Kats Chiropractic Consultants CHIROpulse

203 Where's You're Chiropractic Focus

• Marisa Mateja

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Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.  

This week’s topic:   Where is Your Chiropractic Focus in 2025?

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 Troy Fos.  Michael and Troy are both seasoned experts in Chiropractic 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:

  • Are you focusing on the right things in your practice
  • What should and shouldn’t you be focused on
  • What are the top areas to drive your practice in 2025
  • …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 personalized 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, and represents the opinions of the speakers.  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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KC CHIROpulse Podcast. Helping Chiropractors keep their pulse on success. Thanks for listening.



Dr. Michael Perusich:

Doctors, where's your focus in 2025? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC ChiroPulse Podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants and Chiro Health USA. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich. I'm joined with my cohost, Dr. Troy Fox. Troy, focus. Focus man, how do we focus and what do we need to focus on? And you and I've talked about this. We hear a lot of doctors say they're losing focus. They're burning out all these different things. What's happening. What do we need to focus on?

Dr. Troy Fox:

I think one of it is the world is changing so rapidly right now. And maybe you guys have heard of this little thing called AI. Yeah, and the problem is we got a lot of docs that are concerned that they're falling behind already that I need to know More about AI and instead of becoming a better doctor. We'd try to become coders We try to become you know How do we figure out how to use an AI agent to do all of our work

Dr. Michael Perusich:

and it ain't gonna happen right now?

Dr. Troy Fox:

I think we're way ahead of when that's Actually a user friendly operation. You get people on YouTube telling you they can teach you how to do it. There are a lot of courses out there like course IV and a couple of others that say they're going to teach you AI don't fall into that trap. Your focus needs to be on your practice. Yes. Are we moving more towards an automated practice model? In the long run, yeah, you're going to end up probably being able to have less staff in your practice with more services, you're going to also be able to probably have better notes with less effort, which we all want to hear that, but you're not going to create that on your own. It's not going to be that easy to do. And so instead of spinning your wheels. I think what we need to focus on is what do we need to be doing in 2025? What should our focus be directed towards?

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah. And when it comes to AI, let the technology catch up with us. Yeah, for sure. All the software companies, all the EHR producers are working on. Bringing AI in the fold is just not ready yet, at least at the chiropractic level. I know some of the hospital medical doctors and things are using it, the technology they're using is very advanced. It's also very expensive. Yeah, I don't think that's something to focus on yet. But yeah, it's out there and it's coming.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Frankly, the stuff that they're using right now, even at the hospital and dental level, I see him using it in dentistry as well is pretty rudimentary in comparison to what we're going to see two years from now.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Sure, absolutely. And we see doctors losing focus on other things. We see doctors. Trying to focus too much on marketing. Now that may sound counter counterintuitive. What I mean is we see a lot of doctors focusing too much energy on who can I pay to do my marketing for me? And they wind up jumping into these groups that actually maybe doing more detrimental harm to the practice with their marketing than you just actually doing it. And here's the great thing. Google and a lot of the social media platforms are actually making marketing easier that they're opening up the algorithms more. Google is really focused on your GMP, your Google, my business page. So just work those things. If you spend an hour a week, you could do a lot of great marketing and not lose focus back on your practice.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Yeah. And look at your Google, my business page and look at the analytics behind it and look and see what photo, if you don't have photo photos up on your business page, oh my gosh, get them up. I just looked at a photo. We have a photo of an infrared sauna. We have a pretty cool infrared sauna. It's a larger walk in one. So it looks like a spa, right? We've had almost a thousand views of that one photO. I'm like, we need to get more like just literally yesterday, Kaylee, who works with me and she does our marketing. She's younger. She's the hip, cool person that can put my head on the body of a giraffe in an ad and make it look cool. She does some fun stuff. It's always fun to have young people because they know how to do stuff that would take me. A week to figure out she can do it in 15 minutes. So I just throw stuff her way, but she was talking to me about that yesterday. I'm like, Oh my gosh, we need to get more cool photos and videos on our Google page, because that really is becoming the trend. It's almost like an online business card that is interactive. And it's cool. And then people look at your Google reviews on top of that. If you've got both your money.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah. And if you don't know what your Google, my business page is, it's that little box that pops up when you put your clinic name into Google and hit enter, and I don't mean your clinic name. com, just put your clinic name on it. So a little box that pops up on the right and you can. It's got buttons to click on your website, your hours, your directions, et cetera. And it's where all your Google reviews are. You need to be working that page. You need to be, you need to date. Yeah. And you need to be posting questions and answering the questions. Yes. You can do that yourself. Or you can ask people to post a question, but make sure that you answer it. You need to change your pictures or add to your pictures every single month. That is becoming the number one spot where people are going to find you. It's a great marketing tool, but you have to work it.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And it's free to change all that stuff. You can just, you look at your page when you got an extra hour or two. And with, you have that thought in mind already, you can ask the staff, Hey, what, give me a couple of questions that patients have asked over the last month over the phone. You can also, while you're doing that and you're creating ads already for Facebook or Tik TOK or whatever you're doing, right. When you're doing that. You can either take photos at the time. I don't recommend still photos. I recommend that we're using some action footage, right? Then once we launched like the action Jackson kind of thing, we want you to move in and groove and in your videos, cause stills don't do as good. But. You can pull a still photo from your video and use that, or you can take a photo, before you do the video, if you've got that in mind already, you just have a photo bank of photos that you just rotate things in and out and add things.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's a place where you need to put your focus. And another place is I see doctors who've been in practice for a while realizing. That maybe some of their stats have slipped just a little bit. And so their knee jerk reaction is, Oh my gosh, we need more new patients.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And they ads on Facebook every day. They're going to give me like 45 new patients and I don't have to pay anything. So maybe I should go for that deal. Right?

