We all love movies where the underdog wins. Stories like Rocky, Rudy, Jerry McGuire, The Shawshank Redemption and The Fugitive warm our hearts and/or keep us on our seats rooting for the unlikely hero. In real life, and in business, underdogs win too. But unlike Hollywood, they rarely win by going toe to toe against the big guys. Instead, they reinvent the game and change the rules in their favor.
While it’s no secret that chiropractors are the little guys in the big world of healthcare, perhaps it’s time to consider playing the game a little differently so we can win. Let’s look at a few success stories to figure out how…
Case #1 – Accurate Thinking
In his book, Moneyball, Michael Lewis explains how the Oakland A’s baseball team reinvented their game to achieve victory. Instead competing with the big bankrolls of teams like the New York Yankees, whose salaries were consistently above the $100 Million mark, the A’s did it with a relatively cheap roster ($41 million) focused on alternative skills. While the big money teams spent their millions acquiring players with the traditional criteria of highest batting averages, most hits and most stolen bases, Oakland studied the game and reinvented the rules. They realized the number of times a player got on base (on-base percentage) combined with the number of bases a player got each time (slugging percentage) was a much better predictor of success than traditional criteria.
So what did they do? Since no other teams were looking at these “non-traditional” players, they assembled their team according to these criteria and acquired them at a fraction of the cost of their bigger competitors. As a result, their study in what was truly applied “accurate thinking” led them to world series victory with an unlikely team of underdogs. All the teams had access to the same data, but the Oakland A’s managed to look at the fine points and figure out a different way to make the numbers work.
Chiropractic Success Story #1 – Success Through the “Back Door”
One of my clients applied the same thinking to his practice. He realized that his bankroll needed to be much bigger to compete with the sky-high rents of Silicon Valley. He also realized that many of his patients came to him for massage therapy along with his chiropractic services. In fact, by studying his numbers, he realized that the #1 referral source to his chiropractic practice was through the door of massage therapy. So, he changed his marketing strategy. Instead of going head to head and competing with other chiropractors (with bigger bank accounts) or with MD’s (who had even more $$), he decided he would focus on marketing his massage services. After all, most massage therapists were small timers who had little or no marketing budget. So from that perspective, he was now a bigger fish. In the meantime, something unexpectedly awesome happened. He did some corporate massage and received an invitation to do even more at the corporate headquarters of a Silicon Valley giant. Long story short, he needed to keep adding massage therapists to fill the demand, the chiropractic clients started pouring in as cross-referrals from the massage and eventually, the corp offered him a golden opportunity – move your practice into our headquarters! He now has free rent, instant access to clients and a fleet of massage therapists and DC’s to manage the Silicon Valley giant’s employees. Oh and his bankroll? Let’s just say he could compete with any chiropractor in the area now, but why bother! He changed the rules of his game and likes them better this way!
Case #2 – Elevate the Game
In the wake of over three decades of the success of Starbucks coffee, it’s often easy to forget their massive accomplishments. We need to remember that Starbucks took what was essentially an ordinary cup of coffee and elevated it into what some consider a form of art. The Starbucks operations then presented coffee in a European style environment instead of a seedy diner or gas station and multiplied the number of options for how coffee could be served (tall, half-calf, double pump soy skinny mocha, not too hot, etc). Then Starbucks sold their product at virtually all hours of the day, repetitively, day in and day out for 5 times the price. From a business perspective – it’s truly an amazing story.
Chiropractic Example #2
While the brightly colored strips of tape on adorning the arms, legs, and torsos of Olympic athletes and superstars such as David Beckam and Serena Williams may be hard to miss, what many people fail to remember is that the Kinesiotape madness is not the product of some massive medical supply company (although many certainly manufacture similar products) but that KT was started by a single chiropractor, Dr. Kenzo Kase, in the 1970s.
Back then, Dr. Kase ran his own chiropractic and acupuncture clinic New Mexico. But then something dramatic began to slowly unfold. Check out the story according to an article in the Albuquerque Journal:
Dr. Kase describes a peaceful existence but he feared his mind was becoming complacent. He returned to Japan and had his epiphany. After using the standard “white tape” to wrap the swollen joints of a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer, the patient called crying that the pain and inflammation had worsened. Blaming it on the pressure, Kase started thinking: Could there be a product that would create what he describes as “negative pressure” under the skin, thus creating space for inflammation to clear or drain more freely? He officially founded the Kinesio Taping Method in 1979 and helped engineer the tape to go with it.
The tape and method sold well in Kase’s native Japan and achieved a modest level of success. That is, until another big breakthrough came in connection with the 2008 Olympics where Kase donated tape to be used by the athletes. That donation helped the tape to get media airplay and mainstream recognition, along with a massive boost in sales.
The rest, as the saying goes is history and the popularity of the tape and its instructional seminars has been growing steadily ever since.
What’s Your Blueprint to Launch Profits and Reinvent Your Business?
Do you find yourself moaning about the competition or the fact that others are succeeding while you are just getting by?
Are you banging your head against the ever changing rules of the insurance industry?
Are you frustrated that you are “locked out” of a particular plan or that all the new patients seem to go elsewhere in your town?
Do you feel like you keep working harder and seeing smaller financial results?
Doctor, perhaps it’s time to re-consider the game that you are playing…
Is it the right game for your particular skills, passion and talents?
Are your chiropractic blueprints mapped out so that your business strategy will win – even if there are bigger, more established, better known competitors in your area?
If that is the case, you may want to consider our newest training course — the Chiropractic Profit Launch Blueprint – because that is what it is all about. If you feel that it’s time for you to re-invent your practice, re-ignite your passion, or re-engineer your profits, then the Chiropractic Profit Launch Blueprint is for you!
Anyway you slice it, for many chiropractors it is high time to stop playing their game poorly and instead, start playing a different game or invent one of your own: one you can win!
Reinventing Your Chiropractic “Game” for Better Business
is a post from: The Strategic Chiropractor Blog where you can learn chiropractic billing, coding, documentation & collections strategies that help you maximize reimbursements and minimize audit risk.
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