Kats Chiropractic Consultants CHIROpulse

237: The Power of Strategic Planning

• Michael Perusich

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This week’s topic:  Are you setting yourself up for failure?

The KC CHIROpulse Podcast is designed for Chiropractic professionals ready to elevate their practice to new heights.  This week, the show is hosted by Kats Consultants’ CEO Dr Michael Perusich, seasoned expert in Chiropractic business management and practice success strategies.  This podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable tactics to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • Why some Chiropractors plan to fail because they fail to plan
  • Why strategic planning has such power
  • Why you may be building a mediocre practice
  • Why strategic planning has so much power to help build the practice of your dreams
  • …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.



237 The Power of Strategic Planning for Chiropractic Success

[00:00:00] 

Introduction and Common Pitfalls in Chiropractic Practice

Why do most doctors fail? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC ChiroPulse Podcast, brought to you by Kats Consultants and Chiro Health USA. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Perusich, bringing you strategic spot on relevant business topics every single week to help you have a more profitable practice. So welcome back. We appreciate you tuning in every week.

So. Why do most doctors, why do most chiropractors fail in business? Well, it's probably not what you think. It's not because they don't have passion, it's because they don't have a plan. And we, we, as a profession, and, and I'm not just gonna pick on us, I, it's not just us. I shouldn't say that. I think a lot of entrepreneurs miss the planning aspect of creating a roadmap of where you're gonna go.

Now, a lot of us do. Goal setting and those kind of things. [00:01:00] But honestly, when, when you look at a lot of goals and, and we get to look at a lot of goals here at Katz Consultants, they're empty. They're, they, they, they have no purpose behind 'em. They're not strategic. And so we need to make sure that we. Being strategic about the direction of our practice, you know, and, and sometimes we think that, well, we're busy.

There's money in the checkbook, we're busy, we're running around. We got a lot of new patients, but there's no strategic aspect to it. A lot of that stuff doesn't mean anything. And, and it's funny because a lack of planning is one of the top reasons why entrepreneurs, chiropractors burn out, because everything at that point.

Without the planning is random and we don't wanna run a business by randomness. 'cause what does that do? Well, it creates chaos. And you know, there, there's a great quote, [00:02:00] I'm gonna read it here. If you don't have a plan for your practice, someone else, the insurance companies, the patients or chaos will create one for you.

And you're probably wondering who said that? Well, I said that, but anyway, that doesn't matter. But you. You know, why is it that there's such a divide in our profession between success, success driven practices and mediocre practices, practices that are shooting the lights out and practices that just never can seem to get off dead center?

Well, it's because the top performing practices are using a methodology for planning and creating real relevant action steps to that plan. Instead of just leading everything to chance. 

The Power of Strategic Planning

And that strategy is called strategic planning. And you may have heard of this, you may not have. Um, strategic planning [00:03:00] is basically goal setting on steroids.

And, and I wanna dive into this a little bit. Um. And I wanna kind of talk about the framework of, of what strategic planning looks like and what does it mean and why I think a lot of doctors don't do this. So we're gonna hear a quick word from our sponsors. We'll be right back

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Hi everyone. Welcome back.

We are talking about strategic planning and planning being one of the top reasons why chiropractors fail in business. And good heavens, we don't want you to fail. You know, in my opinion right now is probably as good of a time to be a Chiropractor and have a clinic, um, as ever, you know, since the pandemic.

People are seeking us out, and I think we've really risen up the totem pole of healthcare because not only are people understanding that we offer a great value, but we touch on something most healthcare [00:05:00] practitioners don't. And that's long-term health, long-term, long-term health, long-term wellness, whatever you wanna call it.

And that has become incredibly important, but. As I said earlier, the way we stay in practice, the way we grow a practice, the way we create the profitability in a practice that we want, that we desire, that we deserve. Is by planning. And so what is strategic planning? Well, it's, it's bringing clarity to the practice.

It's creating real vision for the practice. And, you know, you can't plan forward if you're unclear about your vision, your mission, and that that just leaves the future of your clinic, of your business to, to randomness. And we don't want that. 'cause all that does is create chaos. And there's enough opportunities for chaos in practice.

Without adding to it. So how do we do this? Well, there's a system called the 12 Week year, and if you haven't heard of this, we studied this in, in one of our masterminds. [00:06:00] Um, I can't remember if it was earlier this year or last year, but it's kind of a game changer. It, and when you start breaking things down into quarters, instead of what most goal setting does is you're trying to plan for an entire year or, or even five years out, you know.

You, you just a five year plan. Doesn't make sense because why? Well, it's pie in the sky. You, you just can't plan out that far, number one. And number two, it's too long distance. It, it's too far in the future. And so what do we have the, the ability to do when something's too far in the future? We procrastinate and we don't really ever get around to it.

Well, we missed our goals in January, but you know, gosh, we still have February through December to make up and well, it's April and you know, we're still not quite at our goals. But good heavens, we've got May to December. And, and we just, we keep pushing the ball down the road. We, we keep pushing it out and it's kind of [00:07:00] like Congress.