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Sure. Sure. Yeah. It's instead of focusing so much on new patients and we all need new patients. Cause if you've been in practice for a while you have you, you have people that lead the practice, they move away, they passed away, they don't like you anymore, whatever it might be. So we need to replace those, but the focus on new patients, sometimes it's just a little bent and so we need to be focusing on things like reactivations. You've got all these people in your database. Why don't we tap into that? That's an absolute gold mine. And there's a couple other things that I want to talk about. We got to take a break. I'm getting a look. We got to take a quick break. to hear word from our sponsors. So we're talking about where to put your focus in 2025. We're talking a little bit about just a multitude of things that you could and should focus on. So we'll be right back.

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Dr. Michael Perusich:

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast brought to you by Kats consultants and Chiro health USA. Troy, we're talking about where to put your focus in 2025. And we were just talking about. the drive for new patients. And but if you've been in practice for a while, what about looking at your database and saying, Hey, maybe it's time to reactivate some of these patients.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Anything in house is going to be better because you guys know you have to sift through the wheat and the chaff. When you start getting like somebody says, Hey, we're gonna get you 30 new patients in the door. Maybe two of those patients Stay, pay, and refer, right? They're going to be those patients that actually get chiropractic and want chiropractic. The other 28 are just responding to an ad and go, Oh, there's a 1995 special and I get a free car and an adjustment and, what kind of freak are in a head shape? I'll shave their heads too. If

Dr. Michael Perusich:

you took advantage of the, yeah,

Dr. Troy Fox:

yeah, I did take advantage of the promotion. Liked it so much. I started offering it to patients, but so when you get those kind of patients in, that's a lot of work. And we've talked in other podcasts and we will in the future as well about how much it costs. To run and develop a new patient to the point of where they become profitable We're not going to talk about that today But what I am going to say is it's a lot quicker to get to profitability And you have a lot higher retention when you are using in house referrals whether that be a proxy And if you don't know what a proxy is just a quick version is hey, mike I hear that your daughter, you know is playing soccer now And we haven't really seen her in the office. Who's she using for a chiropractor? And Mike's, oh, she doesn't have a chiropractor. We need to get her in here and have her checked out. I'll have the front office staff take care of that when you go up front. And, it's really easy to do that. The dialogue is different for every person. That was just one little example. In house, we can also start raiding our database, like you said, and look at reacts. There are people that have dropped out of care and we do we do some interesting reacts and it's amazing. Whenever we send out that react, we do it drips. We don't do like the whole database at once. We pick sections. Sure. When we do it, it's amazing. Every time we get people that are like, Oh my gosh, yes, I'd love to schedule it. Cause we do it in the form of a text message. And when they get it, they go, Oh my gosh, yeah, I want a schedule. And they come in and they go, Oh my gosh, it's been how many months since I saw you? Yeah.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

And they're shocked.

