James Cameron’s new movie Avatar comes out this week. I’m not much of a sci-fi buff and I remember literally crawling under the seat when Alien first came out so to believe that I am a Cameron groupie is a bit of a stretch. What I do love doing is reading compelling interviews given by really creative people. Cameron is a Canadian and so I believe there is a little give back when he grants the interviews. Regardless, he spoke in length to The Toronto Star and the focus was more on his journey than being a movie promo. I loved when he described himself as being an “explorer and an artist””. This resonated with me to my core. I have memories of poring over the National Geographic (for more than the bare breasted African women!) as a kid and dreaming what it would be like to explore the far reaches of the globe. To this day I am in awe of the Victorians as they launched themselves into the voids of sea, mountains and deserts, totally unprepared but striving to be a part of the next great discovery. I think of DD and BJ as they took on the establishment and promoted a new perspective that highlighted the injustice of outside-in, torturous medicine. I think of the everyday pioneers who I have rubbed shoulders within our profession. The amazing ones are chiropractors who love the entrepreneurial spirit. They are the artists who look at ways to share the great message and to plumb new depths in the understanding of human potential and health. The less than amazing ones; and there are many; are the entrepreneurs who use their chiropractic knowledge and degree to build a business for themselves without regard for the profession.
Choosing to be a chiropractor allows us to be explorers and artists. If we relegate our careers to being just a job and to being the means for providing an income, the days over the tables will be long and very tedious. On the other hand, if we look at the world as an enormous playground and realize the devastating effects of subluxation on human health and potential, we can stand, awestruck and imagine how big our worlds are. I spoke with a DC in China last week and he reminded me that that there were only 5 DC’s in Beijing. That’s about one for every 3 million residents. He told me that some crappy entrepreneur had gone to Taiwan and sold weekend courses to the public and the medics on the use of Activator Methods. An amazing, 50,000 people had gone through the program. The number is staggering and needs to be clarified but you can see the intent. The DC whom I spoke with was a pioneer of a different breed. He wants to keep the message of chiropractic pure and asked me to share some good language hooks to tell the right people the right message about us. It all comes down to intent and in the end that intent reflects our integrity.
Another artist that explores the far reaches of his given talent is Victor Wooten. He’s a bass player and for a treat, catch this youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR6t47pV8Qc and note how fast this guy’s hands can move on the bass. He’s truly amazing and when others ask how he can do it he says that he does what he can with his talent but where others see perfection he sees opportunity to grow from his flaws. He runs a bass camp for kids and when he was interviewed he made the comment that playing the music is the easy part but the real challenge is learning and becoming who you were meant to be through the use of your talents.
Chiropractic adjusting and practice management are the easy parts. What they do for you is the real question. You have been gifted the brains and the opportunity to share a very unique story. What you do with it is why I want to be with you as we explore the next frontiers. It’s time to get our houses in order and get on with the exploration through our art. Become unconsciously competent at adjusting and running the practice so that you can awaken to the new reality of sharing this chiropractic story with millions of people. It’s the hippest message around and the youthful DC’s that I work with confirm that the old is dead and the new is just beginning. Let’s make 2010 the beginning of the end of narrow minded thinking. Let’s be explorers like the Victorians and artists like the Renaissance masters. Let’s put aside our egos and change the world together.
That’s, at least, how I intend to use 2010.
Happy holidays everyone. Wasn’t 2009 interesting? I want you all to plan on being even greater in 2010. A legacy project that I have been working on for the last 2 years will come to life in 2010. It’s all about you, philanthropy and chiropractic. Birthing greatness begins by believing in the scope of your influence on a worldwide scale. Are you up to it? Details in the New Year.
Whether the practice is older and in need of a recharge or young and quiet in too many spots, the question I get asked in coaching all the time is, “How do I get past this stagnant point?” In almost all cases it’s not rocket science. The energy that brought the practice to life, needs to be rekindled and the best strategy to do so is create intensity by compressing the day. I believe that one of the worst places to be stuck in is an empty office. These are places that were designed to be full of life and exude life. Sporadic bookings with no momentum kill that energy and kill the spirit of the doctor and the team.
