Find Your Prime Mover & Skyrocket Profits

All of us went to school to become doctors and healers, not necessarily to become businessmen or women. You've heard that tracking data is important to growing your practice, but have you ever asked yourself what the best way to achieve data-driven growth is?

In this post, I’ll share with you what every chiropractor needs to know. I'm going to drop gold and give you my best secrets for turning your data into dollars, getting your team laser-focused on the thing that's going to change everything in your practice, building gamification into your practice, and then, of course, buying back your time with an incredible rhythm that you're going to put in your practice, where your team becomes responsible for driving growth.

Tip #1: How To Turn Your Data Into Dollars

This first principle comes down to analyzing what we call the ‘Prime Mover.’ This is the thing that the team all agrees on, and it is the number one thing that will change your practice.

Think about your practice as a waterfall. We have systems in the practice that feed each other:  the marketing system feeds into the front desk new patients system, that feeds into the examine case acceptance system, that feeds into the net system of the front desk established patients system, which drives your treatment and production, and then your final system, which is making sure we're collecting the financial system for all of those services.

Each system contains rich data, but there is a lot of data to measure. It's easy to get overwhelmed or paralyzed by analysis. So, I want your team to become focused on the one weakness in your practice that, if we could fix it, would impact all the downstream systems.

When the team understands its primary objective and focuses on it, that becomes the prime mover—the number one thing. It's not going to be the prime mover forever. It's going to be the prime mover until you fix it. And when you fix it, we're going to make sure you have a system in place to keep it healthy and high.

Knowing that the prime mover is number one is the key to understanding the next three steps.

Tip #2: Make Decisions With Lead Measures

Tip number two is that we're going to dive into helping the team make decisions by what we call lead measures. If we take the same example of the new patient acquisition cost, we have to teach the team to look upstream to the prime mover.

Upstream means, what are all the ways we're getting new patients? For example, one practice was actually becoming very dependent on very expensive marketing. TV commercials, radio ads, Facebook ads… they were spending a tremendous amount of money to acquire a new patient.

They were closing enough new patients to keep feeding the machine, but it just wasn't scaling the practice. There weren't enough profits to reinvest and scale.

So, we really had to teach the team and sit down with them and let them strategize what other ways we could be getting and acquiring new patients for lower costs. The team was amazing. They started throwing out better ideas about internal referral systems, about working with other providers, about doing social media that was more organic, and as they started implementing those things, their new patient acquisition cost literally cut in half.

Half of what it was costing to acquire a new patient means that your marketing budget doubled. We're able to go out and not reduce the marketing spend. We're able to double the number of new patients coming into the practice.

Imagine the downstream effect that that had on every system of the practice. That is why this system is so powerful.

Tip #3: Have A Team Scoreboard

My third tip is a powerful one, and this is what we call having a team scoreboard. That’s because your team loves to think strategically. In fact, the art of gamification requires that the team knows the rules of the game.

If we're going to win the game, we have to know the rules so we can work on the strategy to win the game. So, a simple scoreboard has the main key performance indicators (KPIs) for each system of your practice, which we can see on a scoreboard.

They're kind of like the vital signs of the human body. Are all the systems of the body at least functioning? Are any of them in crisis? Do they need our attention? That is what a team's scoreboard does.

At a quick glance, we immediately know the score and what needs our attention.

Tip #4: How To Gain Back Your Freedom

How do you have more time to work on the practice than in the practice? This is where we want to use these three drivers to open up our fourth opportunity, which is what we call our ‘Cadence of Accountability.’

The cadence of accountability is a regular team meeting where the team comes to talk about the scoreboard, the prime mover, how it's progressing to develop the strategy of how to look upstream at the lead measures and come up with a game plan.

We need an opportunity to train on the skill set that's going to move the prime mover. How do we close the skill gap? That's regular training during a team meeting.

We need that cadence of accountability where the team is building a bond together because they're strategizing together and they're coming up with the solutions together.

By them doing that, we're actually training them to be a unified team that has each other's backs and that you are leading that team. You are the leader, and you're not doing everything for them.

If you keep coming up with a strategy, if you have all the answers, they will be too afraid to make the decisions to move the prime mover. They will have to come to you for permission. They will expect you to take action, and that isn't freedom. That equals handcuffs to the practice.

So, the key to this is to create this regular weekly meeting where you guys are developing a team strategy framework. You are leading the discussion and do not have to be the answer for everything.

These are the four secrets to building a data-driven growth practice. If you love this kind of content, you need to join our free community, a Facebook group called "The Data-Driven Practice.”

Come join us. It doesn't cost you a dime. We'll teach you how to run your practice with data-driven decisions. You’ll hang out with doctors like you who are passionate about breaking through 7-figure ceilings, building incredible teams, and making an impact in our world with phenomenal practices that will lead to true healthcare.