Dr. Troy Fox:

I got busy and forgot. And

Dr. Michael Perusich:

and that's what happens to a lot of them.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And then it's Hey, so what do you want now to care? I always ask when somebody has been gone for a while, is there something you didn't like about the care? Oh no, I loved it. I just got busy. Okay. So are we ready to get back on a maintenance or wellness schedule? Absolutely. And a lot of times there may be a little bit of work to get there. Hey, it's been four months. You're definitely very restricted to your lumbar spine. And that was the initial problem you came in with. I'm going to see you one time a week for a couple of weeks before we move you back out to that. Maybe if they've been gone for just a few months,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

right? So yeah. So that's a great one to focus on here. Here's another one. Why do you think some places are so some businesses are so popular take Starbucks, for example, and I know we use Starbucks is as an example all the time, but it's a great example of what I'm about to say. They're so popular, not because they have the cheapest cup of coffee. They have the best coffee house experience, and that's why people go there. The story, somebody walks into your practice with a Starbucks. You immediately want to ask what flavor did you get? And Hey, by the way, did you think about getting me one? Because everybody gets excited about it. Yeah, and we want to be able to have that kind of experience for our patients. We want them to get excited about coming to see us. We want them to be looking at us like we're cheers where everybody knows your name kind of thing. And if we can focus on creating that great patient experience, guess what? We're going to do a couple of things. We're going to build up our retention because people are going to stay. More, they're going to want to come more often. That's a good thing. And what else are they going to do? They're going to refer people in. Yeah, because it's a cool place to go. So I think that's a great place to focus on in 2025.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And if you're not doing that, think of these numbers. We already, as chiropractors, have a higher satisfaction rating than medicine when it comes to spinal problems, like back problems.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

And you were talking about a study or an article or something. You read the other day. You were talking about this the other day

Dr. Troy Fox:

where

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Our patient satisfaction is just through the roof compared to other providers.

Dr. Troy Fox:

So if you have that office that doesn't have that, that, that patient experience, that's great. My concern for you is as you're falling behind, even the other chiropractors in your area, you should at least be on par with them, meaning that you should have a great customer experience or a great patient experience when they come through the door. The beauty that we do have, and I'll give everybody cute kudos that's listening to this. We don't have a dissatisfaction rating. Unfortunately, in medicine, there is a dissatisfaction rating. We are dissatisfaction ratings at zero. It's either, hey, we're super thrilled with you or we're not like over the top. We're just neutral, but we're not negative about the chiropractic care that we receive. But sometimes with medicine, and I get it because there are some pretty intrusive treatments in medicine that people wish they hadn't have done sometimes. And so I would say overall, our satisfaction rating is good, but if you're not up there, My concern is, again, that there's five chiropractors in your town, and four of them have a great customer or patient experience when they walk through the door. And you don't. It's like going to, it's like going to a coffee shop. And you walk in the door, and it's dirty, and it's dingy, and it's not very pretty in there, and they don't really have, I can't get a macchiato, or americano, or cappuccino, or all those names. I don't, most of them, I don't know what they mean. All I can get is a black cup of coffee, and they don't even have real cream. They just have the shaker thing with the powder in it. How many of you would want a cup of coffee from there? Not many because we've been, we have been conditioned that when you go to a coffee house, it's going to be a bohemian, cool, hipster atmosphere, right? And you're going to be able to get names of copies, coffees that you don't even know what they are.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

You don't even know what you're getting.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And you hear people say, I'm going to half calf, double tap calf with the twist, a lemon macchiato half, what is a

Dr. Michael Perusich:

macchiato?

Dr. Troy Fox:

I have no idea. I really don't. I do Americano cause I know it's water and coffee. And yeah, it's, amen brothers. That's what I do too. I understand that one, but we have been conditioned that we enjoy that we go in and we think it's super cool to go someplace. Starbucks coined it when they started coming out with sizes on their drinks that I didn't understand. A tall, it's like a small, right. And then you get a

Dr. Michael Perusich:

small, then there's a grande, which is not a large. And I think I heard the other day that they've got another new size and it's some okay. Yato style name.

