EPISODE 411: Capacity Block Breakthrough

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry. 

Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] Hey docs, welcome to another episode. Today I got a solo episode for you, where we're going to dive into something I think that is all too common. For chiropractors, and that is these capacity blocks that you may be facing in your practice and, uh, it's something that is really kind of stems from my work with strategic coach and their concept, the ceiling of complexity and breaking through that ceiling of complexity.

But like I try to do, uh, when I learn from outside of the profession is to then really bridge that gap into what we face as, as chiropractors. And so today I'm going to go over, uh, nine. potential capacity blocks that you face in your practice to to growth. Sometimes these capacity blocks are going to be, uh, things that are really hindering you.

Um, and then sometimes it's going to be things that are just an opportunity, right? You're not, you're not hindered. Uh, but you could grow more and be even better. [00:01:00] And I, I use that word even, uh, we use it a lot in our, we just got back from our West Mastermind in Park City, uh, as I record this episode. And um, we talked about that in way back when the first five episodes of when I started this, it would be probably April, May of 2017.

I had, um, hall of fame, public speaking coach, Joel Weldon, and I recommend listening to that. But one of the things that he talked about in that is using that word even, and we mentioned it over the weekend in the mastermind. And, uh, it's a bit, it's a big word, right? Like if you said, uh, I want to try to get you better.

Um, you might take it as like, Oh, well, I'm fine. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm good now. I'm not, I'm not in a problem, but if I said, I'm going to get you even better, um, that is something that just shows growth. And you could even, you know, apply that to your patient, right? If they're feeling pretty good, you can say, we're going to get you even better or feeling even better.

Um, [00:02:00] and that's what we're trying to do. Uh, when we work with chiropractors is, you know, a lot of you are doing. Just fine doing great, right? But you want to, you know, you're a, you have a growth mindset and you, um, you want to be even better. And a lot of times these capacity blocks are preventing you from being even better.

Sometimes they are obviously preventing you from thriving and being successful in general. And, and you can kind of sort through that, right? So, but the, we, we developed the tool, um, the capacity block breakthrough. We, we utilize this in the 30k per month online course that we did, which was a huge success.

Um, keeping a lookout for that, we will be offering that as an evergreen. Uh, it won't have a handful of the things that the original cohort had, like all the live zoom calls that we had and things of that nature, but it will still have a lot of the material. And, uh, obviously we won't have the, uh, early bird, uh, pricing, but we use this capacity block as one of the lessons in [00:03:00] that course.

Uh, we're using it with our clients. Now we did it at our mastermind and we've gotten a lot of great feedback from this particular tool that we utilize. And, and what I'm going to talk about in today's episode is, is kind of two things. I'm going to run down. what the nine capacity blocks, the potential capacity blocks are.

And then we're going to take one, um, and show you how sometimes there's some underlying blocks that are happening, um, with that main block that you think is, is the main thing, right? Kind of like when the patient has a knee pain, they think it's a knee problem, but you find it's a hip problem causing knee pain.

And it's a similar situation here with these capacity blocks.

All right, so let's dive into the first one. Um, You know, the first one could be you are, um, lacking the support team members to reach your goals. It could be you don't have any, or you're just short one, or you're short two, or you're short half of one, right? You could use a part time help [00:04:00] and you don't have the support team members internally as part of your team, or even maybe outsourced like a VA or something of that nature.

Right. And so support team members is a common, uh, block and a lot of people are afraid to make that investment in a, you know, you got to look at support team members again, whether it's internal or external, um, as investment, not a cost. And if you, too many chiropractors think of the support team members as a cost and it really is an investment and you need to make sure you understand that.

And that you are willing to invest in team members. And that if you onboard that, if you hire appropriately, onboard them appropriately, train appropriately, you will have a team member that will produce an ROI for your business. And so you got to check if you have a support team member. So as you're, you know, if you're listening to this, obviously if you're driving, don't, but sort of jotting down, if you think you may have any of these nine that we.

