EPISODE 416: The 5 Pillars of Profit

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] Welcome to another episode of Modern Chiropractic Mastery. Today I've got Naota Hashimoto. He is a chiropractor and entrepreneur, and we're going to dive into the five pillars of profit. He has founded the software TrackStat, which many of you know, and we are going to talk to you about how you can really apply technology.

to improve the five pillars of profit. And we, we dive into some of the nuances of being a chiropractor and how to turn a profit in a practice we have decided to, you know, do as a, as a living. And, you know, I think that the takeaway is, is you have to monitor this. You have to know what good profit margin is.

You have to have strategies to increase the top line and decrease the bottom line, and that would be the margin, the differential between those, and, and what is good profit margin? And what are some of the strategies you can look at that are outside the box to improve that? Because, let's face it, things aren't getting cheaper, and insurance isn't paying better.

But there are strategies where you can thrive, and I know a lot of really good [00:01:00] patient centered chiropractors implementing these strategies. Providing world class care and making a professional living and I think you want that as well And you shouldn't be ashamed of that and so without further ado here is my interview with Naota Hashimoto

 All right, welcome back to the show. None of this, I think will be our third time. And, uh, we've got a fresh topic and excited to talk about your ideas around the five pillars of, of profit. But before we do that, what's new in your world? What are you excited about? It's, it's, uh, Q1 of 2025 as we record and release this.

Naota Hashimoto: Um, I'm excited about all the AI stuff that we're working on and like new integrations and new kind of like partnerships. It's uh, it's been a long road. I just remember kind of like when we got going, I'd reach out to certain like EHRs and they just kind of like blow me off. And now like ChiroTouch is like flying me out to San Diego, wining and dining me and other EHRs.

Like, I'm going to Parker and people are wanting to set up meetings before I get there [00:02:00] versus like, when we first started, no one wanted to block off time for me. And then I'd have to go meet them at their booth and just continue, like, doing good work for clients. So it's, um, yeah, it just, it's exciting where.

You know, like I feel like people are now wanting to like work with us. So I'd say that's the biggest difference.

And, uh, and I, um, you're not practicing now. You've, uh, closed that chapter, right? So practice and you're, you're all in on tracks that, and what's that been like to, to make that transition? Uh, how many years did you practice?

20 ish,

Naota Hashimoto: 17. It was. It took me a few years to get to it. Um, I talked about doing it for a few years, but like I have my identity wrapped up as being a chiropractor and helping people and it just. I'm like, it seems so easy, but it was hard. Like, I scaled myself out of the practice for a while where it wasn't treating patients, but it was like that last step of, like, just [00:03:00] closing that chapter because, like, I knew if I was scaled out in, like, a phase 2, where I'm like.

Doing other stuff in the business and I'm not in the day to day, I could always go back to being a chiropractor. But now if I wanted to get back into practice, I'd have to start over from scratch or like go work for someone. And so it's like, it felt like. That door kind of closed quite a bit. So it took me, I'd say, an honest two years to kind of be ready to sell.

So now you're, you burn the ships behind you and you're, you're ready to go, uh, forward. And, uh, I think a lot of our audience at this point is getting familiar or is familiar with what you're doing at Trackstat. And I know it's always evolving and some people might be asking. What does five pillars of profit have to do with what you're, you're doing?

And we'll make that connection as we go along here. But, um, let's, let's dive into the five pillars of profit. I think, you know, in general, I have conversations around profit [00:04:00] with our coaching clients and with other chiropractors and some of our mastermind members, and there's a lot of. You know, good knowledge around it.

They have good basic fundamentals, but, uh, then it kind of stops there and they may not understand how to prove profit without, uh, you know, sacrificing quality and things of that nature. But what's your overall context around this five pillars of profit?

Naota Hashimoto: Well, it just sell for more, sell more often, kind of like automate or like reduce your operating costs, reduce your accounts receivable and finish your projects.

So, yeah, that's pretty much it. .

All right. Let's, let's dive into the first pillar and we will, we'll kind of have some conversation around each one.

Naota Hashimoto: Yeah. Um, one of the things, yeah, it took me, you know, the first year I was out working as an associate, like, you kind of give away your services for like way too cheap.

