Speaker #Dr. Bill Davis
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the webinar for today. Very excited to be with you. I am Doctor Bill Davis with UCM Practice Growth Systems and very excited to present this information to you today. We're gonna be talking about five boxes, you must check before hiring your first associate. So this is ideal for you doc if you are in that range of doctors who is a solo practitioner has established yourself as you know, some, some baseline foundational success in the practice, but have not hired that first associate yet or if you have hired associate before and it didn't go well, this is this, this webinar is also for you so that the next time you do hire an associate, it's going to be more effective and it's going to work more effectively for you in your practice.
And so, you know, over the past 10 years, we've helped dozens of upper cervical practice practices, hire associates.
And my goal today is to save you time and money because whether you're hiring your first associate or you want a better experience than last time we're gonna get you covered today.
You know, we an we know the answers to the questions, we know what works and what doesn't. We've seen this over and over and over.
So, if you're in that range, you know, you're somewhere in that 20 to 70,000 a month range in collections and you haven't hired that first associate yet. We're gonna help you today and so very excited to present this information to you. So, what are you gonna learn today? You're gonna determine, you're gonna know how to determine if you're collecting enough each month to afford an associate. We're gonna talk about how to set expectations with clearly defined results, metrics and bonuses Kraskpis, et cetera.
We're gonna talk about how to develop systems that don't depend on your personality to succeed. We're gonna talk about what you need to do to make sure that you have enough new patients to fill both of your schedules.
We're gonna talk about how to make sure your overhead is under control before bringing on your highest paid team member. We're also gonna talk about how to make sure that your mindset is right to effectively lead and mentor an associate doctor.
Talk about how to develop a training system for your associates and all your team members to thrive, how to make sure your mission vision and values are shared with your entire team, including your associate and talk about what you need to focus on right now in order to grow to the next practice growth stage and much much more and so a lot to cover a lot of things that we're gonna be going over today.
Let's get started. So let's talk about, you know, get it right out of the, out of the way. Five boxes. You must check before hiring your host. Associate box. Number one mindset has to be right. We'll talk about that. F finances have to be right.
Number three, team and systems. Number four expectations. Number five new patients. So those are the five boxes we're gonna be going over. I'm gonna dive deep into each of those. Let's get going.
So box number one, you gotta have your mindset be right in order for this to work. When you go from having a solo practice to having a multi doctor practice, many different things have to change, but the biggest change has to happen within your own mind.
You have to want to lead and mentor and associate doctor. You have to be a purpose driven doc who wants to help more people and you have to have a clearly defined mission vision and values. So we're gonna talk about each of those.
And I also just wanted to mention, you know, if you don't have our book, Upper Cervical Practice, Mastery, learn success. Secrets of the world's top Upper Cervical doctors highly recommend you get it. You can actually get a free digital copy at our website.
If you go to Upper Cervical marketing dot com, you can get a free copy of Upper Cervical Practice, mastery, a digital copy right there.
I'd love to get that in your hands so that you have some, you can take a deeper dive on some of these topics we're gonna talk about today. So let's get into the mindset box.
So first part of this mindset is you have to want to lead and mentor an associate doc, right? And so if you don't want to do this, if you really don't wanna do this, like if, if, if there's any hesitation on this, I encourage you to think through some of these things. One is, you know, who mentored you in this work.
I know, you know, for me uh doing upper cervical work, I had some people who poured into me and really invested in me early on in my career in chiropractic and that made a huge difference in, in my technique and in my practice and just in my life.
And so I'm very grateful for those people. I'm sure that you have people like that as well who mentored you in this work.
And so think about those things, think about who mentored you, how did they help you those types of things because that can start to inspire you and encourage you to want to lead and mentor other doctors.
What do you know that you could pass on to another doc to help them be successful? You know, so you, you think back to when you started your practice and everything that, you know, now compared to what you knew then is, you know, I'm, I'm sure you, you know, a ton of things that you wish you would have known then.
And so someone coming right out of school or someone coming out of a, uh, another situation where, uh, they're coming into your practice, you can be able to, to help them get so far ahead of where you even were when you started by just passing on that information that you've learned over the years.
And then the other thing is just part of uh just understanding that at at a certain point, you're gonna reach capacity, right? Regardless of, of uh you know how good of a doctor you are, how, how efficient you are, how good your systems are, how good your team is at a certain point, you can only be in one place at a time, you can only be seeing one patient at a time.
And so you're going to run into a capacity issue. You know, whether that's depending on, you know, your technique, if that's at $40,000 a month or if that's at $70,000 a month, which I've seen doctors who are solo practitioners who are collecting $70,000 a month.
And that is, I mean, the max of, of what is even physically possible. But I'll tell you at some point, you're gonna get to that point where it's, I can't see any more patients. I just don't have enough time in the day.
Uh and, and also to have a life, right? I mean, you, you, you know, you have families, you have social things, you have other things you want to do in life other than just see patients.
And so understanding that understanding that if done, right, an associate coming into your practice can help you help as many people, help twice as many people in your community, it can help you double your practice. It's a key piece of that process of doubling a practice.
