How to Save Lives Through Marketing

Download or read book How to Save Lives Through Marketing written by John Bergman and published by . This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I am a subluxation based corrective Chiropractor and I've been in practice for 15 years. I have about 800 patient visits a week and over 95% of my patients pay in cash (I don't like insurance). I have an awesome team - we train on office procedures and patient interaction 3 days a week, and we are a Monday-to-Thursday office so we have regular 3-day weekends. Yes! This is a dream practice!The greatest joy I have is making a difference in people's lives. We change our patients' perception of their potential - by reversing Arthritis, correcting High Blood Pressure, eliminating Fibromyalgia, etc., always using drug-free solutions. We just use the power that made the body in the first place to then heal the body. It wasn't always like this. When I started in practice, I was working in a multi-doctor practice and it was commission only. I started at three office visits per week, and those visits were from my mom - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. As you can imagine, it took me a while to save up for a cup of Starbucks. The clinic didn't provide me with any patients until I made it to at least four months in practice - a sink or swim proposition. I was also teaching part time at Cleveland Chiropractic L.A., which put food on the table but not much more. I had two sons, age 5 and 11, and we were staying in a 10' x 12' room in a 30-year-old mobile home. My school, Cleveland Chiropractic College, had given me one of the finest educations in the world. I knew anatomy, physiology, neurology, microbiology, biochemistry, multiple Chiropractic techniques, and I was skilled in diagnostics and pathologies. In short, I was one of the finest trained doctors on the planet. However, school had taught me absolutely no business skills. I had all this passion and all these skills and absolutely no idea how to get patients. I did have a business background, however, and I had been self-employed for nine years before I entered Chiropractic College. And every business that I started, I did it with very little capital - lots of enthusiasm but very little cash. As a brand new Chiropractor, I knew it would take me some time to build up the practice of my dreams, but with kids and bills I had to get it going fast. With only a vision of my dream practice and absolutely no idea how to get there, I was in panic mode. Let me tell you: reality hits hard. Like Rocky Balboa said: "Nobody is going to hit as hard as life." So there's that twisting-of-your-gut feeling that you get when your kids want something and you just can't get it for them, or when you're putting the bills in those three piles: 1. Gotta pay; 2. Gotta pay now, really; 3. Gotta pay because they're past due. To keep a positive mental outlook with my patients and my family - and with myself - was hard when all I could do was feed the kids and pay pile #3. There is a story that a lot of motivational speakers have used about how the early settlers came to this country ill prepared. The way the story goes is that the colonists were attacked by the natives and the colonists were losing. During the attack the leaders of the colony rowed out to the boats in the bay. The boats were the only means of escape the colonists had, and the leaders of the colony burned the boats, eliminating the option of escaping. That way there was nothing the settlers could do except be successful or die; there was no escape. My predicament was similar: make it as a Chiropractor or die; there was no plan "B" in my world. Essentially I had burned my boats in the bay. I had no savings, two young kids, a mountain of student loans, and a passion for helping people. Desperate for a plan to get my practice up and running, I asked every successful Chiropractor what they had done when they started out. I also asked what they read, what they did for motivation . . . I asked them everything. What was amazing was that they all told me what they had done. What was even more amazing was that when I did it, it worked!