And it's just like, it seems like it's so easy, but like, you know, if I was [00:05:00] an electrician, an engineer, or like a. You know, like a cardiothoracic surgeon, it's really easy for them to do that thing. So it's like, just because it's easy, should you give it away for free? And it's uh, just selling for more.

That's your price elasticity. That's gonna be your margin. Now, like, some people on the call might be saying, Well, I do primarily insurance. How can I, how can I charge more when I'm in network with all these insurances or all the people in my area are low income? They can't afford it. And, um, we, you know, it's like, I tried to generate early on in practice, like, at least 5, 600 an hour.

And I know you're telling people, like, you got to hit like 300 an hour and 300 hour, I'd say is the bare minimum. If you want to have a team, because it's, you can't make the math work. Right. And, you know, So it was like, if you charge more for what you're doing, you don't have to kill yourself. Like, I just remember when my wife was seeing all these ASH [00:06:00] patients, we were like new in practice, we ran the numbers and she could lose 75 percent of her patients and still make the same amount of money.

And she didn't lose 75 percent when she got out of network, she only lost like 25 percent of the patients. So like she was making way more per hour. So it's like something if someone's. Doing primarily insurance, you might think of what other services can I do that are not covered by this insurance plan that I can offer?

So it's like, if you did just like, let's say you're doing like a 20 up service and you had 100 visits a week and you did that for a quarter, um, like 25 percent of the people, that's a couple grand a month. Right. Or if you had a decompression table and let's say you're charging 75 a visit and you got up to 50 decompressions a week, that's an extra 15 grand a month.

So it's like [00:07:00] it adds up. It doesn't have to be from you doing a better rehab or better this, um, just come up with creative things to add value to your customer. Right? So you don't want to rip them off.

No, exactly. And I think that's one of the misconceptions is a lot of. chiropractors out there. They, they find what their bread and butter is and stick with only that.

And then they don't have reasons or excuses or, or blocks of to why it wouldn't work for them or why they don't want to do that. And, you know, it could be anything from, like you said, adding a service, like, you know, maybe it's decompression or dry needling or it's shockwave therapy, which is what we've done.

And it's been a huge. benefit to our patients and our outcomes, but also, yeah, to this number one pillar that you're talking about. Uh, or, you know, the other thing that we did some years ago, more like six years ago, and we're in the state of Florida, is we diversified a little bit and said, okay, you know what, um, I don't want a personal injury practice.

Uh, we're a sports based practice and we wanted to maintain that, [00:08:00] um, The essence of our practice is that, but I was like, you know, we could do three to five new auto cases a month and it would not impact the, the essence of our practice and it would significantly increase some revenue because personal injury pays 200 percent of Medicare and you could do four or five, six codes in a visit if you do those things.

And it just pays really well. It's kind of like the last thing that still pays good from an insurance standpoint. And so you could look at diversifying, like, is there some types of potential patient bases that do pay a little bit better if you're insurance based and things like that. So that's some of the stuff that we've done.

Naota Hashimoto: Like, 100 percent on that, adding, adding a modality is an easy way of doing that. Uh, but some people might say, I don't have the space or I don't have the money. Now, I'd say like, if you have the space, the decompression is a no brainer, like a decompression, like you could do zero marketing. We never marketed for decompression and we're doing, I don't know, like 150 decompressions a week without any [00:09:00] marketing.

And that was super easy. Patients loved it. A lot of people benefited from it. Obviously, if someone's not a candidate for it, you don't offer it, but like even someone like just chronic neck or back pain, you could put them on for like 5 treatments. You don't need to put them on a 30 visit package and then like some people might say, well, I don't have the space or the money to buy a modality.

P. I. Is not good in my state. And then you say, it's like, okay, well, then I tell people be someone to someone, like, let's say, like, I know you've had like guys on there. There are golfers or tennis people. Like, if you're in a golf community, you could be the expert golf guy. And now, instead of charging insurance for the exam, you could do a special golf eval for 300 bucks, 500 bucks.

And, you know, you got to be someone to someone, but that means that. Yeah. You're going to post stuff on social media. Your website's going to say you're going to be about golf. They need to understand that this is a thing that you do and you're an expert and now you could charge more for that thing. So

I love [00:10:00] it.