They keep pushing the budgets out and they don't really ever get around to, to doing anything to fix it. And I'm, I'm not trying to be political, but this is important. Strategic planning is taking a step back from the clinic. It's not something you do on the fly. It's something you literally, literally spend at least a half a day on with your team, and then every single week you're refining it.

And creating strategies that are working and adjusting your strategies and making sure that you got yourself on track because you know what? You've only got three months to make this work. You've only got 12 weeks to get on it, and so you have less of a tendency. To say, well, we're on week 11. Um, we didn't make our goals in the first week, but gosh, we've still got 10 more.

I mean, it, it just, it just pushes you to, to drive the process. So it's smaller chunks. And you've probably heard me say [00:08:00] many, many times, we always wanna break everything till the smallest common denominator, right? So we don't wanna look at goals as monthly or annually. Um, we wanna look at these goals really on a weekly basis.

And so we break it down to the smallest piece, and you break it down even from the week, you break it down to what do we have to do to meet our goals per day? What do we have to do to meet our goals per day part? What do we have to do to meet our goals every hour? And it becomes much, much simpler. It's also got a quicker in time to it, so you get jazzed up to accomplish it.

So it's kind of like playing sports, you know? You don't wait until the fourth quarter. Well, okay, I'll back up. Some teams do, but, but we watch the clock in a game, right? Because it's got a finite life to it. And a year or five years out. It, it's just too far. We, we, our brain just can't [00:09:00] wrap ourselves around having that much time to accomplish something.

And the goals just seem too big because it's such a, a big span of time. 

Implementing and Sustaining Strategic Planning

So we do strategic planning, and in strategic planning we create measurable objectives. So we, we focus on those leading KPIs like. Profit per patient visit and things like that. And, and inside of that we create an execution framework that helps us know exactly what to do step by step in these smaller chunks.

And then every week we, we review it and every day we're working it. And every day we're becoming more and more adaptable. 'cause if our action steps and strategies aren't working, we have a small window to adjust it and make changes and get back on top. So strategic planning is about trying to create these perfect goals that are far out into the future.

It's about being adaptable to direction and decision making. And why does [00:10:00] this stuff give you power? Now, I, I said earlier, I think I know the reason why a lot of doctors don't do this, and I think a a big reason is because they're afraid to take the time off from patient care and you have to. I mean, that's the only way this works.

You and your team have to literally close the doors, let the answering machine answer the phones, and focus on defining what your plan is for the next 12 weeks. And when you do that, you start turning strategy into action, but you can't do it while you're in patient care. And so I, I see this all the time.

I see a lot of doctors who, who don't want to take a day out of the clinic or they don't want to take a half a day even out of the clinic because, well, gosh, you know, I'll lose all those patient visits and then my patients will leave me. I'm telling you right now. If your patients leave you because you're closed one day, that you normally are open, you got a bigger [00:11:00] problem than closing the doors.

So you can strategically plan. So you need to get a handle on that. And in fact, you may need to call us 'cause we may need to help you figure out what is happening. That my patients don't like us enough to, they don't trust us enough to wanna stay if we have an in-service day. And so we have to do this process.

And I, you know, many years ago. So we, we study consumer buying habits a lot. We study the economy a lot, and people ask me all the time, why do, why do you guys do that? Well, because our patients are consumers and the economy is what drives buying decisions. And so we have to understand all that. So we know what communication strategy to have in the practice to attract the right people into the practice and to create commitment and engagement from patients.

To wanna buy into our treatment plans and stay in care, be retentive in care, in the practice, and become long-term lifetime patients. So [00:12:00] to do that, we have to create strategy and there's gotta be strategy behind that. And when we, when we take that time off, and here's how often you should do this, you should take time off every quarter.

And there's, there's a way not to lose your patient visits, and if you don't understand how to do that, become a member of Kats consultants. We, we teach doctors all the time how to properly plan ahead of time so you never lose a patient visit. It. But this whole idea of strategic planning is something that this, this is what the big companies do.

This is, think about all the successful companies out there. I promise you they strategically plan at least every quarter. And chiropractors, you've gotta start running your practice like a CEO, not like. A doctor, sorry. I mean, I'm a doctor too. I, I get it. But sometimes we have to realize we have to wear both hats.

Sometimes we need to take the doctor hat off. We need to halt patient care and we need to do planning. So many years ago, through all of our study [00:13:00] of consumer buying habits and, and the economy and so forth, we realized. That there was huge value in having an entire day where you learn as a team and you plan as a team.

So we've structured that into a lot of our programs to, to make sure that you guys are having that strategy day. So. Uh, uh, I wanna dive into a couple of other things. We, we gotta take another pause here for just a minute, but we're talking about strategic planning and how important it is and why the lack of strategic planning is sometimes one of the biggest factors why doctors fail.

So we'll be right back.

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 [00:14:00] today.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the KC ChiroPulse Podcast. We're talking about strategic planning and the importance of stepping back from the practice. Every quarter and having this incredibly important strategic planning session with your team. This isn't something you do by yourself. This is something you involve your entire team in.