Discuss the next [00:05:00] one is a term I first heard from the Scheduling Institute and they call it clinical duplication. I think in our, in our world, it's the associate chiropractor. Um, it could be, um, you know, maybe a mid level. Some of you have integrated practices. Uh, so you could definitely have, you know, some of that type of stuff, like nurse practitioners and, and things of that nature.

Maybe you have an athletic trainer, there's some clinical duplication there, uh, doesn't, you know, it could be a registered or well trained CA that's able to handle many of your modalities. Um, but for the sake of argument, I'm going to put some of those. in the support team members, whereas a clinical duplication, I'm saying they could duplicate exactly what you do, uh, which is really the associate chiropractor with the DC license.

And I obviously a lot of you fall into that you're like, I, I just can't find good help or can't keep good associates, or, uh, I don't know if I can afford one, but I could use one. And so clinical [00:06:00] duplication is typically a big block for sure. Um, and, and, um, you know, breaking through that, that ceiling of complexity as strategic coach talks about.

And also there's another one, uh, had a really good episode. You could just Google search it, uh, with Jason Holm and that's H U L M E. Uh, where he talked about a very similar topic on our podcast and he had some really great insights on that. So I recommend listening to that episode. Uh, the third one we'll talk about is space.

I think this is a common one that people run into is that you, um, you're growing out of your, there's two things here that could happen. There's probably more. But. We'll keep it simple. Um, you're growing out of your space, right? You don't have enough, uh, treatment rooms. You don't have enough rehab space.

You don't have, uh, enough space to hire a second front desk person that you need because the front desk isn't set up for that. Uh, there's all kinds of things that can happen with your growing out of your space. The second is an opportunity cost, which is [00:07:00] different, right? If you're just, you know, if you're running out of space.

And you're, um, you're hindered there with, with seeing particular patients. That's definitely just a loss of revenue. Uh, and, and it's, it would definitely fall into that opportunity cost. But then sometimes there's more, uh, opportunity cost that isn't so direct and obvious. And that is, say, you wish you could add the clinic gym hybrid, but you don't have the space for the gym.

Um, that would obviously be an ROI. Or you don't have any rehab space at all and you, you could be billing. Rehab, if you did and you would be doing it, uh, maybe you would, uh, I would offer a shockwave therapy, but I don't have the space for it. Right? So those are opportunity costs, uh, that you'd haven't necessarily, you're not bursting at the seams per se, like the first example, but you would love to grow and add different services, but you don't have the space for it.

Right? And that's, that could be a [00:08:00] whole, you know, I may, I may break down some of these and do their own solo episodes, uh, over the year, because that could be a whole, uh, episode, which, um, many people would benefit from next is equipment, right? Um, this could, this could definitely look like a couple of things, right?

Don't, um, you, you, you have a, uh, particular table that costs 10, 000 and you love it. And you really, and you have another treatment room. And you'd love to have that another table like that, uh, or maybe you don't have the treatment room for it. And you'd love to have a table for that. You got an equipment and a space problem there, right?

So, so you can see how some of these can be, uh, deeper rooted and that's what we're going to dive into in a little bit on this episode is how there's some usually deep rooted, um, problems that fall into why you have a block there. Uh, but equipment can be that, or maybe you're just, your laser therapy is just.

Blowing the doors out and you got his bottlenecked and you got a line and you need a second. Um laser, right? And that could have its own You [00:09:00] know, it's kind of like hold on one one second becky need some water there um, it's kind of like uh something I learned I forget what it was, but you got to watch out for When you decide to buy something and it's just say your personal life and because it can lead to like 50 other purchases It's like, if you buy the house, you know, like you just scraped together the money to buy the house.

And then you realize, Oh shit, I got to furnish this house. And then when you get in there and you furnish it, it's like, Oh, well, I kind of need more, uh, you know, pillows for the couch. Oh, we need more blankets for this bed. Like it just, it ends up one, one decision leads to like 10 others. And sometimes that happens with equipment or any of these, like, okay, um, let's, uh, I need a second laser.

But then if I, uh, get a second laser, I need a second person to operate that laser. If I get a second person, uh, that, that leads to more, uh, cost and, you know, and, and, and then you got more, [00:10:00] uh, management to do. Right. But that's part of leadership and that's part of growing and you can, you can figure those things out for sure.

