EPISODE 453: MCM Student Business Show

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry. 

Welcome to the MCM Student Business Show, hosted by Dr. Kevin Christie and Dr. Gage Winkles with a special clinical segment by Dr. Mark King, the show for chiropractic students and recent graduates designed to help you become a thriving chiropractor. Welcome to the MCM Student Business Show. I'm Dr. Kevin Christ.

Dr. Gage Winkles, and today we're gonna dive into five questions. We have everything from marketing to business to clinical. We have a nice little segment with Dr. Mark King in the middle, and we're here to help you understand what it takes to grow a practice. Aside from just a clinical, there's a lot of different things that you need to understand and where to help you out.

So Kevin, what is the one thing you wish you had known about business when you graduated from chiropractic school? Yeah, I think from chiropractic school, from a business standpoint, would be the importance of an emergency fund and sinking fund to help you make accurate decisions as you're going along.

And so let's, let's define a little bit, let's start with the sinking fund. Okay. [00:01:00] You might have heard this as a slush fund, that's fine. But with the sinking fund, we're trying to plan out. Large expenses throughout the year that are not gonna impact your cash flow, right? If I asked you to write a $3,000 check for a new table that, uh, broke, that might hurt cash flow and put you in a, in a crunch, if instead you contributed to an equipment repair fund throughout the year, you have that money set away in a different savings fund, so it's going to be a separate account.

So I'm gonna say different account, right? We're gonna have that probably in a savings account. You would take all the things you might spend money on, malpractice insurance, equipment repair, new website. At the beginning of the year, you want to just kind of add up all the things. You might write bigger checks, right?

So for the sake of. Let's say that ends up being $12,000 for the year. You would then, starting in January, move $1,000 over from opex. Okay, [00:02:00] so that's our operating account, operating, uh, expense account. We're gonna move it right over to the sinking fund. Automatically, right? And so that would be $1,000. We would just say one K that's moved over there so that when that expense comes, you have it.

You then move it from the sinking fund back over to the operating account, and then you pay, you write that check. And so the importance of a sinking fund is gonna be. Instrumental in predicting your cash flow and really being able to sleep at night when you have to spend money that's outside of your normal expenses for the month.

Now, moving on to the next one here. Let's go right over here. Your emergency fund is going to be for what that actually says, right? Emergencies. This isn't. Something you want to touch and what a lot of people say, whether it's Christine Odel or uh, Greg Crabtree, a really good one is about two [00:03:00] months worth.

Of your expenses. So if your monthly operating expenses is $20,000, you'd like to have $40,000 in emergency savings account. Takes time to build it up. Doesn't happen overnight. If you open up a practice, there could be a situation where you have working capital. That's what that is, essentially. Uh, or you need to build up to it.

One thing I've learned from Christine Odell, she said, get $5,000 in there, then get one month in there, and then get two months in there. And that would be your emergency fund. And depending on how you learn things, you're gonna have an operating account, right? That's your checking account, that's your business checking account.

A sinking fund account, an emergency savings account, would be the kind of core three accounts you'd like to have in a, in a. Uh, practice and that way you can make accurate decisions with your money and feel protected in case something happens. Alright Kevin, so question number two here today. As a new associate, what would be the most impactful marketing strategy [00:04:00] right outta the gates?

Yeah, one of the things I really have fallen in love with, and I first learned this from Kurt Kim Berger, who's one of our coaches, and I'm sure he learned it from somewhere as well, is the Allied Health Network. And I'm gonna. Share a tool here. We actually have on our CSA digital dashboard, we have a bunch of tools and we have one here on the Allied Health Network.

And essentially we want you to be a great doctor. Right? And that's part of it is being able to refer out really well, like part of being a world class doctor is having a world class referral network and that that's important and you do that consistently and then you also will build a referring.

Partnership with other doctors and performance, uh, specialists that will refer back to you. And so we want to go out in the community and actually build what we call an Allied health network. So these are gonna be people that are related to health and performance for the patient. And when you go into a community, you may not have a lot of those doctors.

