Chiropractors looking to start up a new practice…
Chiropractors looking to start up a new practice, buy into an existing practice or simply want to take their existing practice to the next level need to think like an entrepreneur. In this excerpt from my forthcoming book on starting a practice the right way, I explain the need to get comfortable with the role of the entrepreneur. Too often chiropractors get overwhelmed with the technical work of practice, but in order to enjoy real success, chiropractors must remember that a practice is a business, and a business needs a leader.
Think About the Way You Think.
Whether you’ve been practicing for years or are just starting, it’s important to analyze the way you tend to think. We have talked about outdated paradigms, measurements, and indicators within the profession — now it’s time to think about the way we think.
Most chiropractors think about becoming better at diagnosing and treating patients. We want our skills as good as possible to get the best results. Resolution of tough cases, when patients have seen multiple chiropractors, PTs, medical doctors and they feel at the end of their rope — that’s a great feeling. And it happens often. It’s no wonder that most of us focus on getting that feeling faster and more often. Diagnosis, treatment, and patient communication are incredibly important and we’ll be talking a lot about that later. This is the technical work of the chiropractor.
When we think this way we are thinking like a technician. Improving and utilizing our technical skills. When we look for courses to improve our manual therapy skills or seek out new modalities like laser, decompression, nutrition, and shock wave therapy we are thinking like a technician. As successful chiropractic business owners, and chiropractors looking to start up a new practice we must also accept the role of the entrepreneur, and we must begin to think like an entrepreneur.
The Entrepreneur Mindset.
As entrepreneurs, we must look at the business from a broader perspective. We must shed the biases, techniques, schemes, and practices of the past. We need to think creatively. You’ll need to imagine a business without the limitations of technical thinking. This is the big picture. This requires you to set aside time for entrepreneurial thinking. This is scheduled time outside of the technical work of seeing patients, doing notes, and paying bills. If you don’t think you have time to do it, good… you’ve just identified a major reason why your practice is not where it should be.
Managing your thinking and managing your time are the first steps to creating the practice you envision. It takes courage to set aside time for this when the pressing issues of the day are upon you. Epictetus said, “Persist and resist…” Persist in working diligently towards your goals and resist the distractions that appear. Let’s be honest sometimes those distractions seem quite important, urgent even.
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield describes an almost-mythical force of “resistance”. Resistance is what keeps you from getting the work done. The big work, the creative work, the entrepreneurial work. Resistance disguises itself as pressing matters, emergencies, fatigue, and all other types of apparently-reasonable excuses for not doing the important work. The big work, in this case, is entrepreneurial, or strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is the way we think about our business without the day-to-day minutia. When working in our business as the technician gets in the way of the time we set aside for entrepreneurial thinking — that’s resistance. Epictetus might tell us to “resist the resistance”.
