October 2001

Nodding on Brick Walls...

            Do you remember starting out in practice when you were young, energetic, principled, and excited? You would speak to anyone who might be willing to listen to educate them and cultivate your beginning practice. Your passion caused a fire to light in the eyes of potential patients as you developed points relevant to the importance of chiropractic care.

            At that time you might not have understood well that we are each vehicles for providing chiropractic and the people who sat intensely and enthusiastically in front of you were already aware of other vehicles as well.

            After a high-energy interaction, they would thank you for your time and your concern for their health and would proceed with vigor and enthusiasm, straight to the chiropractor with whom they were already comfortable. As great as this phenomenon is for the health of people, what good was it for the health of your practice?

            Over the years, I have had the opportunity to listen to chiropractors express their discouragement about building the practices of their deserving comrades but wanting reward for their own practice. In this respect, delivering energy to the people around you can become tedious and unrewarding.

            It is at first, like banging your head against a brick wall. It is true that over time, with enough nodding your head against the bricks, a callous forms and most of the successful ones realize that when it is put out there enough, it comes back.

Don't Open the Dam to Water Your Garden.

            In practice, I like to look at the patients as if they are crops and I am the farmer. One hard lesson I have had to learn is that not all seeds germinate, but they all have to be nourished and nurtured to grow a healthy crop.

            This is my rationalization for not insisting on producing a plant for each seed I nurture or producing a patient from each individual I come in contact with. Just like growing anything, time is a great factor.

            In growing and developing a practice, time can afford some great and unsuspected benefits. It seems to me that of ten people I speak with, three already have a chiropractor they love. Three would not consider going to a chiropractor but two of these three have friends trying to convince them to see one anyway. Three of the ten would consider looking into chiropractic and have friends who boast about their, 'Great' chiropractors who should be seen for care. One of the ten is looking for a chiropractor and might be willing to give you a chance.

            It is with this type of pattern that the seeds of chiropractic patients are able to migrate and develop over time and form a habitual predictability. Time, caring, genuine interest through education and enthusiasm are all key in developing a hearty patient base.

Beware!

            The best way to sabotage your own efforts to attain new patients is to make an attempt to unseat the person's pre-existing patient/doctor or client/professional relationship.

            If one chiropractor was to put down another one out of arrogance or professional disagreement, the layperson would easily become defensive and dismiss that chiropractor as unprofessional and shoddy. It devalues the hard work put into contact with these particular individuals.

            If the person is dissatisfied with his/her current professional chiropractic relationship, he/she will communicate it and leave an opening to develop a new relationship of professional opportunity, without your pushing too hard or causing a nuisance.

When Does All that Work Pay Off?

            As the life cycle of many crops grow, die and renew themselves annually, the life cycle of chiropractic practice is much longer and may extend through decades of cultivation and harvest.

            In the beginning, I am sure that many potential chiropractic patients or chiropractic seedlings found their way to other farms. ie. People started care in chiropractors offices where they felt more comfortable because of the effort I had exerted.

            It was just recently, years after beginning practice, that I noticed this phenomenon has become a great source of practice growth and maintenance for my own practice.                     

            Opening the local paper several weeks ago, I began to see some new local chiropractic practices were beginning aggressive advertising campaigns to draw in new patients.

            When we start up a new patient, we always ask what influenced them to come to our office.

            What we have been seeing more and more has been that people are coming to us because of contacts they had with other chiropractic practices through their personal conversations or newspaper advertisements! We have not advertised in years and still this is the case. In fact, people have been coming back under care because of the efforts of other chiropractic offices. This has been true even after not having been patients at all. Pre-established patients have been returning after up to twelve years of absence!

            It might take a while for the universe to bring people back to the office. But in all the years I have spent educating the public about chiropractic, whether it was through a lay lecture, mall screening, corporate screening, casual conversation at a gas station sparked by my chiropractic t-shirt, or any contact I might have had, the cumulative effects through time and persistence have been wonderful.

            Still, at the end of numerous conversations with potential patients, I felt like I had wasted my time or had spoken to a disinterested party. As a result of many of these initially discouraging interactions and passing time, I have benefited from the fruits of my labor and have seen their effect catalyzed by other chiropractors trying to go through the same things I had done to grow my practice in years past. I must say that I appreciate all their hard work and efforts just as someone else, years ago, must have been fortunate enough to appreciate all my hard work and effort in their practice.

Green Tomatoes:

            We are a people of instant gratification and would like our tomatoes to come to us already ripe and ready for consumption. When a neighbor brings us green tomatoes, we might be inclined to fault him/her for not taking extra steps to have brought ripe ones. Through the timeline of developing chiropractic crops, the gift of green tomatoes should be appreciated and left at the windowsill to ripen.

            For healthy and steady practice growth, the demand of instant gratification generally leaves the chiropractic clinic in turmoil and inundates what could have been healthy developing crops. Through caring, education, enthusiasm, example, time, and relentless but nurturing persistence, the chiropractic practice can be a tremendously fruitful place to exist.

The Cycle of Bearing Fruit...

            In 1989, there was a gentleman I had the fortune to take care of only for a very short time whom I will refer to as Ralph. Ralph seemed satisfied with the service he received and the results chiropractic care had to offer his health. Shortly after he had slowed and stopped care. His fourteen-year-old son soon became troubled with hand numbness, which dramatically affected his ability to perform athletically as well as musically.

            While filling my vehicle with gasoline a year or two later, Ralph came up to me and asked if I might be able to help him with his son. He was pleased with his own chiropractic success and was hopeful for his child.

            I spent nearly 40 minutes that day discussing the ill effects of poor posture and how it could contribute to the types of symptoms reportedly experienced by his son. I reminded him that discussing a problem was not enough to make an actual diagnosis. I expressed concern and optimistic enthusiasm about the likelihood of helping his son.

            Shortly thereafter, he brought his son to our office. His son went through corrective chiropractic care with similarly successful results to those Ralph had experienced years before. Currently Ralph's son is married and has his own children. He lives far away.

            Recently, Ralph visited his grandchildren in another state and took them to the local shopping mall where they met a chiropractor. The posture screening conducted by that chiropractor and the discussion of numbness which had begun to affect Ralph's hands caused him to return to our office 11 years after his first treatment to undergo care once again.

            I would like to truly thank the chiropractor Ralph met in a mall in another state for their educational efforts and concern. Without the gift of green tomatoes, the ripe ones might fall off the vine and end up lying broken in the dirt.

            Ralph is one of many patients with similar stories and one of many ripening members in the crop of our chiropractic practice.