COLUMN BUSINESS TALK Tough love T What’s slowing down your business, in a nutshell BY ANTHONY LOMBARDI extremely well informed and they will right now in medical schools. find a chiropractor who meets their In 2014, University of Guelph re-needs and wows them on the first visit. searcher Dr. Debora Powell identified With respect to problem No. 2, if you a list of key personality traits that can have personal issues, family conflict, or predict a medical school student’s any type of extraneous stressor, no success during the clerkship year, practice building course will help you. where students directly interact with You need to seek counseling to help patients. These are: social confidence, solve your issues or accept the situation achievement-focused, and tolerance. The study demonstrated that grades you’re in. If you don’t, your business will never reach its potential. Back in and MCAT scores had weak relations 2012, I interviewed the author of Book to clinical performance. Powell, also a psychology professor Yourself Solid, Michael Port. Port stressed the importance of recognizing at the university, said the findings that in most cases, a perceived business might mean medical schools should problem is a personal issue in disguise. begin implementing personality testing Problem No. 3 is the toughest to for admissions. Powell reported that overcome. If you are an introvert, a any kind of additional tools schools can boring conversationalist who has prob-use to improve selection of who’s going lems answering questions about your to help future patients should be con-product, or if you struggle with sidered. Another study from the Journal of self-promoting your practice, then your battleship is sunk. The older we get, our Applied Psychology in 2009 concluded ability to change our personalities be-that clinicians who were “open and comes more impossible due to the extroverted” would be best doctors for decrease in the neural plasticity in our their patients. Since chiropractors are brains. clinicians and business people, would There are four basic business per-chiropractic schools think about doing sonality types based on the this? Would they consider dis-Myers-Briggs Type Indica-Patients will couraging introverted person-look for a ality candidates from entering tor: dominant, expressive, relational, introverted. chiropractor their college? Or are they more concerned about their financial Based on this description who meets of business personalities, a their needs bottom-line and less concerned with the future success of their chiropractic business prac-and wows tice would be best suited for them on the students? an expressive personality and My point is, the factors for first visit. least suited for an introvert. business failure lie in your in-Why don’t chiropractic schools factor trinsic genetic makeup, your personal this information into the admissions lives, and your clinical outcomes. Chi-process to reduce the number of can-ropractic is a communication-based didates least likely to succeed in busi-profession. This means in order to be ness practice? successful we need to generate referrals Think this is crazy? It’s happening from the patients we see on a regular basis. To do that we must be persona-DR. ANTHONY LOMBARDI is consultant to athletes in the NFL, CFL and NHL, and founder of the ble, clinically impressive, and adaptable Hamilton Back Clinic in Hamilton, Ont. He teaches his fundamental EXSTORE Assessment System and to whatever life throws our way. conducts practice-building workshops to health professionals. Visit exstore.ca for information. 14 Canadian Chiropractor April 2018 www.canadianchiropractor.ca he longer I practice, the harder it is to give business practice advice because what works for one person doesn’t work for another. Addition-ally, very few people will discard their old failing ways in exchange for what you recommend for improvement. So, it is about time that I administer some tough love and tell you the truth about why chiropractors struggle in practice. Let’s be frank – practices are busi-nesses. And, chiropractic businesses that fail usually do so for one or all of these reasons: 1. Their product is simply not good enough. 2. Their business problems are reflections of their personal problems. 3. The chiropractor lacks the right personality. Some contend that if you complete chiropractic college, then you shouldn’t need to improve yourself because that’s what you pay chiropractic colleges to do. If you follow that logic then every-one would be a chiropractic business superstar – that is clearly not the case. However, if you aspire to achieve better clinical results, be prepared to learn from those who are doing it better than you. Through mentoring you can learn to attain outstanding clinical re-sults yourself. This will help solve problem No. 1. Think about how you present your product. If you subscribe to the phi-losophy – visit one, assessment; visit two, report of findings; visit three, first treatment – then do not be surprised if your patients start a mass exodus from your practice. In an inter-net-based world, patients are
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