can post them on YouTube and share them onto your social pages, and you can do workshops in your office, but then you also need to get outside of your four walls, because I promise you, if you just stay in here, people don’t know. There’s not like this vortex or this vacuum that just sucks them into your office. You have to go out there and meet people. One of the easiest ways that you can do that is go to the networking events that are already set up in your community. There might be leads breakfasts or lunch and learns. There might be business associations or Chamber of Commerce that’s meeting like the Powercore or the BNI.
You can go to those and start meeting people, but don’t stop there. Ask them about the events they’re involved in, because if there’s something going on in your community, you should be there. You should be there educating your community and getting to meet new people. Let people see your involvement in their community and then they’ll begin to know you, like you, trust you, and begin to expect to see you at all of these community events.
I can tell you one of the things that we purposely did is got very involved in the community from the day I moved to Georgia, literally getting involved in the Business Association and the Rotary Club and the Toastmasters Club and the Optimist Club and everything that was going on so that I knew people and I knew what events were going to be happening so we could show up. Then started writing articles and then started writing blogs and then we really got involved by sponsoring my city and everything that they had going on.
Think about what’s going on in your community this weekend. Most of you have something going on this weekend, but as it starts to warm up, you’re going to have some spring flings or spring festivals, or you’re going to have a May Day or an April recycling thing for Earth Day. There’s always some type of event going on. Why not get yourself involved?
Now, you could reach out to your local community organizer or the person who’s in charge of your Department of Parks and Recreation, or you could start reaching out to the local schools, your elementary schools and your middle schools. The PTAs, they always have events going on and they’re always looking for sponsors and people to participate. Let that be you. Then while you’re involved with the schools, why not find out about getting involved in their career day? Even the elementary schools do career day. There’s so many fun things that you can do with the elementary school kids, the middle school kids, and even the high school kids.
One of the ideas that I love to use when I go and work with the kids in the schools is I bring a big exercise ball or a soccer ball and we line the kids up. They stand with their legs lined up, because I’m not going to stand up and show you legs, I’m not standing on the desk, but the kids stand with their legs lined up and you just simply roll the ball. One student gets to be the head and one student gets to be the body and you roll the ball under the legs and make sure that the body can communicate with the head, the brain, and the brain can communicate with the body. As long as all of the legs are lined up, the ball is able to roll through and everything works properly.
Then all you have to do is just move one kid out of alignment. Just shift somebody over. Then when they roll the ball, the ball doesn’t get from the brain to the body or from the body to the brain. It’s a simple way to show what we do, which is keep the brain and the body in communication by keeping the spine in alignment so that the nervous system can function free of interference. Then you just simply ask all the students, “What should we do with this one set of legs that are out of alignment? We should put it back in, right. In chiropractic, we call that an adjustment. When we adjust the spine and we put everything back in line, look what happens. The ball is able to roll perfectly smooth, no interference. The brain can send a message to the body and the body can send a message back to the brain. The end result is health is restored.”
That’s one of the things that I love to use with kids because it’s a visual that they totally get and they can explain it when they go home. The other one of course is the safety pin cycle. I have a huge safety pin. I mean, we’re talking like this big. I basically explain the safety pin cycle. For those of you that haven’t done it with me before, we don’t have time to do it today, but it’s real simple. Don’t just tell them, “This is closed, this is open, let’s get it adjusted.” There’s so much more to it. If you’re not doing it right, reach out to me. I’d love to teach you how to do that, but the idea today is to give you a bouquet of ideas for you to go out and really interact with your community.
Listen, you’ve got your spring festivals, maybe your community does Friday night live or they might do business after hours or they might do concerts in the park. They might do different events for Memorial Day weekend and for Earth Day, which is in April, but you’ve got to get on the ball now. You’ve got to start planning that stuff out now. Look at your calendar and print out a calendar where you can look at it. I just had my staff print out these blank calendars that you can get off the internet. This is just a blank one, just so you can see. On these blank calendars, we just jotted in, just real quickly, you start jotting in what you have. Then the more you look at it, the more you start to say, “Oh, we’ve got activities lined up on the calendar,” and you start filling it in.
Now we have big wall size calendars back there and we make sure that we map out the year. I want to make sure that you have things mapped out so that you know there is a steady stream of new patients, there’s a steady stream of community involvement, and there’s a steady stream of education that’s going out to your community so that people can understand what it is that we do. It’s not neck pain, back pain and headaches. It’s so much bigger than that. It’s life. We deal with life. We deal with making sure that the body and the brain can communicate without interference and we help people function at their best level. When you come with that message and you get out there and you meet new people and you talk to them about things that are relevant to them, you write articles that are relevant to what’s going on in their lives right now, let me tell you something, you’re going to have a much easier time at educating people and engaging them in what it is that we do.
One of the workshops that I love to do this time of year, that fitness workshop, listen, we drop that fitness workshop. We do it April 1st. It’s a 30 day fitness challenge. It’s a 30 day month, so we do it April 1st til April 30th, but in the weeks leading up, what we do is ongoing education with our patients and ongoing education with our community members that get involved as well. It’s a constant stream of, “Here’s some information that you want and here’s some information that we know you need.”
If you’d like to find out how to do one of those 30 days fitness challenges or you want to participate in it with us, just drop me an email or a message me on Facebook. I would love to help you out, because here’s the reality. When one of our offices do better and more people are under chiropractic care, and that helps chiropractic and that helps the world around us, when all of our offices start doing better, then not only do we have more people under care, we have more people functioning at such a higher level and vibrating at a higher frequency and really doing great things with their lives and affecting the people around them.
That’s how we really reach that big idea. That’s how we create the big idea, where more and more people are functioning and vibrating at such a higher level because they’re under your care, that we start to change not just our city, not just our county, not just our state and not just our country, but we start to change the entire world. I truly believe in the big idea and I want all of us to see so many people in our community that get great results under chiropractic care, from the womb to the tomb, from our newborn babies to happy birthday Mr. George, to my 97 year old patient who has a birthday today, World War II veteran, Mr. George. Absolutely love seeing patients like that in the office, and I love my newborn babies and everybody in between, and I know you do too.
Take this opportunity to map out your spring so that you can spring into action, see more people, and really enjoy this life that we’re so blessed to live, and make an enormous impact on your community in a positive and absolutely wonderful manner by doing things that are going to help your community understand what it is we do so that they can experience a greater level of health.
Thank you so much for joining me this week. I am so excited to tell you that the next time we meet with Empowering Women in Chiropractic we have the wonderful Dr. Julie McLaughlin as our host. I invite you to join us every other week for our pediatric show, and then come on back for Empowering Women in Chiropractic. I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care, everybody.
Join us each week as we bring you the best in business growth, practice management, social media marketing, networking, leadership and lots more. If it’s about women in practice and business, you’ll hear it here.
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