3 HISTORIC STEPS SMALL BUSINESSES HAVE TAKEN TO THRIVE OR COME BACK FROM A RECESSION

I want to share both what is working extremely well right now as well as historical data on succeeding despite crisis, economic crashes, and recessions.

Right now, I’ve managed to work with my doctors and business owners in virtually every market and determine at least 3-4 ways to make adjustments necessary to thrive.  These same areas are completely designed to accelerate our growth once the playing field levels out again.

The goal with every decision is that based on these changes, we’ll look back in a few months and realize that because of the new way we operate and the business opportunities the crisis created, this time while tragic, will have created far greater profit than loss.

Historically, businesses that overcame turbulent, chaotic, ambiguous recessions took 3 approaches.

1. Aggressive deletions and additions. The first is obvious; they refined their approach to work the same or better with extreme cuts that create far less overhead.  Less obvious is the additions. They also refined the model to create more gross income with the same flow of business. The result is higher collections with better profits on each dollar earned during the downturn and into the future.
2. More, not less aggressive promotion.  Top businesses historically weathered recessions by being offensive.
3. Pivot and recession-proofing (In this case, virus-proofing).  Finding weaknesses in the business where you are only successful when times are solid.  Given that “bad-times” are extremely common; smart leaders consider them to be “Normal.”  If you can succeed in a down market, you can succeed in any market.

I consult for some corporations outside healthcare that are doing some incredible versions of these 3 steps while also taking these initiative in chiropractic and integrated health clinics.  Here are some examples.

1. AGGRESSIVE DELETIONS AND ADDITIONS: Deletion – Many of our multi-unit clinics have got the chiropractor taking on multiple roles as they’ve had to furlough some staff.  Between the doctor and shared services, using roaming CAs, they’re operating efficiently, lean, and mean and profits are solid.
   Addition: We have added services such as testing or a stronger focus on supplementation in dozens of clinics and in many others, we have created up-charged services using licensed professionals that un-licensed CAs were doing.
2. AGGRESSIVE PROMOTION.  People badly need immune support.  You can’t improve immune function hiding in your house eating baked goods and drinking wine.  Save lives! Right now, we’ve devised several COVID-19 focused re-activation and FB ad campaigns that have seen pre-crisis numbers of new patients coming in.
3. PIVOT.  This has been a no-brainer.  Implementing test-consult-protocols for virtual healthcare is the only way to deal with a loss of brick and mortar opportunities in the future.  While nothing replaces the adjustment; we’re now serving patients all over the world right now through a Telehealth platform. These offices will be helping their existing patients on a dramatically greater scale and have developed an entirely new vertical component of their practice – outside the practice.

Don’t be a victim.  Don’t let the environment control you.   

For any industry, becoming more efficient, learning how to do it yourself or bring it internal rather than relying on expensive vendors and paraprofessionals, determining 3-4 ways to more aggressively and expansively market, and innovating in order to do business differently makes you a fearless, master of crisis. You’ll outperform any environment, political climate, panic, or pandemic.

Let’s lead the world out of this!

Dr. Ben

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