Dr. Troy Fox:

So we got all this crazy things. So if you're not up with other chiropractors from a standpoint of creating this experience, look around, go sit in your waiting room. This is a, this is homework for you in 2025 to be focused, go sit in your waiting room and look 360 degrees. And if you're able to do it. While staff is in the building, hear what the sounds are coming from the front desk. What does it sound like, smell feel like? I've always been a big fan of what it looks like when you walk through the door. And if you guys have heard me in past, for the past 200 podcasts, I have talked about if I walk into your office and there's dust on the plants, I am not excited about your office. Number one, what does it look like? Number two, what are the sounds that I'm hearing? And number three, what do I smell? Yeah. You don't have to cook fresh cinnamon rolls every day for it to smell good in your office. A diffuser is cool.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Cinnamon rolls on a Macchiato.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Or what was the smell that we had in new Orleans at the Ritz? What was that a banana bread,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

banana bread

Dr. Troy Fox:

bathroom at this hotel in the, in new Orleans smelled like banana bread. Somebody came out and said, you got to go in and smell the bathroom. And I was like, I don't want to do that.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

No, you really want to do it, but you have to

Dr. Troy Fox:

smelled like warm banana bread or out of the oven. And it was such a. Wild experience that I like had to stand in there and think about that for a minute You can do simple things like a diffuser. How about sounds should you have? Like crazy wild slash metal, Ozzy

Dr. Michael Perusich:

osbourne

Dr. Troy Fox:

Some ozzy osbourne playing in your office or Is it more relaxing to have a spa sound or maybe some jazz music? Maybe you listen to the local Christian radio station, which is usually not going to be music that is going to have a negative theme. Those are the kind of things that we're talking about when we walk into the office. So sit in your office, look around, are the baseboards all scraped up? Are the, I was sat in my dentist's office the other day, and the first thing that I noticed was all the arms on the chairs were all scraped up. It's time for new furniture. And they run a busy office, and I get it. You're going to get wear and tear in your waiting room. But if you haven't been in your waiting room in a while, go out and look, because you know what, as a patient. I sat in the chair and I noticed those things. I noticed that the floor is dirty. I noticed everything about it. It's like walking into a hotel room. Do you notice if they didn't clean the room and the sheets are laying on the bed and there's debris on the floor, you'd notice that.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

So we used to every day we would go out and we would test. Every single chair in the waiting area. And when I say test, we would make sure that it wasn't getting weak, falling apart, loose, needed to be tightened up. Make sure that the the cloth or the vinyl, depending on the chair was in good shape and didn't need to be repaired. And if there was a problem, we would yank that chair out. And we had a couple of extras that we'd put in its place until that one got fixed back up. Yeah. We all, and this drives me nuts. Okay. You go into a chiropractic clinic and they've got every single chiropractic. poster that you could possibly find. Some are framed, some aren't, some are dog eared and turning yellow. Yeah. Some are thumbtacked to the wall or taped to the wall, even better. Some have nice glass frames, some don't, and it's just this hodgepodge of. Stuff and it looks like a flea market and if that's your practice, I'm, sorry I don't mean to offend you but that's one of those things you need to look at It doesn't cost that much to go to a hobby lobby or someplace like that And get those put together black frames with a piece of glass And make them look nice

Dr. Troy Fox:

Yeah,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

it doesn't cost that much.

Dr. Troy Fox:

You know what's right next to that? The tv that's on and it says this channel is not available. Now I've never seen that in a chiropractic office, I'll be honest about that, but I've walked into like bar and grill where you're getting ready to watch a game and they have seven tvs and one of them's working. It's it seems a little chintzy okay, so

Dr. Michael Perusich:

So I go to my dentist's office. This is another thing drives me nuts. And they have soap operas playing on the TV in the waiting room. What, why are we doing that?

