247 Doctor Authority Builds Success

Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.  

This week’s topic:  How credible are you with your patients? 

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’ coaches Dr Michael Perusich and Dr Troy Fox, seasoned experts in Chiropractic business management.  This podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How high-level authority with patients is a game changer for success  
• Why your professional presence helps lead patients to engage in care
• How weak doctor authority can degrade your practice profits
• How your authority with staff creates winning teams
• …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.

Transcript

247 Doctor Authority

Dr. Michael Perusich: [00:00:00] Doctors, how credible are you with your patients? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC ChiroPulse Podcast, where you find all the latest innovative information for managing your practice. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich. This is Dr. Troy Fox. We are your host of the podcast. We also want to thank Chiro Health USA for being one of our amazing sponsors.

You guys are awesome. So Troy. Are you credible with your patients? 

Dr. Troy Fox : That's a really good question and I think that depends on several different things. And you know, I look at it from a standpoint of, number one, are you comfortable with recommendations for patients? Because if you don't believe what you're telling patients, they're not gonna believe what you tell 'em.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Okay, you're absolutely right. But I wanna, I wanna stop on that one 'cause I think that's a major, major point, 

Dr. Troy Fox : right? 

Dr. Michael Perusich: If you don't believe it, your patients don't believe it and we trigger. This all the [00:01:00] time. I say we, I doctors in the profession trigger this all the time by letting patients know, well, we don't really believe this because the minute the patient says, well, I didn't expect it to be that much.

What do we do? I'll tell you what we can do. We can eliminate the decompression and that'll soften the cost for you. Well, you just, you just shot yourself on the foot. You just told the patient that, you're right. It's too expensive. I've got stuff in there we don't need. I just killed my doctor authority.

What do you wanna do, Mr. Patient? 

Dr. Troy Fox : Or you backpedal the second you make a treatment recommendation, you say, but you know, if you start feeling better earlier, we'll we'll just discontinue this treatment program. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And yeah and, and so you really don't believe what you're telling the patient.

Like let's just say, for example, let's say let's put a short treatment plan together. Let's just do three times a week for two weeks with a reevaluation at the end of it. You know, wouldn't that be pretty easy to do? And wouldn't you say most patients [00:02:00] maybe are gonna be pain free by the end of that two weeks, but is it likely that they're gonna be completely functional at the end of two weeks?

I'd say most of us would say one. Pain 

Dr. Michael Perusich: free. Yeah. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Yeah. Probably a pretty good chance. Probably close two. Probably not gonna be there. Probably not, but, but. We're gonna be on the right track at that point. And the reduction of pain is a good indicator that we're improving function. But when you lay the patient down on the table and palpate them, and they still got range of motion restriction, they've still got pain upon, you know, motion palpation, all of a sudden it's like, oh, hey, the problem's not gone.

It's just duct to Ted below the surface. We need to talk to patients about that upfront. That's a good preemptive conversation for Doctor Authority. Yeah, that if you preempt what's gonna happen in advance, and we know 99% of the time, that's exactly how it works. Every once in a while you have to pivot a little bit, but for the most part, that's how it works.

So if my patient knows that at the [00:03:00] beginning and I'm explaining what's gonna happen. Look how much authority I have at that point, because now they go, just like you said, doc, my pain's going down. But yeah, I can tell I'm still a little bit of stiff on certain movements. I can't swing the golf club yet or whatever.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, and you, you just brought up a a good word, preemptive. We're getting preempted by a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. Notice how I jutted that right in there. That was cute. 

Dr. Troy Fox : That was really cute. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: But we're talking about doctor authority and how credible doctors are you with your patients, are you establishing your professional presence?

We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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Dr. Michael Perusich: Okay, everybody, I just wanna preempt you that we are back. There's that word again. 

Dr. Troy Fox : I should, 

Dr. Michael Perusich: you know, that word's incredibly important though. You know, you bring up a whole, a whole nother level of doctor authority and that's preemptive communication. And we may be getting out, out of mm-hmm. Out any kind of sequence here.

I don't know that we ever have a sequence, but 

Dr. Troy Fox : Nah. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Um, nah. What, uh, but, preemptive communication becomes so important because, okay. I'll just give you a great example. Docs, you have a patient comes in, they get their reported findings, they get their first day adjustment. Okay? Is there a likelihood that they're gonna go home and feel better?

Yeah. Is there a likelihood they're gonna go home and feel no [00:05:00] different? Yeah. Is there a likelihood they're gonna go home and feel worse? 

