It’s Simple to Go from Practice Dream to Reality
COACH’S CORNER
CJ Mertz
“The back door is the transformational lifestyle shift from pain care to corrective care to lifetime wellness care.“
YOUR PRACTICE DREAM ISN’T BUILT ON hope; it’s built on what you measure, lead, and repeat every week.
The difference between a practice that’s stuck and one that’s thriving shows up at three points of entry: your front door, your side door, and your back door. Master those three doors, and you don’t just grow, you also create predictable, sustainable prosperity.
The American Chiropractor magazine exists to help you build a stronger, more profitable practice, and practice management is the lever that makes that possible. When you understand the few drivers that move results, growth becomes
predictable instead of stressful. In this article, you’ll get the key ingredients that today’s most successful, prosperous practices use to scale with consistency.
Every chiropractic practice consists of a front door, a side door, and a back door. How you lead and manage through these three doors determines your future success and prosperity.
My clients review their performance weekly using a dashboard to ensure they are making the right decisions that move their practice from where it is to where they want it to be. Without a proper understanding of these doors of operation, new practice growth is very difficult.
The front door is all about your new patient marketing campaign — internally and externally — as well as your conversion performance through your report of findings.
The side door is your patient leadership and education, which determines the level of kept visits, patient referrals, patient dropouts, collections per visit, and much more.
The back door is the transformational lifestyle shift from pain care to corrective care to lifetime wellness care. Keeping spines and nervous systems healthy is the most valuable service a chiropractor can provide for the men, women, and children of their community.
My clients manage their quarterly and annual growth using the following XLR8 coaching formula:
NPs/Mo x PVA x $/V x 12 months = Annual Revenue
The formula helps you establish your current “practice algorithm.” For example, a new client started coaching this time last year, and their algorithm was 15, 20, and $50.
They averaged 15 NPs/month with a 20 PVA and an average of $50 collected per visit. Multiply that over 12 months and the result is $180,000 per year. If they didn’t make any key changes to the formula, that would be their annual revenue for the rest of their career.
I created the exact battle plan of changes for them and their team to follow and produce a new algorithm of 20, 25, and $55. At first glance, that doesn’t seem like much of a change from their starting algorithm, until you multiply it together.
That practice is now on track to collect $330,000 per year — a $150,000 increase! That is how you turn your practice dreams into reality.
This all falls under the acronym SIMPLE:
• See it.
• Insist it.
• Market it.
• Process it.
• Lead it.
• Enjoy it.
I have had the blessing of coaching over 16,000 teams, and without exception, the teams that are able and willing to get their practice SIMPLE — and keep their practice SIMPLE — are the most successful and prosperous practices in the world. Of course, if SIMPLE were easy to practice, everyone would be doing it.
The most challenging aspect is learning to improve on your front door, side door, and back door performance simultaneously. That is how you move your growth needle — literally.
Each day in your practice, three fundamental actions must take place. First is a set of actions that increase your new patient bookings and new patient conversions.
Second is a set of actions leading to zero missed visits, zero dropouts, and 100% collections. Third is a set of actions that lead patients to know you have wellness care, know the value of wellness care for their health and longevity, and know how to join your wellness program when completing corrective care.
Now, you may have just said to yourself, “I already do this.” I am certain you are not, because if you were doing this correctly, your practice dream would already be your new practice reality.
Here are some hard truths:
• The average practice today suffers from more than 20% missed, rescheduled, or canceled visits.
• The average patient who has their third missed visit drops away from care. Even though they like you and are benefiting from your care, they still leave.
• The average practice has only 50% of their patients who complete their initial care plan. Of those who complete their care, less than 70% choose wellness and remain under active care.
All of that is correctable! However, while it is happening, practicing SIMPLE is no longer a possibility.
The great news is that I continuously see chiropractors with over 20 years in practice breaking through and finally realizing their practice dreams. But if you do not learn how to lead and manage through your front door, side door, and back door properly, the practice can remain stuck for months or years.
The biggest culprit is managing by your schedule book. I do not know how this treacherous technique ever entered our profession, but it is the weed that grows around and chokes the fruit of your next level of growth.
Your schedule book contains every action that was produced from all the days before today. If all your team does is review which patients are coming in today and what services you will be providing, you will continue to produce what you are already producing.
You must get off that merry-go-round and learn how to grow your practice, serve more patients, and save more lives. Managing by your schedule book is the antithesis of leading and managing through your front door, side door, and back door.
SIMPLE is where your passion, purpose, philosophy, promotions, procedures, patient results, and profit intersect. The “seven Ps” are either beautifully stacked every shift in your practice, or your practice is in some state of chaos.
It is so worth your effort to get this right. Your practice is closer than you know to earning another $100,000 per year by committing to getting it SIMPLE.
Text GIFT to 575-CJMertz and schedule a call with me to evaluate your three doors so we can create the plan for your best year ever in practice.
Dr. CJ Mertz is a global business strategist who is a trusted authority in chiropractic business development as well as a CE-approved keynote speaker on most of the largest platforms in our industry. He brings years of experience delivering high-impact strategies that transform teams, elevate performance, and accelerate sustainable growth. With a scientific, purpose-driven approach, Dr. Mertz empowers healthcare leaders to turn vision into thriving, scalable practices that serve families, the elderly, and active-lifestyle patients with lasting results.