You know, margin is something a lot of people don't understand. They know what profit is, um, but they don't understand profit margin. Uh, it's a difference to an extent. Um, you know, there's other vocabulary out there, like obviously. Uh, cash flow. And I think that's a big thing that people struggle with as well.

Uh, but the profit margin is something you have to understand. And part of that is to obviously increase the patients that are coming in, increasing the revenue on those, on those patients. Anything else on, on Pillar 1 before we move to Pillar 2? Um,

Naota Hashimoto: I'd say at the very least, just start tracking your dollar per visit average.

Right? You get your, kind of like what you collected over your visits. And then just track that one thing. And if you start measuring it, you'll start slowly increasing it. So,

and go to your point. I'll put a bow on it. Um, you know, you know, whether it's 300 an hour, 600 an hour, your capacity, um, you can, you know, if you're in middle [00:11:00] America, you can probably get away a little bit lower and I'm, you know, the 300 number is kind of like a baseline.

You definitely want to get higher as you go along. And, and you can, if, if you can at least hit that, and I'll give you an example, like there was a point early in my practice where. We averaged about 72 a visit and I was kind of comfortable with four, uh, you know, so what is that about 280 to 300 an hour?

Uh, then now we're at , a one, a one, a visit. And I can see six in an hour. Um, so, you know, like we're at 600 an hour for myself as my capacity. Uh, and that's why, you know, if you think about say a high volume chiropractor, even if they charged 55, but they saw 12 people in an hour, which a lot of high volume can easily do.

the math works. And so I know a lot of the evidence based chiropractors don't want to go that model. Fine. But you got to find the way where the math works. And I think the other part of it is you got to be cognizant of the fact that yeah, you could theoretically price yourself out of the [00:12:00] market as well.

And maybe you're only getting Five new patients a month that are willing to pay you for, you know, like if you like, we have some coverage that spend an hour with a patient and they charge 400, 500 for that hour there. You might only have so many absolute people like numbers of people that will do that in a particular month.

And so, yeah, your, your hourly capacity is good, but your actual revenue is not for the month. And you're struggling there because you just, it's not a product market fit essentially.

Naota Hashimoto: Yeah, and I honestly feel like 20 percent of the people are going to be buyers, right? If you have this upper level service, 20 percent of your patients, no matter where you're at in the country, they're going to buy it.

And if you have that upper level service, it makes your regular service look cheaper. So, like, at the very, you'll see companies do that all the time. They'll have, like, good, better, best, and, like, they only know that a small percentage will buy best. And what they're really trying to sell is better. So they'll have that higher [00:13:00] thing to kind of set an anchor to make the kind of middle pricing look better and look cheaper.

And it's psychology. It works. And yes. If you have more profit, you can hire more people, hire better people and help more people. But yeah, getting into the other model, which you're already talking about, like, I'd say selling more often increasing your volume.

Pillar 2 is more people in the door. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think I got something to say on that for sure. Is that, um, you know, Sometimes people will get a number, you know, like they see an 84 a visit. Is there is there patient visit average or office visit average and like the first thing that is like, I got to get that higher.

I get that higher and I look and it's like, well, you got a ton of room on your schedule to, um, you know, you're not, you're not busy enough and if you actually got more people in the door. And, and there's a certain level of where you can without increasing your overhead at all. [00:14:00] And so you just need to focus on getting more people in the door at that point.

And then we can, we can kind of curate your patient base, right? We can then be like, okay, now we can raise our rates. Now we can cut this shitty insurance out or something like that. Uh, is that some of your thoughts on that part? Yeah,

Naota Hashimoto: and you go after different stuff. Like things that I did early on in practice is I targeted kind of like, um, We'll call it a retirement community because like the problem is I was like, when I first got out, I wanted to work with a bunch of athletes and I was like, fixing them in like 2, 3, 4 visits.

And it's like, it's way too quick versus I take like Mary Anderson, who's 67 years old with like some chronicities. Um, it'd take her a lot more visits to get stable and. She wasn't as good with her home exercises, so she'd come in, like, once or twice a month for, like, preventative care. But, like, you have your pillars of getting more new ones, getting them to start care and finish their plan, and then getting them to do some kind of maintenance.