Dr. Troy Fox : Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. Okay, so what if we don't prep the patient for any of that? Well, let's go through those again. If they go home and they feel better, okay, that's great. We just look like the hero we can get by without preempting that one, but since we don't know, we better preempt the other two.

Hey, Mr. Patient, this patient, some people after the first adjustment or two. Feel little worse. Some don't feel anything at all. Some feel a little bit better. I have no idea where you will fall, but if you have pain when you get home tonight, here's what I want you to do. Okay? That's preemptive communication.

That's setting your doctor authority and creating that professional presence, excuse me, with the patient and telling them that information upfront so that when they get home and they feel worse, they go, oh yeah, Dr. Fox told me. I might feel a little worse. The guy's brilliant. He even told [00:06:00] me what to do to try to manage it at home on my own.

I don't need to panic. I don't need to call the office and say, I'm never coming back again 'cause you hurt me. 

Dr. Troy Fox : That's Dr. And that's preempt number one. Now, this is a little. A little different take on Doctor Authority, but let's talk about finances for a minute. So the next question the patient asks me is, how much is this gonna cost?

And my response is not, well, the adjustment is blah, blah, blah, and the exams blah, blah, blah, and the X-rays are blah, blah, blah. My response is. I don't know, but I'm gonna get you in front of one of the front desk folks and they're gonna they're gonna talk you through this and they're gonna put together a plan Yeah.

That we, that we put for every patient. So that way there's no surprises for you. Ha ha. No surprises, right? 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yep. 

Dr. Troy Fox : We're gonna put together a plan with no surprises, so you can see the exact cost of the plan we're putting together. Does that sound great? And they're like, yeah, fantastic. I never talked about money because I'm not gonna talk about money.

Dr. Michael Perusich: No, because you need that boundary as the doctor. [00:07:00] Now, if you're in the practice by yourself, you don't have a choice, but you need that boundary with the patient between you and the finances. Otherwise, they're gonna wanna play. Let's make a deal with you. Mm-hmm. They can't play. Let's make a deal with the front desk because the front desk never has that authority to play.

Let's make a deal. So you just hit the ball out of the park by doing a little bit of. Preemptiveness, but at the same time, you created a boundary using your doctor authority to make sure that the patient's never gonna ask you about finances. That, and that's huge. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And I think those are two big ones. If you accomplish those two, that you're preemptive in communication and that you're preemptive with the financial side of things.

That you follow through with your plan and that you use table talk every day. I could keep adding to the list, but those, that's really, I mean the, the big four right there, you know? Yeah. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: It's huge. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And it's all about communication. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: It's all about communication. 

Dr. Troy Fox : I see another, I see too many docs that walk into the room [00:08:00] and.

Want to avoid that discussion. So they'll ask, well, how's the weather out there today? You know, what did, what did you do today? And how are the kids, blah, blah, blah, or whatever. And really never get to the conversation of here's what needs to be done. That is, and that is a stab to the heart. And then you wonder why patients quit and you're trying to look at your stats if you actually have stats.

Hopefully you do. Hopefully you actually track something. If not, talk to us, 

Dr. Michael Perusich: please. 

Dr. Troy Fox : If you are not tracking stats and you have no idea, then you're just kind of running willy-nilly. It's like running a lemonade stand and not knowing how many lemonades you sold yesterday. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: It's dust on the wind. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Then when you only sold two the day after that and you realize after the fact that you didn't put sugar in the lemonade, you kind of know why and you can correct course, but if you don't remember that you didn't put sugar in the lemonade.

In other words, if you're not having that same conversation with [00:09:00] every patient, now all of a sudden you're left wandering. Why did these patients quit care with me? Did they not like me? Did they not think Chiropractic care was effective? No, a lot of it has to do with the fact that you just didn't communicate.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Or they didn't like your lemonade. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Yeah, absolutely. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: So stop serving refreshments, 

Dr. Troy Fox : right? 

Dr. Michael Perusich: No, seriously. Sometimes I think doctors get the idea that Doctor Authority comes from trying to make patients your friend. And it's great to be nice and professional and those kind of things, but when we step over the friend boundary, you lose the patient.

'cause now they've got you. Mm-hmm. They can quit anytime they want and you can't do anything about it because they're your friend. So Doctor Authority is also maintaining that doctor patient relationship in a very strong manner, and always being not only communicative with the patient, but truthful with the patient and telling the patient, here's your condition.

