Why haven’t chiropractors marketed chiropractic as well as ShamWOW has marketed a stupid sponge cloth? That thing is a global phenomenon in a microcentury and chiropractic is 1000x more amazing and has been around for 114 years! (If you don’t know what I’m referring to, click here).

One of my favourite leadership gurus is Robin Sharma who’s coined the term, Merchant of WOW.  And I think it’s time chiropractors started acting like Merchants of WOW.  It means obsessive attention to detail in every aspect of your office, it’s decor, the chiropractor’s healthy image, the “red carpet” service to every person that contacts or comes into the office. It means refining your technical skills, growing your understanding of our philosophy and taking your communication skills and procedures to the next level.

Every step of the way we want people to think and to say, “Wow”.

The trouble is, a lot of practice management companies teach chiropractors to make their patients say, “Wow, I had no idea things were so bad”.  And from our perspective, there is no place for Scare Tactics in a TRUE wellness chiropractic practice.  We feel people should say, “Wow, I had no idea chiropractic could help me in so many ways! Wow, I had no idea you could affect my nerve system and my entire body”!  We want to be motivating them by what they want, as opposed to motivating them with fear and what they don’t want. It’s subtle, but has huge ramifications on the relationship long term. Sure you might be short term compliance with fear, but it doesn’t last and the relationship is tainted.

So how do we do that? We teach them under the radar, planting seeds and asking questions to help stretch their consciousness with every interaction in the office: How the CA answers the phone, your First Visit Forms, the look and feel of your office, your communications and procedures of Visit 1, Visit 2, Daily Interactions, Re-Evaluations and Re-Reports, how you handle difficult questions and situations, and how you manage your team.

It’s time that people start saying ChiropracticWOW! The wellness revolution is upon us and it’s time we step up and lead it.  If you want to know more about our chiropractic coaching and how to THRIVE in a TRUE wellness model, let us know. We’re here to help.

Tags: Chiropractic Coach, chiropractic marketing, Chiropractic Practice Management, Chiropractic Wellness Model, communication, LAASR, Leadership, merchant of WOW, Robin Sharma, scare tactics, Success, Wellness Chiropractic, Wellness Chiropractors, wellness revolution

We hear again and again that our profession has an identity crisis, but from our perspective, we have a communication crisis!

What chiropractors know (no matter if they practice in a pain-based model or a wellness-based model) is that we help people have better lives! We’ve surveyed hundreds and hundreds of chiropractors around the world, and no matter how they practice, they all recognize that we can not only help people with their pain and symptoms, but also with improved function and a better quality of life!

Our problem as a profession is that the message that we’ve communicated and marketed to the public isn’t unified or clear.  Not like the tequila marketing sign above.  The public thinks that we help with neck and back pain and we know we help people get healthy and stay healthy to essentially have a better life!

As a profession, what we’ve been doing for communicating the chiropractic message isn’t working. Otherwise, at this 114th birthday of chiropractic, we’d be seeing more than 8-10% of the population.  If people understood what we do, because our communication and marketing was working, we’d be a lot further along right now.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to communicate in a true wellness model, in a care vs. scare approach, we encourage you to check out our LAASR program and seek out the support of a coach.  Lecturing and telling people until you’re blue in the face isn’t working. We need to figure out what people really want and then show them how to get it.  Let’s find a better way and start to move our profession into the position of leadership in the wellness revolution we deserve.

Tags: chiropractic, chiropractic birthday, Chiropractic Practice Management, Chiropractic Practice Success, chiropractic profession, communication, communication crisis, identity crisis, LAASR, Leadership, Wellness Chiropractors, wellness model, wellness revolution

What Do Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and a long list of other celebrities have in common? Harmless prescription drug and painkiller abuse in volumes and mixtures. These famous celebrities are the ones you hear about in the media.  However, the fact is, many medical errors are not reported, including death by such medicines deemed ‘normal’ to use by society.  Tylenol, Advil, Demerol, Oxycontin, Dialudid, Panadol are just a start. Throw some antidepressants, antianxieties and sedatives into the mix and voila! You have a highly addictive cocktail of deadly drugs. Do we have a global problem? I think so. We just hear about the famous ones…

From the Death by Medicine Report by Drs. Null and Dean in 2003), as few as 6% of adverse drug effects are ever reported.  Sadly, deaths estimated in 2003 due to adverse reactions to prescription drugs is 2.2 million per year. And the leading causes of adverse drug reactions were antibiotics (17%), Cardiovascular (17%), chemotherapy drugs (15%), and anti-inflammatory agents (15%).  Can you imagine what this number is now, six years later, with more and more ‘advancements’ in medicine and big pharma?

As wellness chiropractors, doctors of ’cause’, we want to be addressing the bigger picture in our offices – that health and life come from the inside-out.  If you are not teaching this principle to the people you serve, you are just another modality to them.  Health does not come from taking medicine or cutting things out of the body. It comes from the life force, carried unimpeded over the nerve system reaching to every cell, tissue and organ in the entire body. Do they know this? Do they understand the physiological implications if this nerve impulse is impeded? Do they know that it is your job to remove this interference and allow the fullest expression of life?  If they don’t, they need to.  Or they could end up like Michael Jackson, just not as famous.