I know [00:15:00] maintenance is, uh. Dirty word in some people's mind, but like musculoskeletal costs are in the billions of dollars in this country and a lot of us are doing very unnatural things, staring down on our phones, sitting on the couch. I'm sitting here working on a computer talking to you and it's just those aren't unnatural things.

So, you know, maintenance on your teeth, maintenance on your car. Why not maintenance on your body?

I've seen a shift in that with just a coffee shop the other day and it was these two, um, they look like seniors or juniors in high school getting coffee before school and one girl was just like kind of bad posture or whatever.

And she's just like, Oh my God, I, I got going to kill to go see my chiropractor. I got to get in there. And I feel like I'm, I'm hearing a lot more from the younger generation of going to see their chiropractor. Because I mean, they're just, they're in bad spots, which, you know, they're, they are physically not ideal right now with the way they're sitting and looking down and things like that.

And so I think we, we definitely serve a big, [00:16:00] big, um, part of trying to solve that issue.

Naota Hashimoto: Yeah, no, definitely. And It's, you know, not everyone had to do it. We just did a very soft thing. Like they kind of get to the point where he's like, Hey, it's okay. You're golfing three times a week. We focused a lot on golfers and eventually pickleball as it got more and more popular.

But it's like, Hey, you're doing this three times a week. Great. And here's some exercises. Now you're probably going to do some unnatural things. You're probably going to drink your wine and keep doing these things. So if you want to maintain those gains, we have a membership where you get like kind of x, you could get up to x per month for just this much per month.

And yeah, it's, it wasn't a huge part, but like we had like 16 to 20 grand coming in on the 1st of the month, just like that. And it was.

Um, and if you look at like, Netflix and gyms and all these other subscription businesses, like people are used to it and then getting people in the door is 1 thing. And [00:17:00] I haven't looked at it lately, but like, I remember. Earlier on when we had, like, probably a little over 700 chiropractors in our system, when they started with us, I looked, they're kind of like average rate where they dropped off is like visits, like, 4 through 6.

It's just kind of crazy.

We actually now coach our clients and just visit for conversation. I think there's three times a doctor really needs to like sit down and have a conversation with their patient. Uh, you know, there's, there's sometimes there's more, but the framework of it would be, yeah, your report of findings is going to be number one.

You do that. Number two is a visit for because either they're out of pain and they want to stop coming in, but they haven't improved their function or they are not getting better like they thought they would. And you need and they might fall off at that point because of that. And so you need to just kind of plan on and it's not exactly before, obviously, but around around there, start thinking about it.

And then I would say, at the end of discharge [00:18:00] and try to get them to go from acute care plan. To maybe maintenance or performance care. I think if you have a framework of those three conversations, you're going to do really well with adherence and obviously just growing a practice.

Naota Hashimoto: Yeah, like we did that.

Like, uh, we did like a day 1 day to, uh. We did kind of like a mini, not quite an on the 1st visit, and then we kind of close them on the 2nd visit. But some of the people we would treat on the 1st visit, but, like, we're in a vacation area. So, it's like, I used to treat on the 2nd visit, but, like, a lot of people there.

In pain, they're on vacation. They want to get better. So we just ended up doing that. And then 3rd visit, everyone would have a laminated recipe card. What happens when you quit taking antibiotics early? So, and that prompted a conversation, walk into the stall and you see, they have kind of like the pink laminated thing and just say, hey, Kevin.

Oh, it's like, if you were taking antibiotics and you say, Okay. [00:19:00] Yes, it's like, do you know what happens if you quit taking early? It's prescribed for 10 days. Let's say you get off in like 3 to 4 and then you just have that conversation. Then I just say, he's like, well, can you treat it with the same kind of antibiotics?

It's like, sometimes. Yes, sometimes. No. And so I did this right after they prepaid for their treatment plan. So, on the 3rd visit, we would resell them on why they're doing this. So he said. Kevin, you came in here, you said that you're only golfing once in a while, your back hurt, you had to take medications, you want to golf three times a week, you got this trip to Italy in the summer that you want to go on with the kids and the grandkids.

