169 Building High Functioning Chiropractic Teams

Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.  

This week’s topic: Building a High Functioning Chiropractic Team. 

The KC CHIROpulse Podcast is designed for Chiropractic professionals ready to elevate their practice to new heights, and is hosted by Kats Consultants coaches Dr Michael Perusich and Dr. Kelly Fredricks, both seasoned experts in Chiropractic care and business development, this podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How to develop a highly functioning team
• Why creating success partners in your staff improves your profit margins
• How to get your staff involved in becoming an awesome team
• Why high functioning teams build more profitable practices
• …and so much more…

In each episode of KC CHIROpulse, we delve into crucial aspects of building a successful Chiropractic practice, covering topics such as establishing a strong foundation, adopting a patient-centric approach, mastering marketing techniques, achieving financial fitness, fostering effective team building and leadership, integrating technology and innovation, and navigating common challenges in the field.

Whether you're a seasoned chiropractor or just starting your practice, the KC CHIROpulse Podcast offers a wealth of knowledge and practical advice to help you navigate the intricate world of Chiropractic business. Join us on this journey as we explore proven strategies, share success stories, and connect with industry experts to empower you in your pursuit of building a thriving Chiropractic practice.

Don't miss out on the latest insights and expert guidance. Subscribe now and unlock the secrets to taking your Chiropractic practice to the next level. Your success is our priority at Kats Chiropractic Business Advisors.

DISCLAIMER:  The information presented in this broadcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to offer legal, investment, accounting, or medical advice.  Seek the consultation of a professional for advice in those areas. And remember…your results using this information may be different than described.

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Transcript

Dr. Michael Perusich: 0:00

Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC ChiroPulse podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants and ChiroHealth USA. We appreciate y'all tuning in today. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Perusich. Can't even say my last name. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich and I'm joined by my co host, one of our great coaches, Dr. Kelly Fredericks. Doc, Everybody you and I talk about this all the time. This is one of our favorite topics How do you build a highly functioning team? In other words the art of delegation? Yes,

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 0:28

we love it. We love it Yes in

Dr. Michael Perusich: 0:30

those tasks We yeah, we don't have to do everything ourselves doctors We can actually create a team to support create support around us that Allows us to function at a higher capacity Which leads to more revenue and more satisfaction in the job place for everybody

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 0:49

Yes, and more time for us, right? We're always. Trying to buy more time for us. So the more we can delegate, the

Dr. Michael Perusich: 0:57

better it is. The more golf we get to play. Yes, definitely. All right. So what do we mean by delegation? So when I talk to doctors, sometimes I say, you really should delegate that. Oh, I don't know that I can delegate that. I'll do it better than everybody else. Here's the adage. If you can delegate somebody to something to somebody and they can do it at least 80 percent as well as you, then you should delegate it. That's the litmus test. So it doesn't have to be perfect. You might be good at doing some task because you've done it so many times, but when you delegate it might be new to them, but let them take over. They'll eventually may, might even become better at it than you.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 1:38

I was just going to say that and get ready because it's probably going to be way better than you would have done it in the first place.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 1:43

Exactly. Exactly. I was always happy to delegate things to my staff, especially to Marisa, because she would take it and. Maybe I could do it a hundred percent, but she could do it 150%. Yes. Yeah, definitely. And I think delegating also creates a tighter bond within your team in the practice, because now your staff is not just doing tasks, they're much more engaged. In a lot of things. They also feel like you trust them when you delegate to them. Yeah,

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 2:11

definitely. And it empowers them, right? Like they want to have a title. They want to have, a reason to be at work and they want to know that they're needed. So the more we can delegate and empower them to do those things, then that gives them, really good feelings about what they do on a day to day basis.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 2:30

Sure. So how do we know? How to delegate. How do we know what to delegate? The starting point is we have to know our team. We have to understand who they are. We have to know their strengths and weaknesses. So how do we do that? What are some great ways to do that? Here's one that comes to mind for me, personality tests. They're simple personality tests. You can get online. If you're one of our members we have one in the library. Personality tests are a great starting point. How do you all match up together?