Dr. Troy Fox:

Now do something like a Chiro TV where it rolls across stuff for you. I use Chiro TV, so it's not a shameless plug for him. It's just what I use. I like TV out there. Or you can do your own. I know you guys put together like a memory stick. I just haven't had time to do it, but you guys had a memory stick that rolled through, you can just do a rolling slide show on your TV as well. If you don't want to spend the 20 or 30 bucks a month Option. The other option is that you don't have a TV at all. If you're not going to put up there, because honestly having an off or this channel not available, just looks tacky. It looks like you're looking like you're in an office. It's about to go, that's about to get closed permanently.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah. Make, just make sure you update things. And when it comes to your posters, move them around once in a while. It's funny when you move them around, people think you got new ones.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And replace your light bulbs,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

replace your light

Dr. Troy Fox:

bulbs. Yeah, it's a lot of simple stuff when it could sell a lot of these action items of focus, or I get that you're focused when you're in your adjusting room, if there's a new scuff on the wall, cause you spend nine hours a day in there,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

right? But you got to look at the whole plan.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Have you gone to the waiting room lately? And a lot of times your staff hadn't either because they're busy behind the front desk. So as the doctor, you're the leader. So unless you've appointed somebody on your staff, because a lot of times during staff meetings, maybe I'll say, Hey, it's your week to check the waiting room and we literally check it every day, we're out there with a sweeper in the morning, making sure that if there's a spot or two especially when it's. It's been icy out and stuff and people are dragging rock salt and junk in your office. Sure And we live in a farming community people bring dirt and stuff into which is not a big deal And you know what? They probably don't even notice it That's probably one. They don't really notice a whole lot, but I do

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah, we had some pig farmers that would leave their boots outside at the front door, which is kind and courteous, but yeah, we had the vacuum out twice a day, just making sure the place was clean. And one of my staff was in charge of making sure the physical plant was put together and looked well. But I always check to, it didn't mean

Dr. Troy Fox:

I had a manager at Dylan's grocery store. When I was a kid, when I was in high school, I worked at Dylan's and I remember that's

Dr. Michael Perusich:

funny. I did too.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Yeah. I'm working in the store and I'm a high school kid and I've got one, I've got my tie on, but my shirt's unbuttoned and the tie is hanging down about an inch. And I remember him walking in and pointing at me and he goes, we don't do that at Dylan's. We do that at Bogart's. That's number one. So Bogart's was the other grocery store in town and they weren't nearly as cool as Dylan's. You were the cool kid if you worked at Dylan's. It was a treat. And that was the creme de la creme. The other one was he walked in one day and it'd been raining outside and you know how people walk mud and everything into the stores and it gets dirt everywhere. And we're trying to keep up. Spot mopping. We can't get the big machine out and run it. The one that, that cleans the floor. So we're spot mopping as quickly as we can. It wasn't perfect. And this gentleman that was our manager and I have great respect for him. Wonderful guy. He walks in the door and he looks at me and I was the lead guy. I was a senior in high school at the time. And I was in charge of everybody that was there. And he goes, have we even spot mop today? He goes, this looks like effing Bogarts. And so again, that the boat, so again, we made a reference to somebody else, but our focus maybe wasn't quite where it should have been. Cause you know what? We were able to actually get that store a lot cleaner after he said something.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yep.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Maybe we weren't as focused. We should have been. So those are two things you can look at marketing and physical plant are two big ones, I think.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

And we're not speaking about Bogart's by the way.

Dr. Troy Fox:

No, it was just, it was a competition thing at the time. I don't want Bogart's because Bogart's where I lived at had the best fried chicken ever, but there you go.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

So you made me think of something and that's your team and that's a great place to focus on in 2025 is team development. And so think about your staff, people. On their jobs, they like to have opportunities for professional development. That's one of the things that keeps people that keeps creates employee retention. And so this is a great thing to spend time on and think about it as they grow. Don't you grow too? Sure you do. As they become less focused on just doing tasks, they become more focused on being your success partner. And isn't that a great thing? So now they're helping drive revenue, they're watching for treatment opportunities, and really helping to build patient relationships.

Dr. Troy Fox:

If they see your vision, they become more, more involved in it. And quite frankly, even though it was a harsh reality for me that day at working at Dylan's, I saw Bob's vision, the manager at that point. And you know what? From there on out, I didn't disappoint the man because I saw his vision for what that store should look like. We should be the same way. And I think our staff wants to share in that vision. So from a focus standpoint, we can get a lot of help from our staff. You're right. Staff development is huge.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yes. And I'm telling you, a well trained, developed staff will help grow your practice quicker than you can ever imagine.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Yeah, absolutely. So it's so fun when you have a well oiled machine and some of you've gotten to work with a well oiled machine and seeing the opposite side. Some of you had to weed out the folks that aren't part of the well oiled machine because they'll, the wheat separates from the chaff pretty quick. When you got people that are highly motivated and then you got some that aren't they will out themselves pretty quickly and unfortunately it's painful for them. Because they're not a part of that vision. They're just, they're collecting a paycheck. And so you may have some staff shake up as you really get involved, but it's better for your practice in the long run.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah, exactly. So we need to take another break here real quick, but we're talking about things to focus on in 2025. And I think we probably have one more jewel to give you. So don't go away. We'll be right back.

