At some point, you’ll be 15-25 years into practice. You will have either built a monstrous base of patients and a people-healing machine that you can sell for a fortune and retire or, like most doctors, you’ll have the same or even more challenges at 25 years as you had at the beginning. To experience the former bliss rather than the latter pain, apply the rules of multiplication vs. addition.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:
If you brought 1,000 people to your clinic every day, at the end of the first year, there would be 365,000 new patients! That’s Addition: adding 1,000/day.
Another doctor brought in 1 new patient. This doctor is mission-based. Therefore, he or she truly educated and invested in that person, brought them to advanced classes, and made clear the mission of chiropractic to change health care and save lives in that community. That new, on-mission patient then brings in 1 person and they do the same; turn that new person into a mission-based patient. That’s Multiplication; at the end of the first year there would be 2 additional new, on-mission patients.
If you continue to bring in 1,000 new patients every day, at the end of the second year you’d have brought in 730,000 people.
The mission-based doctor at the end of the second year will have invested in two more patients so that at the end of the year, like the other two, they are truly committed and capable of reproducing themselves. After two years – there would be 4 mission-based patients.
If we continue this process and you kept bringing in 1,000 new patients every day (adding 365,000 people each year), in 10 years you’d have reached 3,650,000 people and at the end of 25 years that number would be 9,125,000.
If the mission-based doctor keeps on investing in one new person every year who does the same thing – brings in another person they invest in, the numbers multiply rather than add. At the end of 10 years, there are 1,024 mission-based patients who keep multiplying; they keep going out and finding and investing in another. At the end of 25 years, there would be 33,554,432 mission-based patients (over 3x more than the addition process).
Even if you were selling watch parts or car widgets, the long-term success of your business would be related to mission. It’s a fact in corporate America as well as small companies, like a chiropractic clinic, the more the customer/member/patient/client is on mission, the better the results and the less the attrition.
There are several hard rules to referral:
- The whole team needs to be on mission first – and committed to investing in others.
- There needs to be clear, well-defined opportunities for referral and on-going education. Some of the best businesses, churches, and chiropractic clinics lack these programs and thus, people enjoy the experience but still don’t tell anyone else about it.
- Its essential that your people have easy to use and effective tools to use to refer.
- THIS MAY BE MOST IMPORTANT: Referral should be a consistent part of the patient process. In our clinics, there are 13 parts of every patient’s procedure that includes referral. It’s not an extra thing we ask for, an add-on, or a jump point; but a regular part of our patient’s visits.
- The team requires scripting and training. Patients/customers/members/clients are super busy and distracted. Process AND effective communication are key.
It’s simple; wake up 10-25 years from now and keep slaving away at addition wondering where the drag is in your life and practice or put multiplication to work and watch everything get exponentially better every day the rest of your career.
Have fun saving the world!
Dr. Ben