I remember having a conversation at a seminar with my dear friend Jim Sigafoose. He said it best when he was at his first Parker seminar as a lonely, underachieving DC. When asked how he was doing in practice he would say, truthfully “I’m seeing 500!” Although he was actually adjusting a fraction of those 500, he was “seeing” them. He never lost the vision of where his practice would be one day. The rest is legendary.
When you awaken to start the next practice day, you have a choice as to how it will play out. It will either drive you(nuts) or you will drive it. Most DC’s chase a dream of more, more and more rather than realize that there are production limits to the system you have set up. So often DC’s read about monster practices that can occur overnight with the right marketing etc..These are probably the same DC’s addicted to infomercials or MLM schemes. The reality is that the practice you have is a perfect reflection of your level of clinical and management skills combined with entrepreneurial expertise.
I suggested that compression of the schedule was a good starting point. Even if you are seeing a few patient visits in the hour or in the morning, schedule them all in the same slotted time frame. This gives the perspective of a full practice; it creates a buzz of momentum in the flow and most of all it frees the day up for you to spend the time entrepeneuring. This simple cluster booking saves you the indignity of waiting for the one patient. Remember that an efficient appointment book is scheduled horizontally and then vertically. I created the ABC’s of staff responsibilities, where A stands for Appointment book management. I will review these ABC’s at a later date.
Once the cluster booking has been firmed up, it’s time to literally go to work. Servicing the patient is the easy and straight forward stuff for us. It’s the allocation of time and energy to be the CEO that needs to be learned and implemented. I suggest that you agree to work at least 40 hr a week until your plate is full. Not that hard a request. If you do the math and allow for missed appointments and slow times you would only need to, at most, invest 27 hours in adjusting, examining and reporting time to see 250 pv/week. That leaves a full 13 hours to be the CEO(Creative Exceptional Organizer)(DF’s acronym). Sadly most DC’s see the 27 hours and book a play date instead of working their plan for the other 13.
I know this sounds pretty Dad and Mommish…put the nose to the grindstone but there is a reality of getting paid for the system that you create and manage. I once trained with a hedonistic coach who was all about maximal efficiency and minimal hours. My practice languished for some time until I reorged the schedule. Let me just say from business experience, and I know billionaires who gladly put in 60 hour weeks; work should feel like play, so learn to love the business as much as you love adjusting.
Interested in learning how to be great in practice and create your own Greatness Action Plan? Book a free consult time with docfletch. Fill in the Mind the Gap info and send it through. You can also just call Linda at 905 831 9696 and she’ll set aside 20 uninterrupted minutes to have a chance to chat about coaching and growing the practice.
One of the ah-ha’s that I got from my church going adventure was to note the connection between the preparation of the sermon and the readings from the Gospel. The priest would dissect the meaning of the holy words and put it into relevant terms for us to digest.
The “holy” words within chiropractic are probably best found in the Green Books rather than Dynamic Chiropractic. Whether you are in church or in practice you will have to decide which direction you want to focus on and what words and messages you will follow. This all important decision defines the intent and the principles that will guide your actions and communications.
“I’m a chiropractor, who is a doctor, trained to release and adjust the tension that is being held in a person’s spine and nerves. This turns on the power to heal while turning off stress and it’s all done without using drugs or expensive therapies.”
I just came up with this 7 second, elevator statement and it sums up some of the important distinctions that are unique to chiropractic. Embedded in the dialogue are the key words: doctor, release, adjust, spine, nerves, heal, power, stress, drugs and expensive. Regardless of the way we speak or tell the story, the content and context of the words we use are expressing our intent. In this dialogue I didn’t use the words back or neck care; specialist, pain, therapy, relief, muscle, joint, manipulation, strain sprain. These are words that, when put together, represent a form of therapy and a therapeutic outcome. Healing starts with therapeutic benefit and then opens up to potential.
Its so useful to examine our words as they confirm our intent. This is one of the reasons that I have eschewed the use of scripts in practice management. Regurgitating another person’s intent is useless. Learning the content of what is in the scripts and then reframing it to meet your message is valuable. This is on e reason that I have developed templates to insert, in an appropriate order, your own words and your own message. However or whatever we speak, it must be the truth to us. I am driven by the message that resides in full view in our kitchen: “Choose to be kind rather than being right.” It sort of goes along the route of the Golden Rule. What messages deliver kindness? You can be direct and still be kind. You can disagree with a person’s opinion and position and still be kind. You can give a care plan based on the kindness of the truth rather than the righteousness of a practice management dictate.