Here's how it's [00:10:00] potentially gonna progress on you. If you don't do anything and don't tell 'em the subluxation is gonna kill them. Now, maybe there's some studies out there that suggest a hundred years from now you could, you're gonna die from a subluxation. I'll probably get all kinds of hate mail for this.

I'll read write it for you. But seriously guys, guys and gals, it. Be truthful with the patient. At some point, if we just look at the laws of physiology, Wolf saw says that abnormal pressure on normal tissue, this is eventually going to degrade and turn into probably an arthritic condition, and we don't want that to happen.

Mr. Patient? Mm-hmm. Miss patient? No, of course not. That's Dr. Authority. That's leaning the patient down the path of. True analogy of what's going to happen in the future. So they understand why they need your care today. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And I think you brought it up an important point too, because a lot of times as we're in a community for longer and longer, we do have a lot of friends that come in for care.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Sure. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And I had a great example that the other day, I had a really close friend from, I mean, I've known him since I was 18 years old, [00:11:00] and he doesn't live in town, but. So he wasn't getting Chiropractic care from me and I'll, and I'll be darned, no matter what I said, he wasn't getting Chiropractic care from anybody and then he had that day, that incident, that I can't get my socks on. Incident. Yep. Who did he call? My office? 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yep. 

Dr. Troy Fox : He had somebody drive him 50 miles to come to my office to see me. You know how I handled it? I didn't handle it like my best friend from 40 years ago. I mean, I'm old, obviously I'm 60 years old, so Jesus, 

Dr. Michael Perusich: right. 

Dr. Troy Fox : 40, 41 years I've known this guy.

You know what happened when he walked in the door? He went through the same process that every new patient goes through. Yep. He went through an, he went through an exam, he went through X-rays. And the reason he went through x-rays is because he had red flags for it, right? Sure. We use all the rules.

He sent me a text and it was the coolest text after I treated him on the first day and it started. I had [00:12:00] no idea. How professional you are and how much knowledge that you have about the human body and the spine, and I was amazed when you were sitting there and telling me everything, and I totally understand my condition now, and I can't wait to continue with care now.

That is a friend who came in that I treated like a patient. Yeah, we can still be friends, but when you come through that door and you're in my room, now all of a sudden, the doctor hat's gonna go on and my doctor authority comes in play because at that point, my whole job is to make you understand what's going on with you, how significant it could be down the road if you don't take care of this, and not just treat it flippantly like, Hey, you're a friend.

We'll adjust you a couple times and see what happens. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: That's 

Dr. Troy Fox : exactly, it's a whole different login. And to get that text message from him, it was a lot longer than that. There were several paragraphs of things that he highlighted, but I was like, whoa. And this guy, that's a professional guy, this guy is, uh, he runs a bunch of people in the [00:13:00] grocery industry, and he has a bunch of employees underneath him.

So he is in a, he's in a high management position. He understands how things work. But when it came to my office, he did not realize just how comprehensive Chiropractic was. So it blew his mind, and that was because I went through the process. I didn't just bring him in as a friend and say, oh hey, come through the side door.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Right, you know, I was the same way in practice, you know? 

Friend or foe, you went through the same process. To, uh, to become a patient in the clinic. And if you had an, an incident, guess what? It's time for exam. It might be time for x-rays or other diagnostic imaging. Mm-hmm. We're gonna follow the rules.

I'm gonna use my doctor authority to treat you like a real regular patient, and I never had a friend who didn't appreciate it. And I heard some things you did, 

Dr. Troy Fox : and they, they tend to get better faster when you do it that way and more completely because we're doing a complete job. We're actually not trimming down what we do and [00:14:00] trying to present it to our friend as, Hey, I'm being a, I'm being a really good friend to you.

Being a really good friend is going, I'm gonna treat you like I would one of my own family members. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Absolutely. And to kind of piggyback off that, not really about friends, but I think doctor authority also is that conscious professional presence of being able to say no sometimes. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: When you've got a patient who is belligerent or doesn't want to pay a bill or wants a special deal or you know, whatever it might be, has red flags that you shouldn't be treating, but you go ahead and treat it because you just feel like you need the extra collections that day.

Sometimes we have to say no to people. And we talked about this at length on one of our recent virtual seminars. You know, there's a lot of doctors out there that don't use their doctor authority to say no, and they wind up with patients in their clinic who are, not good for the clinic. They become abusive.