Uh, but what, you know, do you have an equipment block? Is it a. Is it a situation where, uh, you need that second laser or, um, you, you would like to have that shockwave but you're not sure if you can afford it, again, that would be one, there's a underlying block to that equipment block, but many chiropractors have this and it's something that I want you to make sure, uh, you work through.

All right. Next one is mindset. The reality of it is, is a lot of you have mindset blocks. You have poverty mindset that's preventing you from growing. You have a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset, pessimistic about things. You're pessimistic about the profession, about insurance companies, about your town, about the economy.

And you don't have a, any level of optimism around growth and, uh, that is, that is a problem. And the good thing is, is there's a book called learned optimism, which you can read [00:11:00] and realize you can get better at that. There's a book called growth mindset, which you can read, which realize you can get better at that.

There's plenty of books on poverty mindset. And escaping that commoditization trap, um, some of you are worried about being too stressed and that and growing would cause more stress. And so a lot of times there's a lot of mindset issues. And that's something that, you know, ironically, I never thought I would get into with people when I started, um, MCM as early on, just helping people with marketing, but now as we've evolved and we do business and practice growth, coaching and masterminds, you start to realize like a lot of it.

Is mindset stuff without being all woo woo, it's just certain things of, you know, maybe it's even lack of confidence in certain areas. And so you have to be honest with yourself. Is that your, is your limited growth, a mindset issue? Do you need guidance in that? Right. And that's all kind of mentioned on the mindset thing.

Uh, the next is time. Maybe you have a time block or just too busy. Uh, right. I, we have a kind of a phrase that we use with MCM [00:12:00] as we, we try to get a lot of, we try to get chiropractors from busy and broke to cash confident and time free or time rich. And, um. That's a big one. A lot of you are busy, busy with patients, busy with admin stuff, busy with family, uh, but you're not seeing the financial gain that you expect.

And so a lot of you, um, have time blocks that need to be, you just need to reallocate that. That's one of my favorite things to help chiropractors out with is time. As long as the person's open minded, it can be solved almost in all circumstances. And that kind of leads to another one. Another block is delegation, and a lot of times people don't have the time because they, they have a delegation block.

So that would be like a sub category of time. But yeah, there could be a block in delegation. Maybe you don't know how to delegate strategically, you need help learning how to delegate. Maybe you feel guilty about delegating because you have a wrong mindset around delegation. Maybe you don't have the support team members to delegate [00:13:00] to, right?

So you can see how that can lead to that. But a lot of you have a delegation problem. You're doing too many things and you're not, as Josh Satterley would say, is you're not. maximizing your DC license. Right. Um, and that's something to, uh, consider. Um, the next one is profit and cashflow. A lot of you do have a profit and cashflow block, and that's a reality.

And that leads to a lot of these other blocks, right? It's like, yeah, I'd get the shock wave, but I don't know if I have the profit or cash. Obviously we can work through that and there's options, there's financing, and there's also sinking funds that we coach our clients on how to. Uh, save for things or, you know, cut things and, and be more profitable, what, what good profitability looks like, what good cashflow looks like.

A lot of us never learn that. That's something that we, we typically dive into a lot, uh, with our, with our clients. And so you might have a profit or a cashflow block, um, that can lead to a lot of things. And then lastly, you might have a marketing block and that's what I want to, I want to tease [00:14:00] out a little bit here for you today.

is you just realize your clinic is not doing enough marketing. And maybe you built your practice and it's fine, you didn't know marketing, but it's just you, uh, and you want to bring on another associate, or you brought on another associate and you realize now there needs to be marketing to fill two mouths versus one.

And there's a lot of chiropractors that have a marketing block. And that one can have, um, probably more than this, but three key, um, subcategory of blocks that we find. And, um, one of those could be support team members, right? It could be support team members and you don't have the support to do marketing internally or externally, right?

That can be one that you could outsource for sure. You may. Not have that you might say to yourself. I don't have the time to do marketing the time to get out in the community and Do some public speaking or workshops or running events or whatever [00:15:00] meet people. That's a common one You might have a profit in cash flow.