The root of the word trust is truth. To be at peace in practice and in life, tell the truth as you understand it and the trust will build. It takes courage to be truthful but the words are in you. Choose them wisely and you’ll sleep comfortably.
Docfletch trains doctors and their teams to use powerful and truthful words in practice. His templates and dialogues have changed thousands of practices around the world. Call today for a courtesy consult on how you can deliver the message that is inside of you. Join the Insight Academy and book a Mind the Gap session and get the New Year off on the right foot.
In one of those thot flashes (not to be confused with the notorious hot flashes); the kind that would wake BJ up in the middle of the night; I realized the simple but powerful truth: “You get paid to the level that you operate with certainty”. This seems to be applicable across the board so I’m going to label it a truism.
If we take this truism into the details of the practice then we need to ask ourselves the obvious questions: “What are we certain of ?”and “What and where are we fooling ourselves through inconsistencies and incongruencies? “ One question that I ask the attendees at my program is , “What is your product”. Now of all the things that a business has to have nailed is the product along with the pricing and the delivery methods. You wouldn’t believe what I hear. I get health, vitality, change and wellness as answers. This then narrows down to adjustments or care. Generally the room goes very quiet as it becomes apparent that there is no consensus and the answers are asked rather than emphatically given. The answer, as I see it, is none of the above. With certainty, I can tell you that the product that a chiropractor sells is not an elusive or subjective outcome. Nor is it the adjustment alone. It is the care plan. This is the way health care and healing practices work. They create an avenue and a forum to develop a time-based relationship into which the doctor can add their extreme skills of examining, analyzing adjusting, communicating, coaching, mentoring and being.
Imagine how powerful and productive your practices could be if there was certainty in the communication of the care plan with every patient. Imagine if every patient knew where they were going at all times in their care and were aware of their responsibilities. The CA’s could be trained to be Care Plan specialists, dedicated to assisting the patient adhere to their plan rather than focusing on assisting the doctor. Powerful practices run this way and the team gets paid at the level of the certainty that they project.
A case study in certainty can be found around the corner in any orthodontists office. These professionals are the very best at focusing on the outcomes and having care plans that accomplish this. Along the way they are certain that these results are going to be achieved and they get paid handsomely for this certainty. In fact, the client isn’t even told how often they need to be scheduled. The intent is the successful outcome and the making of a new “smile”. Damn, these guys are good!
Lets all take the next step in certainty development when it comes to the care plans. Structure the care plan from exam to exam at the very least with goals that go as far as you are certain of the outcome you can achieve. How cool would it be if the certainty of the outcome was based on the certainty of the value of clearing the scans. Imagine that the true goal was to observe neural clearing regardless how the patient felt and that the care plan reflected your expertise, like the orthodontist, on the momentum of the change. Imagine that you could equate, without a doubt, that wellness was being acheived as the scans reflected the healing state and improved in their pattern.
A solution to a lack of certainty is to dissect the care plan that you would love to deliver. Write it out, step by step and fall in love with every bit of it. Imagine and envision the scans and the healing as the patient moves from a Release state to the Rebuilding phase. How long and how frequent will you need to see the patient? What are the outcomes you expect? How will you communicate this each step of the way? What media will you use? What is the fee structure and the payment model? How will you measure the success? How does a patient grow into wellness? How can they be trained? Will they refer families and friends? What do you do in the process? Your staff’s role and duties?…These are the questions that develop certainty and I am certain that if you focus on removing the inconsistencies in your intent, actions and delivery, you will be repaid handsomely in so many ways.
Its past due to post this latest blog as I have been pressing the flesh and telling DC’s how to awaken their passion in a variety of locales. In the earliest days of coaching and lecturing Patrick G and I would log between 30-40 weekends away each year. That’s a lot of airport reading to work through.
The post today will be of a practical vein as most of the docs that I have worked with recently need an update on the discussion of the GAP. As you know, my coaching program is styled after that principle hence the name, GAP Coaching. Remember that GAP is a derivative of Selye’s original concepts of General Adaptive Syndrome. At Total Solutions, we reorganize the GAS to become the GAP which now stands for General Adaptive Potential.