How are you using this most recent, tragic death of an icon as an educational opportunity in your office?  We coach our clients to ask thoughtful questions to the people in their offices to illicit a response, rather than just lecture them about the overuse of medicine in our societies.  We need to shift their consciousness and beliefs about health and wellness.  How about the following as a start to get your mind going:

• What do you think killed Michael Jackson?
• Do you know that prescription drugs are just as dangerous as recreational drugs?
• What happens when you give a healthy person medicine they don’t need?
• If drugs can make a healthy person sick, how do they make a sick person well?
• What do you think, can medicine make someone healthier or just take their symptoms away?
• Where does health come from? What causes us to be healthy? What keeps us alive?
• What does the Nerve System control? What part of your body could live without Nerve Impulse?

May I suggest that you look at our LAASR process of communication (Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Solution, Resolution) when educating, answering difficult questions and in all of your interactions within and outside of your practice.  It will literally transform your level of communication and results!  It is what we teach and how we coach chiropractors to great levels of success! Let’s start to manage your chiropractic practice in a true wellness model.

Tags: Adverse Drug Reactions, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Consulting, Chiropractic Practice Management, Death by Medicine, Elvis Presley, Health, LAASR, Life Force, Medicine, Michael Jackson, Nerve System, Prescription Drug Abuse, Subluxation, Wellness Care, Wellness Chiropractors, wellness practice management

It’s easy to be mediocre.  A mediocre person, a mediocre mother, a mediocre friend, and certainly it is easy to be a mediocre chiropractor.  Look around, most everyone is doing it.  Mastery however is difficult.  Mastery takes hard work, dedication and keeping a big vision in the forefront of your mind and the stamina to follow through.  To be an overnight success takes 10,000 hours of work.  It means you have to push through The Dip. 

What does it take to be a master in the art, science, and philosophy of chiropractic? Even more importantly is what does it take to be a master of communication about our truth of health, healing and chiropractic?  As a start you need to understand personality types and communicaiton/behavioural styles of people. You need to LAASR your Visit 1, Visit 2, Daily Interactions, ReAssessments & ReReports communication to lead people forward.

Do you know what the common denominator of all successful chiropractic practices have? Chiropractors with certainty.  They are clear on their vision and how they are going to achieve it.  They know what they bring to the table.  And they speak their truth boldly and in a way that people can hear them.

Are you the best chiropractor you can be?  Are you communicating chiropractic to the people in your office and community so that they ‘get it’?  Can you turn people on to a healthy lifestyle that includes chiropractic care for them and their families for a lifetime?  Write down what having mastery in your chiropractic career would look like. Then write down the things that would need to change or improve to get there. What support do you need?  A coach?  A consultant?  Practice management tips?   An action plan? Accountability?

Most people get successful ‘enough’ and help ‘enough’ people.  They hit a plateau and get comfortable.  Are you pushing yourself towards mastery?  It’s your life. It’s your practice.  You get to choose. Let us know if we can help. There are too many people sick and dying in your community because they don’t know what you know.

Tags: 10000 hours, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Coaching, chiropractic profession, coach, communication, consultant, LAASR, Leadership, mastery, mediocre, mediocrity, Motivation, Practice Management, Success, The Dip, wellness chiropractic practice management

Most people don’t want to know about their disappointed customers.  It scares them and it’s uncomfortable.  Especially if you are a chiropractor, serving with all your heart.  If you are taking care of people with world class excellence, doing your very best, it can really ruin your day to hear from someone who isn’t happy with your service.  In fact, it can start a downward spiral of self-abuse if you don’t get hold of your head space right away.

From the wise Seth Godin, a guru in marketing and leading tribes, he says these words about disappointed customers, “Don’t ignore them”.  

Find out if you can save the relationship and rectify the disappointment using LAASR communication we use in our coaching. Ask for more information to clarify the disappointment. Acknowledge their concerns/fears/feelings. Come up with a solution that works for both parties. And then knock their socks off! Really WOW them.

If they are out the door anyway and are the 10% of the population that will tell you they are disappointed (most will just disappear without a word), don’t hang your head in shame.  Have the guts to ask what they didn’t like about the service? What could we improve upon for next time? The more information you can extract from these people and then change your approach, the better your service will get.  Don’t hide from the hard stuff ~ get as much as you can get!

They key is to take their input not as criticism, but as feedback. It’s not a setback, but valuable information, a gift to evolve your practice, your procedures, your service.  Because we can’t always see how our service is perceived.  It is more important to extract this information from disappointed customers, than it is to ask why the happy ones like your service. Why? Because an unhappy customer tells 20, a happy customer tells 5.

Please share this blog with others if you are happy with it!  Please email me with feedback with what you’d like to see changed.  I value your input. Thank you for reading.

Tags: chiropractic, Chiropractic Coaching, Disappointed customers, Feedback, Happy customers, LAASR