So even though they paid, we resold them on the third visit and just reminded them. So, and I just said, there's three things you have to do. You got to make your visits, you got to do your home exercises, and we got to break the bad habits. That's good. I like that. And then just say it anytime that you want to change your goals.

I'm happy to change the treatment plan, so if you don't want to come in as often and do as much work, and you don't want to go golfing three times a week, and you don't want to go to [00:20:00] Italy and carry your grandkids, um, no big deal, right? I'm okay with it, and I just have that conversation, so they just prepaid for their whole plan, and we resold them again on the third visit, and then when I sold the practice, um, just kind of like fell out of that.

Um, but like that, that helped a lot. And then we just have automated kind of like messages that go out to different parts in their journey. And the old school table talk thing does work. So, but

no, absolutely. Uh, all right. So what is pillar three,

Naota Hashimoto: uh, just reducing labor and we kind of like touched on that.

So it's like, I just. So I just find a lot of people don't know where to start. So I just say start with your repetitive low value tasks, right? And if there's a way to automate that or way to outsource that, do one or the other. And then, you know, like insurance verification, that's [00:21:00] an easy thing. Um, if you have software that's not talking to each other and you're doing manual entry, that's something like answering service.

Patient onboarding, educational email, automated reactivations. Those are all things. And like, I think eventually it's just going to be AI answering, answer, schedule appointments. And

I just attended virtually the abundance 360 summit, which is out in Santa Monica every year, three and a half. Three and a half days worth and I attended virtually watch recordings and one of the things they talked a lot about.

And I also heard I forget the CEO of LinkedIn, but is it Benny off and talk about agents and amount of money being invested in agents and then ultimately. Curating that AI agent into, you know, like you would train that AI agent in your business like you would train a human being, right? It takes time to onboard them, but essentially, that's what you're doing.

And I'm [00:22:00] excited about that. And I think there are going to be ways where chiropractic practice already there already is, but there's gonna be even more kind of crazy out there ways . I mean, I'm even looking at the idea of, you know, the robots that are coming, you know, whether it's the Tesla robot or the other.

I think four or five companies that are developing these robots that you'll be able to have in your house, but theoretically could have in your office. And, um, you know, I think a lot of futuristic stuff coming, but obviously, for the time being, there's a lot of things you can do. Like you said, outsourcing.

I mean, one of the things we did we have now, and we have some clinics that are doing it is Um, we have a lot of clinic in our office. We have someone that's at the front desk, a human doing all the human things with the humans in the office and being there front and center for the patients in the office.

And then we use a company called AvinMed to do all the phone answering and handle that type of stuff. And they also can do like, um, you know, patient callbacks, they can do insurance verifications and all that. And it's at a much reduced rate than if you hire a United [00:23:00] States, um, like full time. Person in the office with employer taxes and benefits and all the things that go into that.

Um, so there's a lot of ways you got to start looking at reducing labor

Naota Hashimoto: and for some people that have multiple locations, like, and they have a physical staff person, like, I think, honestly, in the future. Um, and people are already doing that. And I have clients doing it. You'll go have like multiple locations.

Patients going to just walk in. They're going to have a card on file. They're going to check in in their kiosk and you're going to just have CA and doctor. Right? And you'll have these little dock in the box type things. And I have clients that are doing that with like, uh, virtual assistance, but things that were like, Working at adding in is like, kind of like you call and this one's like, relatively easy agent and then scheduling that and putting into the system.

Another thing that we're working on is like, um, I would love to work with like, everyone 1 on 1, but it's just not [00:24:00] scalable. So, like, more AI and showing them like, hey, here's where you need to focus. Focus here. The people that you need to call today. Hey, by the way, this is how your front desk is doing. And this is how they're comparing against other front desks or here's how you're doing what your dollar per visits here.

How here's how you're comparing to other chiropractors in the state of Georgia, right? You know, like, so it's that kind of stuff is the, they're the things that we're doing. A lot of the EHRs are busy working on, um, tying an AI into soap notes and billing, which if I was an EHR EMR, that's what I would be focused on.