And why do we do that? Well, they have to know the vision. They have to have that clarity. They, they have to know what that, those goals are. And probably most importantly, they need to know what the action steps are. Because docs, they're gonna drive most of this, your team. Is going to drive most of this. So we have to realize that success is never an accident.

It happens by intentional planning, and this is why strategic planning is so important. So we have to make sure that we're doing this. So in our strategic planning session, here's what we're doing. [00:15:00] We're creating. Visibility. We're putting action to our mission, if you will. We're creating steps to be able to reach the goals that we want, and we're scrunching them down into short timeframes so that we have the, the energy, the adrenaline, if you will, to want to attack these and, and win the process.

And so strategic planning, while we're talking about taking a day or a half a day every quarter, it's really not something that stops. Strategic planning is a process, and it's a process that we work on every single day. So every week, every Monday, we recommend have a 10 minute meeting with your staff.

You, you have plenty of time in the day to find 10 minutes. Do it before you open. Do it at lunchtime. I don't care when you do it, but you have to find that 10 minute slot. And what are we doing in that 10 minutes? We're [00:16:00] reviewing our action steps from our strategic planning. We're talking about what's working, what's not, and we make adjustments to our strategy for what's not working.

And so we're, we're constantly every week making those adjustments. And then every week in our staff meeting, oh wait a minute, some of you don't have weekly staff meetings. We should, so in that weekly staff meeting. We, we want to go back through our action steps. We wanna check in with everybody. How's everything going?

Are they. Um, are they capitalizing on their, on their action steps? And where do we stand in relation to that 12 week goal? And then we keep this visible in the clinic, whether it's giant post-it notes on a back wall where only we see it, or we have a secret code that, you know, we, we say when we walk by each other while patients are in the clinic.

We, we had one, it was 88. I don't know if you've ever heard me tell the story about 88. I'm not gonna talk about it today, but, um, it's, uh. Actually, I really [00:17:00] should. Okay. Real quick, real quick. This is how strategic planning is so powerful. Long time ago in our clinic, we were stuck at an average of 44 patient visits a day, and I was just, I was kind of racking my brain.

I, I was thinking about this on the weekends. I can remember mowing the yard thinking about how do we grow? Why aren't we growing? And I came in one day, I think it was on a Monday morning, and I got all my staff together and I said 88. And they looked at me like I had three heads and I said, 88. That's the number we're gonna go to.

I'm frustrated that we're stuck at 44, we're going to 88, and I want all of you to think about that 88 number, and at our staff meeting on Wednesday, we're gonna start planning for this. So we did, we rolled up our sleeves. We actually cut out some extra time. We realized that the process of planning needed at least four hours, and I think we only had like an hour and a half.

So the following [00:18:00] week, we actually set aside that four hours. I'm telling you, it was a game changer because here was the result of setting aside that time and actually creating a plan that made sense with action steps that we could work every week. Here's what happened. We went from 44 to 88 in about three months.

In fact, we didn't stop at 88. We blew right through it, and we're up to about 115, 120 patient visits a day in three months, three and a half months. Okay. This is the power of strategically planning like this and taking the time. So was was taking that amount of time worthwhile? Oh my gosh, yes, because that.

Going from 44 and increasing it by more than 60 patient visits. Do you think we made up for the day we took off? Oh my gosh. 10 times over. 10 times over, and we catapulted ourselves through our goals [00:19:00] and boom, here we are in three months, 44 to 88. Bam. That's the power of strategic planning, so get on board with it.

If you need help with this, call us. This is one of the big things that we do for doctors is we help you put yourself in a position of profitability. Part of it's through our virtual seminars. Part of it's through our methodology for helping you have successful strategic planning and working that plan in that 12 week year mode.

Get the book, read it. It's awesome. And really helping you drive that process to create a business structure. That creates the profitability that you deserve to create the lifestyle that you deserve. And, and that's not obviously all we do. I mean, we, we coach you on every single aspect of running your business, training, your staff, marketing, communication strategies, et cetera, et cetera.

The only thing we don't do is come and treat your patients. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to kats consultants.com, [00:20:00] check us out. It's Kats with A-K-K-A-T-S. Go check us out. There's a whole bunch of free downloads on there. And continue to show up here every single week where we give you free of charge.

We should start charging for this for free of charge. We give you relevant, powerful strategies to run your practice more effectively. So if you ever want to have a breakthrough session with us, talk about your practice, what's going on in your practice, how maybe we can plug in and help you, or maybe not.

Um, you can always jump on one of our calendars. It's on our website. Just go to the top, chat with us, and, uh, you can jump on somebody's calendar and, uh, including mine and talk to us. So anytime. So, alright, we're gonna, we're gonna time out here. Thanks everybody for tuning in every week to the KC ChiroPulse podcast.

I wanna thank Chiro Health USA, for being one of our amazing, amazing sponsors. Go check them out too if you're not familiar with them. And, uh, be sure to like, and subscribe and, and share this podcast with everybody else [00:21:00] because I think we're doing some pretty unique things in the profession just to make everybody better, 'cause we love ChiroPulse.

Alright, for now, we're outta here and we will see you next time.