Kats Consultants:

Kats Chiropractic Consultants your partner in chiropractic success. We are dedicated with one on one guidance to bring you all your practice management needs. Let's supercharge your practice. Give us a call today.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

All right. Welcome back to the KC ChiroPulse podcast. We're talking about things to focus on in your practice, in your chiropractic clinic in 2025. We've talked about a lot of great things. We've talked about reactivations. We've talked about new patients. We've talked about several great things, staff development, but what we haven't talked about yet is profitability focused on profitability in 2025. And you know when you when we talk about

Dr. Troy Fox:

hold on you didn't say new patients I didn't say profitability instead of new capability. All right, explain to me why I care more about profitability and less about new patients. And I know some of you've heard this and it's a broken record. I don't care. You know what you

Dr. Michael Perusich:

need

Dr. Troy Fox:

to hear it more often. Cause I'm tired of going to state conventions and hearing you guys ask how many new patients did you see last month? I saw 45 and I charged every one of them a dollar a visit, including The exam. Okay. How profitable am I? All right. So

Dr. Michael Perusich:

hit it. Yeah. If you've walked up to me at a convention before and told me how many new patients you're asking you you're seeing, you've heard my response. I don't really care. No. Cause it's superfluous. Yeah. We have to focus on profitability and here's why new patients are not profitable. I don't care what you say, but. The average chiropractor should be billing out about 400 to 500 an hour. And there's no way you're charging 500 for that hour long new patient exam. Plus think about the marketing, the staff time, your time to process a new patient. They're just not profitable. And if you're losing them in by the third or fourth visit, which the typical dropout point is day three. You've actually lost money on that patient. So we have to focus on the patients who want to stay, pay, refer, and believe in what we do.

Dr. Troy Fox:

So here's an easy way to do this. So just so you can see how much money you're losing in the short. So we won't even include staff into this. Let's just put marketing costs in there. Marketing cost total. Yeah. Yeah. Divide that by the number of new patients that you received. And then you can parse out exactly what it costs you per patient. Now you can do it more than a month. I'm not saying it should be just a month, but we know for the year, really, and trending, is it costing us more or less with the marketing we're doing, because if we're trending to where it's costing us more per patient, I need to look at marketing and to determine is there a better avenue or have trends changed, but I'm going to look at it from a month and a year. And sometimes quarterly as well. But I want to know what did it cost me. Okay, now what did that new patient came in and they paid 29. 99 for that new patient special. And then they came in and they paid 45 for an adjustment and they paid 25 for a therapy and they came in day one. They got their exam. They got maybe a couple x rays. They came in day two, day three, and they dropped out of care. And so I'm at about 200 now, and I have to look and see, okay, what did I pay for marketing? And then you go ahead and throw on top of there, all right, there's probably a little building cost. There's a little bit of staff cost and all that. And you're lucky if you broke even at that point. And most of the time, lucky. And most of the time you didn't. And I see some of you guys spending thousands on marketing every month. It's crazy to keep generating. You don't have to do that because you still want to get 50 new patients a month into your practice. You are spending so much money and spending your wheels and losing those patients so early. Wouldn't it be better if you had a better method to, or a better mousetrap? In other words, a better method to get people to understand, stay, pay, and refer because they get chiropractic rather than the constant turnover wheel. And that's where we run into the problem. And so our focus doesn't need to be as much on new patients. Do we need new patients? Sure. Do we need 50 a month?

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Probably not. Yeah. And here's the other side of profitability too. We see this all the time. Doctors are setting their fee strategy randomly and oftentimes based on what other doctors in town are doing. That's wrong. You have to have a fee strategy that matches your ability to promote your practice and matches the level of service that you give. And there's one more component to it. It has to create profit. That's a novel idea, creating profit. And far too often we see doctors, they don't even know what their profitability rate is. And we, you've got to know that. So that's where you got to throw that business hat on. This is where a good coach comes in handy to help drive your profitability in the right direction.

