COVER PRACTICE MANAGEMENT Open for business K Channel your inner marketer and become the chiropractor of choice in your community community and establishing that trust with the chiro-practor is half the battle won. Once people get to know you and like what you’re telling them and what you’re doing, they start to trust you — and this will form the foundation of a great practice, says Anderson-Peacock. It’s what she calls the “know, like and trust” funnel. This formula has worked really well in building her practice in Barrie, Ont., which she ran from 1988 to 2009. The practice is now run by her children, who are both chiropractors. She is now focused on life and leadership coaching, nationally and internationally. Although she still sees patients from time to time, she is now only focused on pediatric and maternity cases. “I really built my practice from the inside out, and it’s really engaging patients about the story (of chiro-practic) and (the chiropractors’) ability to help other people by telling the story. “If you know something that could help another person and you have the ability to help them now, why wouldn’t you want to tell them?” she says. Dr. David Leprich, who has been a chiropractor since 1977, agrees the key to practice success is getting out and talking to people. Immediately after gradu-ating from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, Leprich started to scout for a potential loca-tion for his brand new practice. He eventually settled in St. Catharine’s, Ont., pur-chased a building that previously housed a conveni-ence store and three apartments. He moved into one of the apartments where he opened his practice. Sounds easy? Not so much in this day and age, says Leprich, as the economic picture is very different today than when he started out 36 years ago. “I did not have a lot of student debts, so I was able www.canadianchiropractor.ca B y M ari -L en D e G uzMan yra Proctor just spent two years as an associate chiropractor at a busy down-town chiropractic clinic. She recently moved to the suburbs to open her very own clinic. After finding what she thinks is a suitable location for her practice, she begins to daydream about all the new patients who will come lining up to see her as soon as she opens for business. When she wakes from that dream a few months later, she finds herself staring at her clinic waiting room filled with empty chairs. This scenario would sound too familiar for many new chiropractors venturing out on their own or re-locating their practice to a new community – and bring back not-so-fond memories to the veterans who braved through those growing pains of practice. Whether starting a brand new practice or relocating to a new community, chiropractors are bound to face real-life challenges that years of top quality education could not have prepared them for. “(One of the) struggles is certainly just getting an understanding of what reality really was,” says Dr. Elizabeth Anderson-Peacock, a chiropractor of 28 years, recalling her first few years in chiropractic practice. “People won’t just gravitate to you because you opened your door and put your shingles outside.” The real wake-up call, she says, is the realization that a chiropractor, especially one who’s in the early stages of his or her practice, really needs to go out to the community and promote the practice and what chiro-practic is all about. Forming relationships in the MARI-LEN DE GUZMAN is the editor of Canadian Chiropractor and Massage Therapy Canada magazines. You can contact her at [email protected]. 22 Canadian Chiropractor May 2014 Invest in long-term relationships in the community to sustain your practice $
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