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 2:59

Yeah we do personality tests in our office. We actually just read the book, the Enneagram together as a team, which has been life changing for us. So we all know what our number is. We all know, where we go in fear, where we go in stress. And it's really been so helpful for us. And also we do something fun in our office where we ask each other, what are your favorite things? What do you like to do? And that kind of helped, too, because I realized that one of my patients loves to organize, so you better believe she's the one that every week goes through the office and tidies things up and organizes the back closet and, does that thing. And then I found out another person doesn't like social media. So that's not the person that I'm gonna have help me with my marketing. Sometimes just sitting down as a group and asking each other questions and say, what do you like to do? What is it that you would like to do in the office? And then they're gonna start telling you,

Dr. Michael Perusich: 3:53

and that's a delegation process because now you're filtering out the workload. Yeah. On the people who actually want to do some of those things. Not just, oh gosh, I have to do marketing. I hate social media. Why am I doing this so it goes you're matching tasks then with the right team member is incredibly important. I want to dive into this just a little bit more, and I want to talk about some other aspects of delegation, but we need to have a quick word from our sponsors Kats consultants and Chirohealth USA. Hang in there. We'll be right back. We're talking about how to build highly efficient teams through delegation.

4:31

So we all feel it. Rent or dining out, gasoline or movies, as a matter of fact, the dollar is not going as far for a whole host of reasons. And it's impacting everybody, regardless of your financial situation. Did you know that 38 percent of the overall population is having to reconsider how they're spending their money just to afford the healthcare they need? And if you break it down further, 26 percent have actually delayed the healthcare that they need. Including going to see you, the chiropractor. So here's what we need to know about the breakdown in demographics. You would think that someone who's making 120, 000 or more would be continuing their care right now. But the actual number is 18 percent. 18 percent of that group is actually putting off health care. And that's a group of people making six figures. When you take that same information all the way down to a group making 40, 000. That number is much higher. It's closer to 40%. So it's never been more important than now to make sure you've made it easy for your patients to come see you, that you have choices for them, and you understand what they're going through at home. We want to make sure your practice thrives during this time, and we encourage you to learn about what ChiroHealth USA can do for you and your practice, and making it easy for patients to see you and continue care.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 5:57

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the KC ChiroPulse podcast. We are talking about building highly effective teams through the art of delegation. One of the things that I think is really important is, when we delegate a task, we're always worried if it's going to get done, right? Yes, especially if the person's never done it. So part of creating a good pass off, if you will, when you delegate part of creating that good pass off is setting clear expectations. What are you looking for? How do you want it done? What are the rules? What, how long do you want it to take for them to get the project done? Setting clear expectations is incredibly important. So people know, so your team knows what to expect and what you expect.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 6:48

The priority status, is this something that is high priority doc? Do you need this done in the next two days? Do you need this done by the end of the shift? You have to let them know, is it top priority? Is it midline priority? Is it low priority? So that way they can also sit down with their tasks and know, okay, this is how I need to arrange what I'm doing in order to best suit us. That's such

Dr. Michael Perusich: 7:14

a, that's such a powerful idea right there. And that requires that two way communication. We need to create an environment where our staff feels comfortable communicating back to us. Sometimes we create a culture where I'm the boss and you can't talk to me and that's their takeaway and they don't, you don't get that two way communication. That two way communication is incredibly important because you need to be giving each other constructive

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 7:41

feedback. Yeah. And that's exactly how I learned. That was actually from my office manager. I would be giving her things to do. And then she finally came to me and she was like, I really have no idea what is, what's important to you. So we set in place, that priority level. And so now she knows, her concern was, Oh, I want to do the right thing by her. But if I, if she doesn't understand, what drives me, then she couldn't really handle that. So it came her coming to me and having that conversation, which I was incredibly grateful for because it, it changed everything.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 8:15

Yeah. So when you have that two way feedback loop, what happens? You start to build trust with each other. Now you're working more effectively together. That's part of building that high powered team. When you build that trust, you encourage more initiative. On their part. And doc, I'm telling you, this is a game changer. If you feel like you're overburdened with a lot of the tasks in the clinic and you don't feel like you can delegate, you just got to do it because it will take such a load off of you. Yeah, your practice will become more efficient. Your capacity will go up. Your revenue will go up. You'll be happier on the practice And everybody will be happier because now you're just you're really building that team environment where together everyone achieves more