So we're kind of like coming at it from a different angle because, like, for us, we just view ourselves as more of a marriage, like a partnership. We don't try to be the EHR and yeah, it's I've seen 1 of my clients. He did this. Kind of by he had to he was in like downtown Denver and he has a virtual assistant in the Philippines at his front desk and they have 2 monitors.

They have 1 facing the patient and 1 facing where they [00:25:00] work off. And if they have someone that's struggling or having problems, she just turns on her camera. Talks to him. You put in your card over here. He's seeing with just 1 CA in the office. And like, I swear to God, like four days a week, like probably like 230 visits a week.

So it's, it's very

Naota Hashimoto: efficient.

It kind of reminds me of, um, you know, Michael Michalowicz, uh, talked about in his book with Profit First is, is if you really start with a profit margin number, right? Or if like Great Crabtree wants a, a business to be a 15 percent profit, and that's after the owner doctor actually paying themselves.

A real professional salary. If you start with what your profit margin needs to be or profit needs to be. And then like what Michael McAuliffe talks about is then from there is you can reverse engineer and really make. accurate, but sometimes challenging decisions on like, no, we, we need to be able to do this at this cost.

And we need to find a way to do it at [00:26:00] this cost. We can't just, um, blow through that and, and, and have cashflow issues consistently because we think we need all these people or all these other expenses to, to handle it. And I think that's something to consider.

Naota Hashimoto: Yeah, no, it's, um, reducing costs overhead by outsourcing and automate is good.

I think a lot of times people will look there first, right? And like one of my mentors always said, like, you can't save yourself into a profit. Now, I agree that you do have to control your costs, but like, I always just looked at, okay, how much can I increase? My price last city by increasing the value or increasing the volume.

We weren't high volume, but like we definitely were higher volume than the majority of practices. So a few 100 visits a week, but not like 1000 visits a week.

Love it. Love it. And then pillar 4.

Naota Hashimoto: Uh, just reducing your accounts receivable, like, for people that are cash only. It's easy, right? Because you're collecting up [00:27:00] front, but when you're doing insurance or personal injury and some of these things, like, we would just take a look at all the visits that are coming in tomorrow.

And then seeing who owes money, and then just popping in a note. And then if people were receiving services that day, and, you know, like, when we're doing, like, some bigger ticket medical ones, we collect an estimated amount. Every single patient had to have a card on file, right? Um, that was a non negotiable.

We had occasionally some people say, I don't want to have a card on file, but like, um, it was like, very rare. It was like, just whenever things you're going to have a card on file, we're going to do an estimate and we're going to try and. Collect it sooner, because, like, I remember at one point we had, like, 240, 000 in AR, and it was just, like, this is, like, ridiculous.

So, it's, like, we started doing that, and then we cut it in less than half. Yeah, no, it's

It's huge, and I think, you know, you definitely got to collect. You know, a lot of these doctors are in network with insurances, and they have a [00:28:00] network deductibles or coinsurances. So it's it's not just a straight 30 copay like a lot of times it used to be, and the visit might be different, but you should have some form of a calculator.

Uh, we, we put together a spreadsheet that actually had the fee schedule for the different insurances. You could plug in, you know, okay, doing these three codes, then the co insurance at 20, 30%, and then it would spit out a, they owed whatever. And I know the software does that now. This, this was like, I was in network with insurance like 12 years ago.

So you would want to collect from that patient. But yeah, there's going to be times where there, there is money owed or codes are denied. And I think one of the things that's pretty cool, and I know your software could be used a lot for this, but, um, maybe the days of mailing, like physically mailing a patient statement to that patient goes out the window, or at least early on, and that's something we've been talking a lot in our mastermind where we're talking with one of the particular clinics is like, look, you know, what we do now is Utilizing the different softwares we have, but we use cash practice software and we can [00:29:00] actually create a unique link if that patient owes 43.

15, actually create a link that they click on it and it says, here's 4315 and they put their card in and pay, um, if they don't have the card on file, but if they do, and we, we will give them a courtesy email and say, or even a two way text, however you want to slice it and say, you know, there's balance of 4315.

Do you mind if we run the card on file? Or, or like more like, okay, in 24 to 48 hours, we will run the card on file. We had your approval to do that and give them a couple of times email back if they want to do something else, whatever. But now you don't have to sit there and mail out a hundred statements per se, and you'll get a lot more people paying that way.