They really don't belong in the clinic. Maybe they're not really a Chiropractic uh, [00:15:00] patient. Maybe they don't like being adjusted or understand why they're there. Or there's a lot of scam artists, artists out there right now too. That will look for you. Docs who don't say no upfront, and then they'll turn around and they'll, they'll grift you.

So you gotta be careful. So you gotta use that doctor authority. It's almost like a shield between you and the patient that says, I'm the one in charge here. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And I think it's really hard Sometimes it's scary to, to cut ties with the patient because you are running a business and it's no different than anything else.

Nobody wants to lose a client, right? I don't care if it's my accountant or if it's a Chiropractic office or if it's a lemonade stand. We'll go back to that. You want your clients right? But I'm gonna call it the rule of threes. I don't know, this is not a real rule, but I just made this up because this is kind of how it seems to me whenever I release a patient that's got bad juju, [00:16:00] in other words, they're coming into my practice.

And I had one that not too long ago, said, it must be hard in here all day long dealing with all these people in pain. And this is a patient that had been kind of a bit of a problem. And really sucked up A lot of my time would not follow recommendations, and when they came in, demanded that I spend a lot of time with them.

They wanted to go through their whole history again every time and it's like, man, you are literally wearing on my last nerve and I am trying to be kind. When they said that, I said, you know what's interesting? I would say 95% of the people that you just saw motoring through this building right now are all here, here for wellness care.

They've all improved their condition and they are now trying to maintain either through palliative care or wellness care, whatever you wanna call it. And so they're not in pain when they're coming in. They're coming in to get their adjustment, and that person looks at me and they go, well, that's ridiculous.

I would never do that. So what I did at the end of that treatment with that patient, rather than make a [00:17:00] recommendation, I said, you know what? How about you just call me? I'm not gonna worry about putting you back on the schedule because obviously your concern is only when you're in pain and they're like, well, why would you do that?

And I said, because you have never followed through with my recommendations. Yeah, you don't appreciate 

Dr. Michael Perusich: the care. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And I didn't let 'em even say another word. I said, you have a good day today. And I handed them. I handed them the paperwork that they needed to go back up front. I and I basically released, I said, once they got up front, I, you know, the staff said, yeah, they were a little rude when they got up front.

I said, yeah, they won't be back. And so we released them and you know what happened right behind that? And this happens often, either I'll have a phone call of, Hey, I've been seeing another Chiropractor and I just moved to town. I got adjusted two weeks ago. And I'll get those in twos and threes after I release a patient.

It's almost like God says, isn't that crazy? You know what? The laws of nature. Say you got rid of some bad juju. We're gonna put three good ones in place. Yep. It's ha I don't know, happens every time. It just [00:18:00] happens all the time. And I know you've experienced that as well. Oh yeah. But when you release bad energy, good energy comes in its place.

I don't know how else to explain it. And a lot of it, 

Dr. Michael Perusich: no, it, it's absolutely true. You know, and I can think of a patient that I, I turned their juju around then. This happened more than once. I can just think of this one just off the top of my head. This. A person came in for an exam, they'd been referred for a second opinion in a PI case.

Dr. Troy Fox : Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: And they didn't wanna be there. This person, this patient was matter in a wet hand for having to be there. Didn't understand why they were there. Just moaned to moan, to moaned about everything, wouldn't gimme any information. I finally, just this back when we had charts, I finally just took the chart.

I stood up and I said, you know what? I got other patients I need to see. I don't have time for this. I wish you the best of luck. My staff at the front will help you out to your car. Have a great day. Yeah. And before I even turn to reach for the doorknob, the patient had completely [00:19:00] changed. Oh, no, no. Doc, don't leave.

Don't leave. Don't leave. I need to get this done. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's doctor authority. I didn't bow down to that patient. And you know what? You just have to realize you don't have to be the authority. Be the authority. 

Dr. Troy Fox : It's your practice. And quite frankly, every time that you. Short sell yourself in your own practice.

Eventually what happens is, and I hate to see this, but it happens, you short sell yourself so many times and you degrade yourself that you become a technician and you are no longer the doctor with authority. You are now. You're now the guy that pops people's backs or the girl that pops people's backs, and I hate to see that.

So from a standpoint of doctor authority, it makes your life much better too. You're so much happier in practice because now people are coming to you and you'll know when you've achieved that level of doctor authority. And here's how. Because your patients will start coming to you with things that have [00:20:00] nothing to do with Chiropractic, and they will say, Hey Doc, well, I'm here getting adjusted today.

