across Atlantic Canada, then into southern Ontario, and eventually hurdling the U.S. border. They will be test-run-ning two franchise clinics in 2018; adding between five and seven franchises in 2019; and ballooning to an expected 100 locations by 2025. “We’re swinging with the fences,” chuck-les Comeau. The key driver behind the accelerating growth of the Town Chiropractor business model is hiring grads with the right stuff. “I read everything about management and leadership and retooled how I approach new graduates and people new to our organization,” explains Klein. “It wasn’t about mak-ing a buck, but it was about knowing you were contributing to something special that would be making society a better place.” To Comeau, a major success – in addition to winning two national awards for being inspirational public service advo-cates to the chiropractic profession – has been streamlining systems for practice development for new graduates. “Our goal is to help grads get to a five-year competency within six months,” he says. “We’ve developed clinical standards that give new doctors an opportunity to develop their skills and get the necessary results more rapidly.” “It wasn’t about making a buck, but it was about knowing you were contributing to something special.” Hampton. He later branched out to other satellite offices in St. Stephen, St. George, Saint John, and a travelling office that goes to remote island Grand Manan on a monthly basis. Things got really boiling in 2012 when he crossed paths with new chiropractic grad, Daniel Comeau. When they met, the connection was immediate. “Erik said we’d get along well; we complemented each other’s person-alities, and I was a fresh young doctor with fire in my belly to get my practice into high gear,” Comeau recalls. Klein saw an unprecedented determination and work ethic in his jovial, bearded colleague. “I knew that Dan had something that you couldn’t teach, and I knew that to grow the business from a handful of relatively small clinics to the empire I dreamed of, I needed someone as stubborn and as passionate as I was.” Comeau relished the idea of working in a multidisciplinary clinic environment. “We agreed that we wanted all of our clinics to operate on that scale. It didn’t take much selling for me to buy in. We’ve worked ever since with one goal in mind: To become the largest multidisciplinary/results-driven health network in Atlantic Canada.” Now the COO of The Town Chiropractor, Comeau sees that goal coming to fruition. The organization is seven clin-ics strong, comprising five chiropractor/associates, 10 mas-sage therapists, a naturopath, a kinesiologist, and an athletic therapist. Plans are well on the way to expanding clinics www.canadianchiropractor.ca And when targeting locales for a new clinic, there are the must-haves. “For us determining new locations stems from the model we see in our clinic network,” Klein says. “The clinics we had in smaller town like Hampton, Sussex and St Stephen all grew really quickly. This is likely because word of mouth is highly effective in smaller communities. “We also try to pair offices nearer to larger urban centres as it is highly difficult to find doctors and therapists that are willing to move exclusively to a smaller community. How-ever, these small towns in rural areas are notoriously under-served, and accessing them from a business standpoint only makes sense. Moving forward, while we have locations that we’d like to establish, we will identify exceptional practition-ers and use their hopes, goals and passion to evaluate where to go.” Team Town The company’s associate at the Fredericton and Woodstock, New Brunswick, clinics, Dr. John Neal, hails from Brown’s Flat, New Brunswick and his post-grad plan from the CMCC (2016) was to return to the region to pursue his practice. “I’m sports oriented, and specialize in doing move-ment-based assessments,” he says. “Town Chiropractor’s model allows me to get involved in local sports organiza-tions, working with them to bring coaches and athletes into February 2018 Canadian Chiropractor 17
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