You may have one or two. And so what we put together here, and I'm just gonna kind of show you, is an Allied health [00:05:00] network. And we have two tabs here. We have health and we have performance. Uh, it can be shown as cards like this, like Dr. Allen Jones. Uh, it could be, uh, on the performance side. You might have Sue Smith, who's a running and triathlete coach.

And then when you go in here and you add a contact, right, you add a provider type. We have health, we have a bunch of different. Types of specialists could be the hand wrist special, the primary care doctor, all the way down to physical therapy, acupuncture, imaging centers, urgent cares. Doulas and midwives, dentists with like maybe a TMD specialist.

Uh, we have all these different types in here and, and then we go down and we've got the performance. This could be running coach, triathlete coach, personal trainer, tennis coach, golf person, uh, instructor. You get it like. Okay. Whether it's on the health or the performance, we want to build out this list.

So what I would recommend as a new doctor going into whatever community, whether you're starting your own practice or you're working for another practice, is to work with [00:06:00] either the existing practice or, again, if you're opening up your own, is build out a world class, uh, referral system. This Allied Health Network, it gives you a reason to go and meet other types of people, right?

And so let's say you need to go find that need. And shoulder orthopedist because you treat knees and shoulders and some are gonna walk into your clinic. And, and you've been in practicing now for a, a year and a half. Isn't that something that you notice, like you're getting certain conditions you weren't maybe expecting?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And um, and I think when you build this out. You can now have a good referral out and then it also, again, you can build connections that will over time refer back to your practice. And so maybe you don't have the knee and shoulder orthopedist, but maybe you have a good foot and ankle specialist that you know.

I would go and talk to that foot and ankle specialist who's the best knee, shoulder specialist I need to know. That doctor gives you the name of the best knee ortho. And you contact that office, say, Hey, I'm Dr. Kevin Christie. I'm new to the area, building out [00:07:00] referrals for our patients. And I heard Dr.

Smith was the best knee, shoulder ortho in the community. I'd love to set up a time to meet with the doctor. Is is there a a good day and time that would work for you? So it becomes a, kinda like a Trojan horse to get that meeting with the other doctor. Right. Um, on the other side of it, maybe it's, uh. You know, you've got a tennis coach, but you need a golf performance coach.

And you start building this network of people that you can now connect with on the health side and the performance side. And you just, I would love for you to, this is just a demo one here, but I would love for this. If I go over here and you just got a laundry list of doctors, uh, and all kinds of health specialists here, you can tease this out by health only or by performance only.

And then you can go in here and search, right? If you need to do, uh, knee. I don't have one in there, but it would pull me. Uh, but let's say we weren't running, running Coach. As I typed that in, you can see it pops it up and it becomes really, uh, good for your team as well. Like we [00:08:00] basically stopped with the business cards and what we do is say, Hey, send uh, so and so to.

To the, uh, to Dr. Smith. And so our staff, the front goes on here, finds Dr. Smith, and then two-way texts it to him. And then that was a really good customer service as well. So that's what I would do. Getting into the community, knowing what I know now, I would work diligently to build that. There's other things you have to do as well, but that would be a big focus of mine.

Absolutely.

All right. Under our clinical segment with Dr. Mark King of MPI, we've got one question here submitted by. A student, and that is, can you give me one piece of clinical advice that every student should hear when they are in school? Mark? Well, this is an important question because I always, I've been asked this question in the past, and, uh, I had a lot of wide ranging answers to it, but I heard an interview with Dr.

Mike Leahy from a RT not too long ago, and they asked him that question and he said that you should try to become great at something. [00:09:00] Now at the Motion Palpation Institute, we are biased and we want you to be great at palpation and adjusting and integration of other techniques. Dr. Lehe wants you to be great at a RT.

Maybe you wanna become a neurology diplomate, uh, whatever you're, you're the rehab, uh, expert, whatever the thing is, but become great at that, and then you can build on, on top of that. Again, our bias is toward the foundational skills of palpation and adjusting, because that's what you're gonna typically do each, each day.

And then we want you to add these other things to that, but be great at something that helps set you apart from other, uh, clinics in your area, sets you apart from other, um, offices around the country. So that's the way where I would start, is that I'm gonna become obsessed and fantastic at something and then build on it from there.