I wanted to ask you about this bariatric procedure that I'm having. Do you know anything about it? Well, yes I do actually. And a lot of times we do. 'cause we as chiropractors are willing to learn about what other professions do. It's amazing. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Sure. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Whereas in a lot of cases, they have no idea what you're doing.

You might be adjusting a patient with activator and that provider will tell them, oh, you shouldn't get a job. Because blah, blah, blah, and I'm looking at it and the patient says, Hey, I'm having this bariatric surgery. What can you offer me on this? And I can talk 'em through what I know. Or if I don't know, I'm gonna tell 'em, Hey, I'm not familiar with that procedure.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Sure. 

Dr. Troy Fox : But when you've got patients that start coming to you with questions about other procedures, or I wanna ask you before I go to somewhere, do you think this is the right decision or the right person to go to? Now you know that you have authority in the situation. It's not like you're holding them over a barrel.

It's just like, okay, you're in a proper position now that the [00:21:00] patient absolutely implicitly trusts what you have to say. So next time they come into your office with a musculoskeletal problem, you don't have to water down the response that you're gonna give to the patient. You just tell 'em, here's what we're gonna do and here's how we're gonna do it.

And they go, okay. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah, 

Dr. Troy Fox : end of story. And you get to work. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: I became known in our community as, uh, the go-to for second opinions on upper and lower extremity and spinal MRIs. Mm-hmm. Because the medical doctors were taking too long to get back to the patient. Patient wanted to know what's going on with me.

Pick up so many patients by that. But that's authority like you were just talking about. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Yeah. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: We need to take a, another quick break, but uh, I've got one other area of practice where you need to use your doctor authority and I'm sure we could come up with a dozen, but we'll be right back.

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Dr. Michael Perusich: Okay, everybody, welcome back. We are talking about Doctor Authority and that one other place that I mentioned before the break that we absolutely need Doctor Authority. And I'm gonna do a little lead in here and Troy jump in. I hear doctors say all the time I. I can't get my staff to do anything. I can't get them to do this.

They don't want to train, they don't wanna talk to patients. They don't wanna advance, they don't wanna schedule patient's treatment plans, it, whatever it might be. I immediately think, well this, 'cause you don't have doctor authority with your staff. And I think that's just as important as having doctor authority with your patients.

If you don't have doctor authority with your staff, they're not gonna believe your treatment plans with patients. And that's gonna come through in their communication with patients. They're not gonna understand the cost of care and that's gonna come through to your patients. And make that front and center in your practice that if you want a good [00:24:00] high quality, effective team behind you, it starts with your doctor authority.

Dr. Troy Fox : I got to see that firsthand because when I came back and. Bought the practice that I'm currently in. I had all new staff that had never been exposed to Chiropractic before. Mm-hmm. They didn't understand it. They were learning, they were going through the steps. They were learning, we were training how you use the software, how do we schedule, how do we talk to patients.

But they didn't know anything about me and they didn't know a whole lot about what I knew. So in the beginning, they never leaned on me. They never leaned on me because I didn't have Doctor authority with them. But what they saw was, is I started to work with patients and I started to become the go-to with patients.

And, and this is how it happened for me. Maybe I put the cart before the horse, but what I did is I let the patients, or I let the staff see that doctor authority with patients. The amount of information that I was given to patients, and my staff started to learn from that, and they started to [00:25:00] roll with it.

And then what would happen was they'd get a phone call. Next thing you know, they're back with me. Hey Doc, I just got a phone call and blah, blah, blah. What can you tell me? And they'll do it right in front of another patient while I'm getting ready to adjust 'em, which again helps with what you're doing in practice when patients get to see you in action on the fly.

They're like, whoa, this guy knows a lot, or this gal knows a lot. They answered that question right off the top of their head and it was a pretty detailed answer. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And that my staff got is at a point now where it doesn't matter what somebody calls about, they go, Hey, hold on. Lemme go ask the doctor.

You know? And if I'm super busy, they'll ask me over the lunch chair. It's not like they come in and interrupt me all the time, but 

Dr. Michael Perusich: sure 

Dr. Troy Fox : they know if they have the availability and if it's kind of a laid back time. They'll just pop their head and say, can I ask you a quick question? 'cause they know it could be three hours before they get to, so a lot of times they'll come in and pop a quick answer and go back out to the patient.

It's either, Hey, you need to go here, or, Hey, we could, we could take a look [00:26:00] at you kind of thing, and here's why. So that kind of authority with your staff makes a huge difference as well, because if your staff, again, doesn't buy into what we're doing. They're not gonna help further your practice. They're gonna hurt it.

