Is Your Chiro Business Making One Of These Deadly Mistakes? Avoid THESE To Stay In Business

Growing your chiropractic practice is an enriching journey, but it comes with many challenges. Most of these challenges can be overcome with common sense, diligence, and mentoring, but there are a set of mistakes most chiropractors are making that can seriously harm their practice.

In today's post, I’ll share the four most common mistakes chiropractic businesses are making and how to avoid them so that you can grow your practice quickly and easily.

Mistake No. 1: Not Understanding Your Practice’s Operating System

Let's talk about this first mistake that’s keeping your practice small. An operating system is a lot like a computer, meaning that you fire up the computer, it runs some processes and commands, and now it's ready to go to work. It's waiting for things to happen, and if something does happen, a sequence of events is triggered. That's what we call an operating system.

Now, we've all used excellent operating systems and probably experienced some really bad ones and how frustrating they can be. In small practices, they don't even recognize that there is an operating system. So, what happens is that the practice owner becomes the operating system.

There's no intention behind it other than we show up and do the work that's coming at us. It's a reactive operating system. This keeps us small because everything has to go through you as the practice owner – every patient decision, business decision, and every fire goes through you.

And it's exhausting. It’s what makes you so drained and tired at the end of the day. We love delivering patient care, and a lot of times, that supercharges us, but that's a lot of energy expenditure on top of all of these reactive decisions that you're making and trying to run your practice.

The better way is to have an intentional operating system. The intentional operating system called “DRIVEN,” our driven framework here at The Data Driven Practice, is a complete practice operating system.

When you have an intentional operating system, problems don't come to you. You’ll have measures in place that handle the problems that create the flow; when this happens, that happens, and it's automatic. We take you out of the equation to allow your practice to scale beyond you.

Mistake No. 2: Not Teaching Your Team Strategic Thinking

Mistake number two has everything to do with your operating system, and that is teaching your team strategic thinking by learning how to look upstream. This means that every team member in the practice at any moment of the day is working within a system.

For example, if they're at the front desk handling patients who are already part of your practice, they're working within the established patient system. If they're running over to put a patient on muscle stem or decompression, they're working within the production system.

So, your practice has different systems, and your team member handles the process in various systems. The larger your practice grows, the bigger your team scales. We actually narrow that scope. We want cross-training, but we also want to build experts who know how to master systems so they become the drivers of those systems.

In this concept, the key is to think backward or upstream when something goes wrong, no matter where it happens. The team members can then ask themselves what happened just before the problem and what systems are involved.

By tracing back like this, they can pinpoint the exact process or system that's broken. Once you know that, you and your team can strategize on how to fix it

That’s because practices operate differently at different levels. A $25K a month practice is different than a $50K a month practice, which is very different than a $75K a month practice. Your process needs to improve. As your team becomes experts and drivers and begins thinking upstream, this operating system takes over and carries momentum to drive you to record months. This is how our data-driven practices are growing and scaling fast.

Mistake No. 3: Not Having A Team Scoreboard

Ever been playing a game – basketball, checkers, anything – and just felt completely lost because you're not scoring? It's just no fun, right? There's no excitement, no sense of purpose. That's because games are meant to be won!

The same goes for your practice. We're in the game to win, though the 'finish line' isn't always clear. We set goals, create milestones, and celebrate each victory along the way.

Having a team scoreboard allows us to see if we're winning or losing. Are we on track for the month, or are we behind? Do we need to change behavior? Do we need to get intentional about a specific underperforming system in the practice?

When the team becomes aware, they can engage in the game. No awareness, no engagement. They're just there to process the work. And I don't want you to have team members that are just there. We want them intentional, excited, and we want them pushing the work forward. That's what a team scoreboard does.

Mistake No. 4: No Cadence Of Accountability

A cadence of accountability means there's a daily huddle and a weekly team meeting. These two meetings are the rhythm of data connected to the responsible team member for that data.

It’s amazing when your practice transforms from a team just showing up to process the work that shows up to intentional team members coming to team meetings and having stewardship. Do you understand the power of stewardship? You've taken it.

In fact, you have taken an oath in our chiropractic or holistic health world to take stewardship of patients’ health. I know how seriously you take that. I know how passionate you are about showing up for your patients, changing their lives, and removing the obstacles that are keeping them back from the dream life they've always had.

That's stewardship, and why do you take it so seriously? It's because you are trained and understand the process of being healthy. Well, it's the same for your team. They need to own their work and say, “Hey, I own this. I'm not going to take every problem to the doc. I'm going to train and master the system, and I'm going to figure out how to solve my own problems.”

We can do that through data-driven decisions and truly understanding the product of that system. That way, when your team members join a team meeting, they’re there to actually meet with my team, not just crunch numbers. And remember, it's okay if some metrics aren't hitting the mark. The only real failure is giving up.

Just imagine your team members sharing the same passion and dedication you have for your work. Wouldn't that be amazing? We need to build a culture where data drives everything we do. We want our team to feel responsible for the success of the system, just like they own it. By creating this rhythm, this constant drumbeat, we'll empower them to show up prepared, ready to take charge and ensure the system performs at its best.

The real magic happens when we work together as a team, supporting and helping each other. Think about any championship-winning team, like the NBA, NFL, or the Olympics. They're not just colleagues; they're a bonded family. They celebrate wins together, pick each other up when things get tough, and genuinely care about each other's success.

That's the kind of culture we want to build in your practice. By eliminating those four critical mistakes, you can create a team that's closer than ever, works together seamlessly, and achieves incredible results.

If you need help with this, we're here. It's a free Facebook group called The Data Driven Practice. Come join us, and we will help you remove these mistakes so that you and your team can become number one in holistic healthcare in your community.