What are your thoughts on that? Uh, yeah, it's just a waste

Naota Hashimoto: of time and money to print and mail statements. I, yeah, I'd say like having the card on file. And then like, obviously, I was a big fan of prepay. So it's like we did that. Um, but, uh, for people that aren't doing a [00:30:00] lot of prepays and doing a lot of insurance, I'd say you'd have to have a card on file.

You should like get like some kind of estimate and collect something. Even if it's not the full amount, you have an idea of what they're going to pay. And if you over collect, you'd always like refunded to them, but we just collected a little bit under, but we collected a large chunk of it. And then, yeah, having cash practice or Fortis or one of these other things to do an e pay that's great.

Uh, we have an integration with cash practice. We also have one with Fortis and you'd be able to see all the people coming in tomorrow that owe money. Uh, you can look at all the people that left last week that owe money. And then we're adding a thing, which we're just about done where you could just bulk send it where they just click it and you could do a e pay statements from there.

So actually, by the time this podcast is live, it's probably going to be done. So

good. Good. Yeah. So the days of trying to get money out of people with paper statements are good. Now, you might still have to send them a collections, but that's a different story. All right. Pillar, uh, pillar [00:31:00] five for

Naota Hashimoto: just say, finish your projects.

Right? It's just like inventory sitting on the shelf. Um, You know, like, if you have 10 partially finished projects, it's not done is like, get something done. Some people could only get 1 project done at a time. Who cares? Right? If you can only focus on 1 thing at a time, work on it, get it done, get it shipped.

Good enough. It's like, I'll work on like 3 to 5 simultaneous things. Um, it's no big deal. It's not bragging or anything like that, but like, I don't work on 10 simultaneous things. It just for me, I just, um, I try to get something. Done good enough and get it shipped and get a minimal viable product, not a minimal product because like you can't do it super half ass and get a minimal product out the door, but like.

Yeah,

yeah, I want to connect the dots on that a little bit and how it might relate to, you know, like a lot of chiropractors are just struggling with volume in a sense, like they're just [00:32:00] not getting enough new patients or offices in the practice and and that's why they have a cash. Uh, they have a profit issue is because that could be the only thing, right?

Like, they could be as lean as possible. They might be all that, but, you know, finish the project might mean. Like, go do the marketing, you know, don't wait till it's perfect. And you're like a savant at community outreach and MD meetings and this and that. Go just do it. You'll get better at it. And that type of stuff, focusing on those leading indicators to get out there and actually do the work of marketing and getting out there and position yourself as an expert https: otter.

ai More people will allow you to charge more money and will help with your profits. So, uh, yeah, like you said, just ship. It is kind of an analogy of just like ship your ass to the local gym and talk to that trainer or ship your ass to the MD and have that meeting and just start doing it because no one's going to do it for you.

Naota Hashimoto: Yeah, it's, um, and I think a lot of docs out there [00:33:00] are working too many hours now. I know it seems counter intuitive because we talked about seeing more people, but if your schedule isn't that full, um, just close it down part way through. So for us, uh, like, before we had kids, I had a wider range of hours, but like a cluster.

But like, when I saw patients, and I was seeing younger people, older people, and then as we had kids, you can relate to this. It just, like, it's like I wanted to be there for things. And I was, like, feeling like a missing thing. So, like, I focused even harder on that older demographic is like, when I was early on in practice, working for 1 of my mentors, like, downtown, like, that 1030 ish.

Through like, 233 ish was like a really hard slot to fill, but like with the retirement community, it was easy now filling up things after 4 PM when it starts getting dark. That's a little harder. And, uh, but like, they wanted to come between 9 and like, 435 and it was [00:34:00] like, perfect for us. I could start a little bit later, leave a little bit earlier.

And yes, we missed out on, like, the working folks, but it just, it was better for my personal and family life. Yeah. Yep,

and I just we'll leave it with one little tip for some of our newer docs Yeah, like schedule the medicare patients at 10 30 a. m Not at 7 30 a. m. When you're you're you're working crews trying to get in there, right?

book particular types of patients You know don't fill up your 5 to 6 p. m With medicare patients save that for the folks getting out of work and need to get in before you close

Naota Hashimoto: Well, yeah, like and I have um You know, like one of my friends, he feels bad because like, there's no one, everyone's opted out of Medicaid in his area.