The other thing is you gotta make sure that you are purpose driven. So this is part of that mindset box you gotta check is, you know, are you driven by your purpose? What I've seen over the years and myself personally too, in, in, in my business and in my practice before is purpose is the driving force behind all top upper cervical doctors. And really, it's the p it's, it's the driving force behind all successful people.
BJ Palmer said a man without a purpose can be distracted, but a man without, with a purpose cannot be stopped, right? A man without a purpose can be distracted, but a man with a purpose cannot be stopped. It's one of my favorite quotes by him.
And it's a powerful reminder that if you have that purpose, if you are of a big purpose in mind, you can, you can accomplish so much, but so much of it is you've got to get other people around you, you gotta build that team.
And so when you're thinking through your own purpose and making sure that you are a purpose driven doctor, you gotta be thinking through some of these questions like why did God put you on this earth? What were you designed to do? How can you make a powerful impact in your community? How can you leave a legacy? These are some of the questions that can drive you when it comes to having an associate and just making an impact in your community, starting to determine your own personal purpose and your practice mission will allow you to keep your mind focused.
Mark Twain said the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why I love that last part of that mindset is, is thinking through your core values, your vision and your mission for your practice, right? And so we're gonna spend some time on this because this is something that we see a lot with, with doctors who are, who are struggling in this area, who aren't uh you know, they, they, they feel like they might not quite be ready when it comes to having a culture in place, having AAA team and systems in place when it comes to ready to bring on an associate.
And a lot of it comes down to this. Do you have clearly defined core values? Can you, could you name the core values of your practice? Could your team members, could your cas do, do they know what your core values are? If you, if you say no to that question, then I guarantee you that you're gonna have some problems with this. You've gotta be clear on what the core values is of the practice. It's essentially what your company is all about.
It's a collection of characteristics that outlines what it means to be a team member of your practice. So for instance, one of our core values at, at UCM is, is team, right? And so our description of team, that core value of team is where team members, not employees, this is not just the job we're doing work that matters. Our team is on a mission to help sick and suffering people all over the world.
We win together or we lose together, we reward performance and results on our team. We have fun and enjoy working together as a team, right? So that's an example of a core value.
One of our core values is team and so making sure that you have clearly defined core values for your practice. They're the foundational pillars of your company.
When when it comes to once you have these core values established, then you can hire team members based on those core values. You can hold people accountable to that standard.
You can you know, when, when other people, when people on the team are not living up to those core values, you can call each other out on it, right? A lack of congruence with core values can be, is a major reason why someone should not be working with your team anymore, right? So core values is a key piece to helping you have a AAA solid culture that you can bring an associate into so that they will thrive.
If you haven't thought through that, then it's gonna be more difficult to bring somebody in who's gonna be your highest paid team member into an environment that is not as clear and focused as it should be.
So the best way for you to determine what your core values are, if you don't already have these established is to first determine what's most important to you personally, right? So you want to go back to your personal purpose as I started, as I mentioned earlier, really make sure you know what your purpose is that you've written it out that you have a clear understanding of, of, you know, a one sentence, purpose of your life purpose and how your practice is helping you accomplish it that will help you to be led towards understanding your core values.
And then from there, you can do a brainstorm and really start thinking about the words that come to mind as you go through some of these questions here, you can take a screenshot of this and, and go over this with your team, you know, what's the initial impression or feeling people have as they approach your office? How do people feel when they walk into your lobby? How do people feel when they call your practice? How do patients feel when they meet you for the first time? What is a patient's first visit like in your office? How do you want your patients to feel? How do you want the atmosphere? What do you want their atmosphere to be? Like? How do you want your team members to feel about the company? If a patient was describing your practice to someone else, what words would you want them to use if one of your team members was describing your practice, someone else, what words would you want them to use if you were telling a friend about a practice, what words would you want them to use to describe it? So some of these types of questions are really helpful for you to get crystal clear on what's most important? What are those core values of the company so that you can get uh get those laid out? And as you begin to answer those questions, questions, you wanna capture words that keep coming up, right? Words, the more words you have the better next you go through and you circle those different words, right? So literally you start writing down these words on like a whiteboard or piece of paper or whatever. And you start circling those words that are most important of the ones written down.
It's also good to get input from your team, especially if they've been with you for a while. If you have ac A that's been there for, you know, several years really understands the practice and what it's about. Help them be involved.
Uh, if you have your spouse get them involved, anybody else, you know, that uh you could really help understand what the practice is really about.
Once you've included, you know, accumulated those most important words, you start to kind of put them together and you want to start writing out definitions of what it means. Like we, like I talked about with our team core value.
We've, you know, team is the core value, but then we have an explanation of what that means, right? And so what you want to look for is 3 to 7 practice, core values and a basic definition of what you mean by that core value, that's a key piece of setting up your practice for success when it comes to bringing on an associate.
And really just in your team culture in general, having that clear core values will help you with your team and your patients and your associates. So from there, then we talk about a vision, right? A vivid vision means that you can clearly see what the practice looks like in the future and what you want it to look like in the future because again, bringing out an associate to a practice where you, you don't have a clear understanding of what you're looking to do is very difficult and you're setting yourself up for failure.