Dr. Troy Fox:

Yeah, don't tell me when I talk to you that you think the guy down the street is charging 43 for an adjustment and so you're afraid you can't raise your fees this year past 40 because you want to stay below your competition down the street. That's not how you set fees. That's a reason. You're telling me that you use thermography on every patient that you use a very extensive exam on every patient and the guy down the streets doing a two minute exam and telling people to lay down on the table. You're not even comparing apples to apples. So quit comparing yourself to others.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

No, just look at ways to become better, create a better experience. But. You've got to look, you've got to peel the layers back and you've got to look at that profitability. I was talking to a doctor the other day and not a client of ours, but we threw some quick calculations, figured out he's losing 30 cents every time a patient walks in the door. Again, race to the bottom. Why? And, part of it was he hadn't raised his fees in years. And part of it was he didn't know that his fees were below his reimbursement level and, a whole bunch of things. So you've got to really make sure that you're digging in from a business standpoint and understanding the true profitability, true profit point of your practice.

Dr. Troy Fox:

That's the same guy that's at the state convention telling me that he saw 45 new patients probably was and it's like I'm fortunate because I get that you're trying to show me how successful you are. You don't have to show me how successful you are, that we're doing awesome in practice and we don't need a literal, a tsunami of new patients. Think about that. You need a tsunami of new patients every month. just to make yourself feel better. And I've been there. Trust me, we speak from experience because you and I were to practice were taught that really on up front. It was get as many new patients in the door as you can. That's what everybody was teaching you back then. Truth of the matter was we learned very early on that was and you and I both learned at the same time. There was a month when you and I had An event that we ended up with more than a hundred new patients in a month. That's a lot.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

It was, it

Dr. Troy Fox:

was the moment we both had the light bulb click on and we went, what are we doing here? We are, there's people coming out of the woodwork. We couldn't even see the people that we had as new patients and service our patients effectively.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

I couldn't remember who they were. Yeah. Yeah, it was horrible.

Dr. Troy Fox:

It was horrible. And that was the, that was where we finally realized, what new patient numbers don't matter because you can bring in 100 new patients and lose 96 of them. And it's as good as having maybe 2 new patients because you lost so much money on the other 90 some, right? We figured out early on that there's a formula and that formula is not new patient formula. And so that's why we tell you, you don't need to focus on it. You need new patients in your practice. Yes, but do you need as many as you think you do? Probably not. So

Dr. Michael Perusich:

no, there's a capacity point and you have to

Dr. Troy Fox:

know what that is. Our focus should be on better service for our patients, not on new patients.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Exactly. And these are all things that. Having a good business coach behind you and guiding you and giving you that oversight and really help you monitoring things is such a great investment in your profitability, your success, your future, and the value of your practice. At some point, most of you out there probably want to sell your practice and use that as part of your retirement nest egg, right? But far too often, we see practices become worthless because you haven't done all these things and your focus is in the wrong direction. Go to KatsConsultants. com, check out what we're doing to help clients, help doctors out there, drive their practices to be truly profitable. And guess what? They're also fun. So we're unfortunately trained that bigger is better and bigger. I'm here to tell you is not always better. So I'll take profitability over bigger any day.

Dr. Troy Fox:

And if you think the tidbits you get from this podcast are phenomenal and you're like, what more could they possibly give me from a coaching standpoint? Very individualized, very personalized. And we get into the weeds and what's going on in your practice. So that's where the difference is. We can give you generalizations like we're given, and this is all great information, but what do you specifically need? And that's why getting into the weeds and finding out what's going on in your practice and analyzing your numbers allows us to create huge change in your practice. Because we are very personalized and specialized from that standpoint, rather than just giving you general information, which is really good, but so you're listening to this today going, man, there's some changes I can make in my practice. Absolutely. We can take even further. And it's more,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

and one would be great when you're that successful, we can go out and share a macchiato together. That's true. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in this week. You guys are great. You are the reason why our podcast has grown so much over the last couple of years, so make sure you subscribe, share, comment all those great things that so we know you're out there. So we appreciate all of you. And from all of us here at Kats consultants, we'll see you next time. See ya.