You don't know how much you can spend on marketing You're concerned about spending on marketing because what if it doesn't work and I wasted money and that could be frankly a mindset I I you know, I'm only gonna go through kind of the three Here, but, or, you know, let's just, let's add mindset, you know, cause there's a couple of things with mindset.

You might, there's a few, you might say I'm a doctor. I shouldn't have to do marketing and that's wrong. That's a mindset problem. Uh, you might not think you, you have enough money or you're scared to send, spend money on marketing and that's wrong. You got to get that figured out and you should be spending money.

Now, do you need to spend. 10 percent of your revenue. Like some people say, no, you work your way up to a certain healthy percentage, but you do need to invest in, uh, you know, ROI driven marketing. You got to have that. Um, and that, and that's a, that's a problem for sure. Right. You might have a delegation. Uh, you know, and you don't know [00:16:00] how to delegate because you don't want to delegate to people or you're feel guilty about it.

That's a, you know, if you feel guilty about delegating, that's a mindset problem and you got to get rid of that one as well, uh, to overcome this lack of marketing that your practice has. And that's what we like to try to dive deep into it. And so what we do is we go down, we, we work with someone and say, okay, what are these challenges?

Um, to, to your marketing, your lack of marketing. And I, and I have like five here, I'll, I'll rattle off. But, uh, one is I don't have enough time to do a lot of community outreach. Like I mentioned, two is I'm unsure of how much I can spend on marketing. Three, I don't know what good marketing looks like and how to do it.

Four, I'm an introvert. Five, I'm doing too many tasks in the business because I'm a bit short staffed. Right. And so that's that support team member. And so those are some of the challenges that you have to do that are preventing you from doing good marketing. And the good news is you can overcome that.

Um, you may have, you may need help, uh, you may need guidance and, and you can do that and you can sit down and build out a logical plan to reverse [00:17:00] engineer this and, and tackle these obstacles, right? Like, like Ryan Holiday wrote about, the obstacle is away. That's what is good about doing this tool and looking at what the obstacles are and, and saying to yourself.

You know what? I can overcome this. It's not going to be easy or I don't have the wherewithal right now, but I'm going to find someone that does have the wherewithal to help me get through these. And I always like applying another strategic coach concept, which is the four C's, which is making a commitment to something right, making the commitment to overcome whatever block you have.

Um, and then having the courage to reach out to someone for help, to work through it while it's difficult. Uh, just like you did when you work through it to get graduate through four years of chiropractic school and take all those exams and graduate and have the courage to start actually treating patients.

And then when you do that long enough, you, you end up with a capability. And [00:18:00] so you might have a marketing issue now, but if you. Make the commitment you have the courage to do what it takes You then in your clinic will have a capability of marketing when you do it long enough. You'll have confidence In doing marketing for your practice that is elegant and ethical and is actually driving the roi Into your practice and so you may feel uncomfortable Uh and not have a strategy of overcoming some of these blocks that we talked about today but if you apply the four c's and and probably Uh, seek help for this and coaching, uh, you will get better at it as long as you do the work and, uh, that's what we do for a lot of chiropractors in a lot of different realms.

And so if you feel like. You've had any of these blocks and you could use some actual work to get through this to break through that ceiling of complexity that you have or you just know that you have a level of growth you haven't achieved yet that You'd like to your practice is amazing right now, but you want to get even better We're here to help you out.

So just reach out to us you can go to our website [00:19:00] modern chiropractic marketing comm fill out a form hop on a call with one of us and See if we're right fit to help you out with These blocks and many other things, anything, practice, growth, finances, marketing, business, communication. Uh, and then obviously we, we do marketing for chiropractors.

Like we'll do your marketing for you, but it's not canned content. And so reach out to us if you're interested in that. And we can plug our team onto yours. So you do have the support team to help you with marketing and all the other aspects of growing a practice. So that is our episode for today. And I hope this resonated with you and you are thinking about a couple of blocks that you need to work through.

And I have confidence that you can do that. Have a great week and we'll talk to you soon.