We, I wanted to mention in on March 21st, 22nd, we have our sports summit in Florida, in the Daytona area, and then in, uh, uh, June, June 6th and seventh we're doing MPI disc in Chicago. So wanted to [00:10:00] mention those, uh, as upcoming, uh, classes that you might be interested in. Thanks.

All right, Kevin, so fourth question here of our first episode, talking about communication here, we, uh, we had a submission. What is the biggest patient communication mistake you see with new graduates? Yeah, there's a lot going on. With that, you know, you, you're on the younger side, typically, you gotta look at someone that might be 20, 25 years older and you, with conviction and confidence have to recommend a treatment plan.

And I think the biggest thing that I see is under recommending care, under treating that patient, uh, that patient comes in with something that might be going on for six to eight weeks. And, uh, a lot of times a new doc is, let's come in a couple times, see how it goes, or let's do one twice a week for two weeks.

And really, if you look at the evidence-based. Care guidelines for treatment frequency duration for a lot of these conditions. There needs to be a more substantial treatment plan [00:11:00] to it. Not, it doesn't have to be six months, but it might have to be two times a week for four weeks. It might have to be three times a week for two weeks and two times a week for another two weeks, and then once a week for a couple weeks.

Right. Like, and I think what I see chronically with the, the newer DC is, is the under kind of dosing of. Of treatment on that now, what did, what have you noticed as you've progressed over the last couple years in, in clinic with that? Yeah, I think, you know, being a young DC there's definitely the trust factor that needs to be built in there.

Um, and especially with older patients, I mean, it's still. You know, weekly I get the, uh, the question like, how old are you? Or, or how long have you been doing this now? Right. And so you need to present your treatment plan with trust in yourself. And I think that's the first thing. Um, you need to need to know your capabilities and your ability to help that person.

Yeah. You know, that's, that's huge. Um, and then, you know, the second thing being that. You know, with evidence-based [00:12:00] chiropractic care being more and more popular and taught more and more in schools, which I think is great for the profession, uh, but you can't get caught up in chasing, uh, the pain. Yeah. Right.

You can get a patient out of pain and two to three visits sometimes. Mm-hmm. That doesn't mean that they are then released from care at that point. Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. And, and a lot of times we, we try to phrase that with them as, okay, the first phase of this is gonna be pain relief. Right.

Second is we're trying to build up injury, resilience and Correct the function. 'cause Yeah, ironically. A lot of evidence-based chiropractors will talk about not chasing the pain or focusing on function or movement, quality, all those things which we all believe in. Yeah. But then they use pain as the kind of indicator of release from care or success.

Right. And as you know, we know a lot of times that pain will come back in three weeks or three months. And so we gotta graduate them from, okay, we're out of pain now. Now you can do certain exercises or treatments that you couldn't do. When they're in pain, now you can have some fun [00:13:00] and, and really work on the underlying cause of that.

And so that's something that I, I talk a lot about. And I think the other thing is, is I always use the, the examples like if you, if a pro athlete, if, uh, you know, if an NFL player got, uh, strained his back, how, how often do you think he's coming? For care, like probably every day, right? Right. Why is that?

Because it works. It gets them better faster. Now, I understand the realities of like your regular patients aren't NFL players, but I'm just using as an example of sometimes more frequency, uh, does get them better quicker. And if you asked your patient, uh, would they rather come in two times that week or three times that week, if it meant shaving off a week of getting, uh, of them being hurt, they'll probably take the three times a week.

And you can use that as an example with the athlete. Now, obviously with regular people there's money constraints, there's work constraints, there's a lot of things going on. So we're not necessarily saying you have to see them twice a day for for three weeks, like per athlete, but it just gives you an example of like, [00:14:00] yes, sometimes.

More frequency early on with acute conditions does get them better quicker. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's, it's meeting your patient with their goals, right? Yeah. If they have that, that upcoming race, you know, coming up on a a 5K or a, um, marathon coming up right. You may have to see them a little bit more frequently than, than you would if they were just dealing with some, some hamstring pain, you know, and, and no rush to the treatment there.