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 9:05

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Another thing that I thought was incredibly helpful that i've learned over the years too is that not all people Take delegation the same way in regards to what their tasks are. For example, I used to come up to somebody and tell them, I need you to do this and this. And then I would walk away. And then I would realize that one. Staff member A would take that and run with it because they'd be writing a list. And then I would realize that staff number, letter B would not do any of those things. And I was like, okay, I don't understand why the one person is doing it and the other person is not doing it. So then I realized that everyone learns differently, right? And everyone works differently. So now we have, I figured out which ones I can tell things to. And then I know the ones that I have to email things to. And then I also know the ones that we have, like I said before, we use Asana in the office. So we all put all of our tasks in this Asana and that way we've got the dates. We've got the priority in there. We've got all the things listed and then we're meeting up on that every week. So that's covering all bases. But. If I know that christy I can't tell her something because she's got 10 other things going on in her mind because she's the office manager I know that has to be digital done digitally with her. So

Dr. Michael Perusich: 10:26

What a great way though to track tasks track progress create accountability for everybody That's a fantastic thing to do. So creating those systems. We had a reporting system that we used in our staff meetings where projects would get action steps put to them and then the action steps would get assigned and then we'd carry it over from week to week, with expectations set for all the action steps of when they needed to be completed and what the progress was going forward each week and it was. It was a huge way to get a ton of them, ton of work done in short periods of time by spreading it out amongst everybody and maintaining that accountability.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 11:09

And then it's all organized as well, right? So your staff meetings can go so much better when we're all working in one system and then we can all, here's our topic today. We're talking about. The first quarter events that we're having for mother's day then everyone says, okay, you have this, I have this, I'm working on this. Oh, I still have to do this, so it becomes that team environment. And then everyone is talking about the same thing to all accomplish the same goal. And it can be

Dr. Michael Perusich: 11:39

smooth, quick. Exactly. And there's some great tools out there. We use google workplace and gosh, it's fantastic because we can share information schedules. What else do we share in there? We can have meetings in there. We could chat. We can create task lists and assign assigned tasks to people and create deadlines for things. And it's phenomenal. And it's fantastic. What a great way for us to be able to manage because all of us cats, we're all, we're scattered all over the country, but but whether you're scattered around the country or you're all in the same office, it doesn't matter. It helps create that organized workflow, which again. That's one of the demons of doing this is you've got to create those management tools, those workflow tools to help keep it organized. Yeah,

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 12:30

you do have to lay the groundwork, right? You have to take the time. And once you do that and sit down, take the time. And then everything else becomes so much easier. So literally, yeah. And sometimes it's a leap of faith, I know as docs, it's hard to let go. Take it from me. You've fought me on this many times, right? It's hard for me to let go. I'm a client as well. But when we can let go and we can gain that trust, oh my gosh, it just opens you up to do so many other things. The amount of marketing that we've been able to tackle this year has been incredible. And I know that is because of our delegation system, and figuring out who are my creatives on my team, who are the people that love technology? Because I do not, I am not a tech person. And in finding those strengths and putting the right people in the right

Dr. Michael Perusich: 13:18

tasks. Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. So to make this work, we have to have leadership skills. And I'm just, I'm going to throw out something here and don't throw darts at me, everybody, but I know we all need our CEUs to keep up our licenses. Okay. But I see a lot of doctors immersing themselves constantly in clinical based stuff, whether it's techniques or diagnosing, and that's all great. That's all great. But we also need to realize that we were a second hat. We're not always just clinician. Sometimes we're running a business in the business. You're also an entrepreneur and you've got to put your entrepreneur hat on sometimes. And so you've got to get off that chiropractic mouse wheel and develop. Some leadership skills, develop some understanding of how marketing works, whether you're doing it or not, you need to develop that creative, innovative side of your brain, the right side of your brain, instead of using the left side all the time so that we can really get into leadership mode. And lead our staff. So we're not pushing them or leading them or pulling them. We're giving them direction. We're laying proper tracks for everybody to work effectively together. There's a lot of re there's a lot of responsibility as a leader, but it makes delegating so much more simple. Yes, because when your staff feels like you're the leader of the team, they will follow you right. It's not the leader, but push back a little bit.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 14:54

Yeah, definitely. And you want to lead them into greatness, right? So you want to be, you want to be a good leader that is organized and has a clear vision. And once they know that there is a clear message and a clear vision, then they jump on board with that,