And he wants to serve these people. It's like, well, it doesn't mean you have to serve them at all times. So just say, Hey, you have, he has trouble filling up is like 1030 to 12 and is like 2 to 4. Great. That's, that's the time that he's going to see him. So he still gets to serve those [00:35:00] people. He still gets to help them because he's complaining that he doesn't have time to see these other patients.

It's like, just see them during certain hours. Like there's, okay. I like that. I don't think there's a discrimination and I don't know this next part, but like, I have some clients that do this and they say, if you want to go in these other hours, you have to be part of our membership. So, I'm not a compliance person, so I'm not going to say that's allowed or not, but I will say that I know people doing that as well.

Well, Dodo, this was great. I always love having you on. I like having, uh, chiropractors on that have been in the trenches and then are entrepreneurial and have a lot of wisdom. And you certainly, uh, check those boxes. So thanks for your, your time today and your, and your ideas.

Naota Hashimoto: Thank you for having

me. Yeah.

And tell us, uh, how, how can they reach out to, uh, um, learn a little bit more about, about TraxApp. How, how maybe, what, I guess, what are a few things that your software does? that would help them with [00:36:00] some of these aspects.

Naota Hashimoto: Uh, a lot of things, right? So, most of the time, the cost of their appointment reminder system is ours, right?

So, like, that's, that's an easy thing, online scheduling, integrating in, like, things like Cash Practice or Fortis. Because Cash Practice or Fortis is gonna be the merchant part, and it's gonna post payments back, but it doesn't have visit information. So, we're tying the two together, so you can manage a membership.

A lot easier. I wish we had this track stat back when I was in practice, you could manage like a are a lot easier. You could manage those E statement part easier. If you're doing a lot of social media advertising, you find that half of your patients are no showing something that they could. Do with that is they could drive them to a free phone consult or paid 1st visit.

So that way you get rid of that no show problem. And if they know show, it's only a 10 or 15 minute phone consult. Uh, you know, you teach doing metrics like KP eyes will automate that. We just we make it really easy for [00:37:00] frontline people. Or solopreneurs to know what to focus on, and we just automate everything else.

And with AI and stuff like that, we're just really busy adding a lot of that. And our goal is to take a really busy office and get by one front desk instead of two or three and taking a solopreneur and just allowing them to be a solopreneur for a lot longer. So like AI, I don't think it's ever going to replace people, but like, it's going to allow like.

An A or B player to get like 100 times more work done

yeah. Trackstack. org. But yeah, uh, the saying is, is human plus AI is better than human and it's also better than AI. So. Human plus AI is where it's at and it's what's cool about having softwares like yours where it's integrating that AI and now your team that you do have is going to be that much more efficient.

So and they can do like demos at the like schedule. Yeah, they can

Naota Hashimoto: use it for free. They could. Go to tracks that dot org, go click, watch [00:38:00] demo. There's a video, they could schedule a call and get a more detailed thing. Um, and then, yeah, from there, if they like it, they just do a free trial. And pretty much everyone just moves forward at that point.

Cause like once they see all the revenue opportunities that they're missing out on, not even just the automations, it just, instead of a nice to have, it becomes a must have and, you know, like. I would love this profession to kind of move forward. I feel like I owe a lot to it. Um, getting chiropractors to agree on like anything is difficult, right?

There's a number of your, it's like number of listeners in this camp that feel a certain way. There's a number of listeners in another camp that feel a different way. And I think everyone could agree whether you're a straight or a mixer or different kinds of chiropractors, um, that. Having more money in your bank account at the end of the year is going to be something that all of us could agree on.

Yeah, my whole thing is trying to get evidence based chiropractors to realize [00:39:00] they can be really great patient centered chiropractors and not have a stigma attached to actually doing well financially. So, um, Well, thanks Stota. I really appreciate everything again, and we'll have you on in the near future.

Okay? Thank you very much for having me. I always enjoy it.

Naota Hashimoto: Take care.