These are strange times and most chiropractors have plenty of time on their hands, ads pop up all the time for the next great practice building tool and how to build your patient base during a pandemic, don’t sell out. I’m going to give a little piece of advice for all of the young chiropractors, you are going to get pulled in all sorts of different directions over the course of your career, three simple little words can go a long way…..Don’t Do It.

As times get tough, you will begin to see ads pop up from all sorts of people regarding building your practice whether it be through coaching, management companies or other things that are meant to take your money and time with no guarantee of more patients in the door.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, if you don’t feel comfortable explaining your practice philosophy to the general public or to your friends and family, don’t even think about doing it.  Sleep well at night, and ponder a little bit how you look to the general public.

Chiropractors are already the black sheep of health care at this time, we don’t need any more crazy people out there trying to influence the general public that they need more care.  In fact, the vast majority of the population would probably benefit from chiropractic care at some time in their life, but the public perception that some of us are crazy is alive and well; this doesn’t bode well to get more of the public to trust chiropractors.

Slow times are a terrible thing for me, as your mind will start wondering.  If you either build or buy a practice make damn sure that it has a strong base.  You will always be able to circle back on the patients that have built your practice.  Do a quality job from day one and those people will provide for you in the slow and busy times. These slow times can suck for everyone, but don’t sell yourself out to a management company that will probably not be able to produce the results that you are ultimately looking for.

Become really good at whatever you want to center your practice around.  Whether its adjusting, nutrition, functional medicine or any other avenue that you would like to take your career, hone those skills and run with it.  Develop this over time and continue to build a loyal patient base that trusts you.  You are not going to win every case, some people just won’t get better but patients will trust you significantly more if you don’t try to push more visits or therapies that they don’t necessarily need.

For me this is musculoskeletal pain along with DOT physicals, from low back pain to headaches.  I don’t deal with a lot of internal problems as I feel that there are other people that are better qualified to handle these things.  I said this a couple of posts ago, stay in your lane and you will find that there are plenty of people to treat that are right in that lane.  If your patients don’t know what you treat, then they will have a hard time sending other potential people your way.  Stick with what you are good at, it will pay off in the end.

Bottom line, worldwide pandemics are not fun for anyone, your mind will wonder and you will be pulled in a lot of different directions but just know that just be yourself, run a reputable practice that people trust and can fall back to in times of uncertainty.  They will appreciate the comfort of what they are getting when they walk in the door.