Dr. Michael Perusich: 15:07

And this is the whole reason why we developed our mastermind program at Kats Consultants. It was because we see that huge need to foster those leadership skills in us, and that track really gives us an opportunity to help develop that leadership side. Of every doctor that's part of that group. Yeah.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 15:24

The mastermind. And then also, our virtual seminars are fantastic because that takes a day out of the clinic where we are just sitting together as a team and we are all working on ourselves. We're all working on personal development because your staff, they want to grow. They want to learn. They want to do more things in your office. And the more that We can pour into them and the more that we can train with them and take, something that they think they might be good at, but then help them to foster that helps move everything along. But it is work. You have to take time.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 15:59

Yeah. And what you said is huge. That opportunity to develop as a team, we set our virtual seminars up so that they're on Thursdays. We did that on purpose. Everybody always asks why during the week, we need to see patients. No, every once in a while. You need to develop because when you develop as a team, you can see more patients. There's a way to schedule around the virtual seminars. If you do it right, you'll never lose a patient visit. You'll actually gain.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 16:27

In your clinic, they see that you're taking the time to develop and be better and love it. Your patients love it because they always want to know what did you learn? What did you learn in your seminar? What did you learn on Thursday?

Dr. Michael Perusich: 16:41

They see the positive aftereffects of it too. In the practice, it just helps refresh in you as a team helps you building together as a team practicing together as a team, if you will, and working together. If we're a, if we're a football team, for example, we don't all take the playbook home, read through it. And I'll see on Sunday and we'll play a game. No, we practice every day and we practice every week. And we continue practicing even in the off season together in some way you. So that we're always working together and building that power and strength as a team, you can only do that together. So those team building events periodically are incredibly

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 17:23

important. Yeah. And you're always evolving, right? You're evolving everything from, the. The feel of your clinic to the tasks that you're working on. So you have to evolve together with where your focus goes, do you need to make changes? Is what we're doing working? Is it not, do we need to change your message? Do we need to, change what we're offering? Do we need to change a promotion? Do we need to change our schedule? You have

Dr. Michael Perusich: 17:48

to, we see so many clinics that are constantly working in the now. And I don't care what business it is, chiropractic, or you're selling widgets, the business environment changes over time, consumer mentality, their buying habits change over time. Consumers are patients, for example, in our profession, but we've got to keep pace with those kinds of things. And if we are always practicing in the now that we're never working towards the future. So the future growth of your practice is really dependent on a lot of these things that we're talking about. Excuse me, like team development, like building employees that want to stay with you 10, 20 years because they're fantastic employees. They trust you. They love what they're doing and they're getting that constant growth for themselves. One of the number one things that employees want is they want development and training opportunities on the job. So building that in really helps not only develop good talent. But helps you retain good talent.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 18:54

Yes definitely retain good talent. And yeah, like you said, develop them into, you could have someone start as a CA that ends up developing into your office manager. There's so many places where you can take them.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 19:08

Yep. And that whole. Roll that whole art of delegation and building your team and making it highly effective, highly successful, really creates a succession plan for growth term. And in my opinion, that's one of the biggest things you can do in your practice to create long term success.

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 19:32

Yeah, definitely. And preparing for the future, letting everybody know, okay we're going to grow and I need you to help me. This is how we're going to get there. And this is what we're going to expect. Whether that's what you want to add another doc or whether that's okay, we're going to get to this many patient visits because. This is where we're moving and now we need to get another CA. So we need to start thinking about, how are we going to hire? Who are we going to hire? How are they going to fit into the team? And what kind of person are we looking for?

Dr. Michael Perusich: 20:01

Yeah, exactly. So team development, building highly effective teams, delegation. These are all important roles of a true chiropractic leader, true chiropractic entrepreneur. So put that entrepreneur hat on from time to time and bring these principles into your practice. All right. If you haven't done so go to Kats consultants. com. Check us out, check out all the things that we're doing for practices and helping doctors. Reach unbelievable levels of success. We've got a lot of free downloads and things, free tools on our website. So go check all those out. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Tell everybody about it. We want to thank our sponsor, Chiro health USA, and I can't think of anything else. So Dr. Kelly, anything to add?

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 20:45

I don't think so. I think we

Dr. Michael Perusich: 20:46

covered it all. Okay. Awesome. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning into the KC Chiropulse podcast brought to you by Kats consultants and Chiro health USA. We will see you next time. See

Dr. Kelly Fredricks: 20:56

you next time.