I'm gonna give you, they're gonna hurt it. A really nasty, great example. So back in 1999, 2000, we were. At that time running a very large practice in the state of Kansas. I was the only doctor in the building. We had about nine people working for us at that time. 'cause back in the insurance days, right, you had two or three, they were just doing insurance.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Right. 

Dr. Troy Fox : So nine people working for us and I had two clinics, one there, and one about 30 miles away. We were, when we hired that ninth person, we were looking for somebody that could be a therapist. And this is, no kidding. This is a true story. It's gonna sound not real. We hired this person. She seemed pretty sharp, [00:27:00] pretty with it.

Had really good linguistic linguistic skills, had very good patient dialogue right off the bat. Come to find out she'd worked for an or orthopedic surgeon at one point. Oh. Okay, great. Fantastic. So she had a little bit of the lingo, which I thought was great. She worked with patients very kind. So about day three, Diane, my number one 

She 

Dr. Troy Fox : was, she was the rock rockstar. She was the one that was with me for the longest. She comes burning into my office hot. You need to take care of this right now. I said, what happened? She said, she, this gal that I had hired, pulled the curtain with the patient that I was, it was a simple, low back case.

Like they, they didn't have any, there were no red flags. It was a simple, low back case, no disc involvement. It was a facet problem. I had already done all the testing on him, and so I got him in. We got him on some therapy and she's [00:28:00] putting this gal on or this guy on therapy. This gal says, you are in the wrong office.

You need to see an orthopedic surgeon, and here's his card. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Oh my. 

Dr. Troy Fox : You can imagine that less than three minutes later, everything that she owned that was in that practice was in a box and she was heading towards the back door courtesy of bridges. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: I love it. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Bridget was in the building and you know, some of you don't know Bridget.

Bridget is, she's, no, she's no nonsense. She's 

Dr. Michael Perusich: no nonsense. 

Dr. Troy Fox : You guys know Marisa. It's literally Marisa's twin from a different mother and pretty much it was no nonsense. She went and got a box, said, get your stuff, and took her out the side door and she was gone. True story. If your staff does not buy into what you're doing, sometimes you have no control over that.

Right. I had no control over that. That was just a crazy situation. But that is an absolute true story that happened in my [00:29:00] practice and I was flabbergasted. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Wow. 

Dr. Troy Fox : And we didn't save the patient. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Well, no, not by then. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Nope. They left. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Nope. They'd already put doubt in patient's 

Dr. Troy Fox : mind. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So you want good training with staff.

You want staff buy-in, but you can't force it. You do not become a great leader by force it. Well, you do if you're kaddafi, but other than that. Or, I mean, we won't talk about Iran right now. That's a whole different story. But 

Dr. Michael Perusich: yeah, 

Dr. Troy Fox : no, I'll use Kaddafi 'cause that was a pretty good example. If you're kaddafi, you rule by fear and people listen.

But in your Chiropractic practice, I tell you that probably ain't gonna work very well. So you have to have authority in the way you get authority is through people learning how knowledgeable you are and how much you care. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yes. 

Dr. Troy Fox : That's 

Dr. Michael Perusich: really the key. Absolutely. I, I wrote this out this morning about authority.

Mm-hmm. Because I knew we were gonna talk about this leader. It's leadership without arrogance, confidence without [00:30:00] rigidity, boundaries, without hostility and competence, without apology. 

Dr. Troy Fox : Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: And when you carry yourself with that level of authority in your practice, when you have that professional presence about you, it's amazing what happens in your practice.

It explodes. So if you need help with Doctor Authority or anything else in managing your practice, that's what we do here at Kats Consultants. So give us a call. Go check out our website, kats consultants.com. Whole bunch of free downloads on there. Go check us out, see what we're doing to help chiropractors manage the practices, and most importantly, create profitable practices that fit their lifestyle.

Troy, anything else? 

Dr. Troy Fox : I think we've covered it, man, that was a really good one. I mean, if you guys are looking to engage your practice at a higher level, this was a, a great topic to talk about. 

Dr. Michael Perusich: Absolutely. All right. From all of us at Kats Consultants, thanks for tuning in this week. Tune in every week.

Share, share likes, subscribe, wherever it is. Yeah. And, uh, we appreciate all of you and [00:31:00] thanks to Chiro health USA for being one of our sponsors. You guys are the bomb. Okay, from all of us. We'll see you next time. 

Dr. Troy Fox : See ya.