Yeah. And so build some confidence, work on it, really own. Uh, clinical encompasses evidence-based guidelines to treatment frequency and duration, and realize that, um, you are setting up yourself for failure and potentially the patient if you undertreat them.

So Kevin, our fifth and final question of this first episode here is regarding career development. Mm-hmm. And this is a big one that, that I relate to personally as well. What are your thoughts on picking one location? Upon graduation versus opening up options for different [00:15:00] states or different cities to set yourself up for the best job and success in your career.

Yeah, and it's a reality, right? And, and I want to be cognizant of that is sometimes you are gonna be in a scenario where you have to pick the town or the city and then find a job. There's no doubt that's harder in many cases. Sometimes there's different things where you have a job lined up back at home, but oftentimes you're going away.

For undergrad, going away for chiropractic school. And then if you want to go back to a particular town or city and you have particular desires of the type of practice that you want. 'cause what you're trying to now figure out is. I've gotta figure out a job that's a good job and congruent with my style of chiropractic.

And that can be hard even when you open up the whole country. But then it gets really hard if you pick a town and you say, I want a sports chiropractic clinic that's gonna compensate me well, and I've got professional growth and it's gotta be in [00:16:00] wherever, America, right, in one town. Like if, if I, if you want to be in.

City, Indiana, like, and you're trying to find that exact perfect job that gets tricky, right? Versus if you open up to uh, states completely, or regions, or obviously the entire country, I would say the entire country might be a little bit rare, but oftentimes. Uh, you know, we have a, an intern now, he was opened up, he gave me like a laundry list of Yeah.

10 cities and states and stuff. Yeah. And it, and it helped and, and he's got something lined up. Yeah. Uh, so we saw that there. And so it's gonna be challenging if you're trying to find the perfect job at the perfect type of clinic for you. In one town, when you open it up, you really open up to a lot of opportunities and, and that was something that you obviously addressed.

Yeah. You know, myself, uh, being from a small town in Northern Minnesota, it's about 30 hour drive from where we sit here today. Um, but upon graduating. You know, I was in a position where, you know, no, no ties [00:17:00] to Minnesota there no kids, no wife, nothing like that back home. So it was something that I really wanted to explore any and all options that would give me the best opportunity for growth and success in a career.

Mm-hmm. Um, and so that was something that I had to come to terms with. And it's not always easy, you know, I, you can miss home and, and I do at times, but home's always there for me and, and I can tell you that I don't go a day. You know, regretting that decision, and I think it depends on what your goals are, but when you kind of loophole yourself into that situation where, like you said, you want to practice in.

Small city and specific state, and you want to have this laundry list of things that the practice involves. It's you, you really limit your options there. And so I would encourage, you know, an open mind as you're graduating, especially as a young DC Yeah. And, and there's obviously, there's no right answer and you gotta take all the things into consideration.

If you're, if you're just, you know, dead set on opening up your own practice outta school, then yeah, you [00:18:00] can kind of go anywhere. There's gonna be certain areas that are gonna be better than others, but. If you're gonna do that, then you've got a little bit more, uh, wiggle room there. But if you are looking for an associate position, uh, my recommendation would be is if you have some wiggle room, is maybe start to pick an entire state or a, at least a big part of a state, uh, or a region.

Yeah. And, and maybe there are similar areas, like if you like the Midwest, then great. Like pick different areas of Midwest. If you want a coastal town, start a list of those things and then, uh, prepare yourself. Early on, I think the big thing that, uh, becomes a double whammy is when someone picks a town looking for a job and then didn't do enough while in school, right.

To start finding doctors. Like go like I. I wanted to come back down to South Florida, but I was open to it. But a year and ahead, I started coming down. Whenever I came down, I started shadowing clinics that were sports chiropractic clinics, and that ended up getting me an internship into a job. And then, [00:19:00] and then ultimately my, uh, kind of springboard into my career.

So that'd be my recommendation. Start early in school. Uh, position yourself and, and that will give you opportunities that maybe you, you wouldn't otherwise. Yeah. Now that you're getting a taste of understanding what ethical chiropractic business is all about, head on over to the Chiropractic Success Academy to check out our special student discount and continue your business development.

You can visit csa@csacircle.com to find out more.