In essence, we all operate within boundaries. Thankfully they are not rigid like a set of train tracks but rather flexible and responsive to life’s nuances. If we look at the opportunities of living big and living on purpose then we would be well served to widen the GAP as often and as much as possible. As A Dr. Beatrice Berry puts it,” When you walk with purpose you collide with destiny.”
The lower boundary of the GAP represents entropy. It’s where life energy has depleted and the rigors of daily living have taken such a toll that the GAP is narrow and the dis-ease is the norm. The lower boundary is where failed decisions come to rest. The net effect of persistent dis-stress pushes the patient or the person closer to that lower boundary. The lowest level that can be reached is when life energy, the elan vital, can no longer be expressed and death ensues.
The upper limit is actually limitless. It represents the opportunity of expressing human potential at its nadir. This boundary is self and evolutionarily imposed. We mere mortals live with glass ceilings where we can envision what lies beyond but feel the constraints of self imposition. Who knows when the next barrier to human performance and creativity will be shattered?
At each station in life we develop a state of ease that “fixes” these boundaries. These set points become our relevant and dominant perspective. We activate our neurology to allocate a state of ease where physical, mental and biochemical stressors are viewed as eustress (beneficial to growth and maintenance). What is one man’s poison is another’s pleasure. We operationalize our tasks to use enough stress to get pleasure and enjoyment in life which may or may not be enough to “raise the bar”. Eventually, we accept these limits until creativity and purpose push us to expand. So long as the added stresses are deemed to be advantageous to our future well being, the body-mind deems these to be eustress, thereby expanding the limits. When unintentional stress is applied, a downward force is activated and the GAP begins to close. This can be from any one or all three dimensions of stress, simultaneously, instantaneously or insidiously. Regardless, the perspective is altered and what used to be tolerable now changes to aggravating as the upper limit slumps.
Stress is cumulative by nature and design and so if unmanaged or emotionally charged, a snowball effect begins. But something worse is at play. This snowballing isn’t linear. As stress affects the processing in the neural core and perceptions are altered, the original tranche of stress becomes another stress to deal with. This snowball is rolling downhill, gathering speed and overcoming the inertia that has taken years to develop. This is now an exponential problem. That is verging on “out of control”.
Somewhere along this chain of events, the body-mind recognizes this altered state and begins to produce defensive strategies. This guarded response is to protect and alert the stress owner that something big is amiss. Sadly the owners are rarely tuned in to their bodily state. In effect they are disembodied. This shift from stress/ eustress to distress creates a measurable response that we term the subluxation. It is identifiable through its spinal component, the vertebral subluxation in ways that chiropractors are trained to analyze. For this reason, we can apply the results of the scanning technology to the concept of GAP. WE can use the combined score of an NSFi to represent the width of the GAP that a person is operating through at the time of exam. We can identify where and how deep the stresses( distresses) are being stored and to what extent they are altering the health of the patient by reviewing the thermal scans. Algometry allows us to measure the sensitivity of the inflamed, upper tissues while inclinometry detects the global guarding associated with subluxation. Dysponesis is a state of total energy inefficiecy and can be identified through sEMG readings to understand the failing state of energy management in dis-ease. Finally the HRV is a point of reference for the doc and the patient to see how the narrowing GAP is affecting the patient’s ability to adapt and “dance on the head of a pin.”
As you can see, the goal of the chiropractor is to “widen the GAP”. Innate allows us to have a GAP and Innate is programmed to widen the GAP so that we humans can accomplish our purpose and destiny. If distress can narrow the GAP then adjustments can jack it open. Keeping it open and pushing the boundaries is a combined effort of purpose, chiropractic and hygienic decisions. I registered the website, www.widenthegap.com for some future project that could inspire, teach and train the world how simple it can be to take charge of one’s health, perspective and future. Send me your thoughts on how this may look and we can collaborate on widening the gap in our communities.
So, all of the airports and recycled airplane air have narrowed my GAP. Writing to all of you has begun the process of easing the downward push on my system. The healing is in play. Use the GAP wisely and train your people how good it is for everyone to get “gapping”.
DocFletch blogs are shared around the world. Pass on the link and let the scanning and chiropractic communities know that this is the destination to learn and grow as a chiropractic warrior. I invite all of you to drop me a line in the comments section or do as many do and write an email to docfletch@docfletch.com. Let’s widen the GAP one patient and one family at a time.
