Build & Empower Your Team: 5 Steps For Growth-Focused Chiropractors

If you want to build a successful chiropractic practice, you have to have a great team. But how do you build a great team? How do you give them the tools to thrive and develop the skill sets they need to do the work that will help your practice be successful?

In this post, I'll share my five best tips for empowering an incredible chiropractic team.

If you're a successful chiropractor ready to create more impact, you need more team. And I'm going to give you 20 years of knowledge compressed into the next five minutes of you reading this post!

We'll explore an essential step towards building a team-driven practice. Then, I'll reveal the missing ingredient that might be holding your success back. Don't miss this crucial piece, as its absence can lead to burnout.

Finally, we'll wrap up with a powerful "hack" to skyrocket your practice's results. Buckle up, and let's unlock the secrets to teamwork and growth!

Secret No. 1 - Onboarding A New Team Member

There’s a law of success that says if you get the first 15% right in a process, the rest of the 85% almost takes care of itself. This is so true with building your onboarding.

I once worked with Dr. Kendra’s practice, which had a revolving door of employees despite boasting dozens over the years.

Unfortunately, the work environment wasn't ideal. There was a lot of backbiting, sabotage, and disgruntled employees who struggled to thrive in her practice.

That's when we stepped in. We introduced Dr. Kendra and her team to a community focused on data-driven practices, where a key realization emerged: building a positive and supportive culture requires intentionality.

We do that with a document called your “Team Member Orientation Packet.” So Dr. Kendra took it and customized it for her practice, but it had the fundamental framework that explained to her new team members that they were entering into a practice that worked with only A-players.

This document also expressed that this team is now an Olympic-level team where we are very intentional about the patient experience we create. We're not reactive to patients. We show up to the practice each and every day with clarity of what we're trying to accomplish for our patients, and we become tenacious about measuring our success.

Her practice was now a data-driven practice with four key disciplines that teach the team how to know their prime mover, make decisions with lead measures, watch the team's scoreboard, and have a cadence of accountability.

This type of onboarding culture introduces them to our core values, the principles we're trying to live up to as a practice. We support each other in our efforts to adopt those core values and authentically live them in our lives.

Patients feel that energy when they walk into a practice. If they walk into a practice where there's backbiting, gossiping, or frustration within the team, your patients will pick up on that energy. They will not want to make a return appointment.

So, that first step of intentional culture, onboarding a team member into these expectations, is vital in getting the first 15% right of building your team-driven culture.

Secret No. 2 - Sign Up System Driver

This may sound a bit strange, but your practice is made up of seven fundamental systems, just like there are fundamental systems within the human body.

Now, most practices believe in cross-training, and we want cross-training across our team, but what we don't want are Jacks of all trades, masters of none.

That’s because if nobody is assigned as the system driver, there will be a lot of finger-pointing and room for blame. And blame will deteriorate your culture faster than anything.

When we look at the scoreboard, we want to know who is driving each system of the practice and who is responsible. A system driver says, "Hey, I'm going to show up every day and take responsibility."

In fact, if you break down the word responsibility, it's the ability to respond, and that takes training. That doesn't just happen reactively. We have to be intentional about developing the gifts, the core values, and the skills that that team member was born and blessed with and nurturing that within them so that they're intentionally driving that and taking ownership for its failures and successes.

Secret No. 3 - Data-Driven Practice

Now that you understand the principle of a system driver and recognize that each system produces a product within the practice, we are more intentional about defining what the marketing system should produce.

What should the Front Desk New Patient System produce? What should the Exam and Case Acceptance System produce? You work with one of your case managers to train them on the data they generate.

So, to generate that high-performing data, what do they need to hand off to the next system within the practice? This is now moving over to the front desk system, which is now scheduling treatment for patients who have agreed to treatment plans.

The exam and case acceptance system empowers our case managers. By the time they finish with a patient, everyone is on the same page:

• The patient has agreed to their treatment plan and financial terms, understanding their commitment.

• They grasp the importance of appointment frequency and duration for successful treatment.

• They acknowledge the signed patient policies, including potential consequences for missed appointments and the importance of rescheduling promptly.

• They understand the best ways to communicate with the practice for a smooth and efficient treatment journey.

Imagine a case manager creating this product and handing it to the next system. This would create such a beautiful experience for the next system because the patient is already trained and has made these agreements intentionally, and financial agreements have already been set up and made.

Secret No. 4 - Key Performance Indicators

When we start measuring the quality and quantity of a product, that will lead us to secret number four, assigning a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to that product.

The KPI is the one number that, when we measure it, tells us if we’re doing a good job in our system as the system driver. Is the system driver producing a high number of their product that they have now committed to doing for the practice?

The KPI is an indicator that we can set a goal towards. By setting that goal, I know I'm responsible for hitting that goal as a team member. My value as a team member is not the time I give to the practice; it's actually the volume of the KPI that I'm helping the practice accomplish.

I now, as a team member, know my value. I show up to deliver on that value and take great pride in delivering that value for the practice.

Secret No. 5 - Accelerator

An accelerator is incredible because, in your practice, you must understand that each system has capacity, and capacity depends on your people and your processes.

This became clear to me when I spent a day at my front desk and saw the capacity of my front desk team members. They were dealing with all the different patients coming in through the practice, the phone calls coming in, the appointments that needed to be scheduled, the payments that needed to be collected –- the capacity is only so big.

Training will increase the capacity, and better processes will increase the capacity. But we have to monitor that capacity on a regular basis. And we do that through the accelerator.

If at the front desk, the KPI is total scheduled appointments, and the accelerator is the percentage of those kept appointments, we know the higher the accelerator, the better the KPI will perform and the more patients that will come through the practice that day.

We know we've mastered this when that accelerator is higher. Now, if we get those two things moving in the right direction, we'll hit capacity pretty soon.

You can now start strategizing about whether to add more team members or hours, and how to increase capacity within the practice. That's your job as a practice owner – to strategize with your team about how to work on people and processes. That's how you scale.

I get so passionate about this because I see the power of what happens when practices scale. I see the patient volume skyrocketing, I see communities changing, I see more chiropractic miracles happening, and that's what I want to be a part of.

So, I developed a system called the Profit Accelerator System. It is the key system for turning your data into dollars. It guides you through these five essential steps, seamlessly integrating them into your practice and fostering a culture your team will love.

We'll help you re-onboard your team with this new approach, creating a game-changing impact on your practice's success.

In fact, in six short months, one of our doctors literally doubled his collections by simply implementing the Profit Accelerator System.

If this system sounds too good to be true, then simply join our free Facebook group. We'll show you these steps and how quickly you can implement this, transform your practice, and turn your data into dollars. See you on the inside!