And so you wanna not only have that core value, those core values, but also that vivid vision. And so asking yourself some questions about this, when writing your vision, you know, what will your practice look like when it's done? How many patients would you like to see on a weekly basis? How many new patients would you see on a monthly basis? What's your target for collections each month? Which how many team members will you have working in the practice? What would your role be? Right? So clearly, I thinking through that thing and seeing how an associate fits into that vision is really, really important because without that vision, it's not going to help, you're not gonna be able to, to clearly see the direction you're going.
And a good vision is basically broken down into three sections. So, you know, taking out a piece of paper or Google Doc or whatever and start writing out, just write out who we are, who our patients are and where we are going, right? That's the three sections of a good vision who we are as a practice, right? A lot of that goes into our core values, right? Who our patients are, who are we looking to attract, who are we looking to serve? Where are they, are they, you know, in this case, community and other communities around the area? What uh what are, what are some of the struggles that they have? What are the issues that they're, they're struggling with? What kind of people do we want to serve? Do we wanna serve families? Do we wanna serve athletes? What, you know, whatever it is? Target market, niche, all those types of things and then where we're going, this is where we are now. Where do we wanna go? What's, what is the future look like for us? What is success looks like for this practice? What is growth look like? What do we wanna do as far as serving our practice? So those three things are really clear and important for a vision who we are, who our patients are where we're going.
So here's an example from Ru, you know, ruc and vision in our who we are section and we, we say, you know, this is a portion of that section says our team serves sick and suffering. People who need hope and healing.
We do this by utilizing our God given talents, gifts and skills to communicate hope and healing messages that are practical and actionable. Our leadership team believes in empowering our team members. We believe that we can either have control or growth but not both.
So we delegate authority and not just task to develop leaders our entire team is results oriented. We win together, we lose together, we reward performance and results while having fun, crushing our goals and working together as a team, right? So that's part of our who we are, who we are as a company. You can see that this is related to one of our core values, which is team, right? So tying it all together, core values and vision should be linked together in many ways.
You want to keep your vision to less than three pages, make sure that you get it real clear and that's gonna help you with your decision making going forward. It's gonna help you with picking a, an associate that's gonna fit well into your practice culture and your vision.
And then lastly, the mission, right? The mission is, is a one sentence rallying call, right? It's, it's something that the team can rally behind. You wanna make sure that this is prominently displayed throughout your entire practice. People can see it. Your patients know what it is.
Everyone knows that this is your mission, this is what you're trying to do every day. It has to be something that you're passionate about. Personally, your team is passionate about and it should focus on a bigger purpose. It should be a crusade for your practice, right? Our mission at UCM is to bring hope and healing to sick and suffering people for the glory of God, right? That's what we are about as company, right. That's our mission every single day.
That's what I focus on is how can I bring glory to God by bringing hope and healing to sick and suffering people. Obviously, we partner with upper cervical practices to make that happen.
But that is a key piece to who we are and what we do every single day. So for you, it should be a rallying cry, right? It's, it's, it's what everyone can get behind.
They can be excited about, they can get up every day and say yes, I do that right at UCM. We love giving people hope we've seen people get well, which is why this mission statement is perfectly suited for us.
So make sure your mission gets you and your team fired up. Ok. So that was box number one mindset.
You gotta want to, you gotta, you know, you gotta have the want to, you gotta want to lead and mentor an associate doc, you gotta be purpose driven to wanna help more people that has to be the driving force behind hiring this person.
And then you need to make sure that you have a clearly defined mission, vision and values so that when you bring this associate doctor into your practice world, they're going to uh fit well and really strive, let's talk about box number two.
Mhm So real quick before we get to box number two. If at any time, you want to dive deeper into any of these things that we talk about. We'd love to chat with you.
You can get a free practice strategy session by going to our website upper circle marketing dot com.
Uh We, we do a lot of different things to help doctors grow their practices, practice growth systems, practice growth sessions, including our Associate Accelerator Academy C A hiring and training, made easy for the UC practice transition out of practice academy.
Lots of different things that we have to help doctors regardless of which growth stage they're in, in their upper cervical practice. So let's talk about box number two, finances.
So you in order to bring on an associate, two things have to be true when it comes to your finances. One is, you need to be collecting at least $35,000 per month and two is your overhead needs to be 50% or less, right.
So let's look at both of those more in detail. So $35,000 per month, what does that mean? And why is this important? Well, because we, we found over the years that if you're going to be successful bringing on an associate, you need to be collecting at least $35,000 per month consistently. Right.
So that's averaging 30,000 $35,000 per month in collections or more for about six consecutive months before considering adding an associate. Right. So it's not. Oh, well, I collected $35,000 a month for the first time last month and I should get an associate next month.
Now, you need to be, be doing this consistently in order to have the stability to bring on uh an associate, right, 50% or overhead or less is also a key piece to this because if you're collecting $35,000 a month, but your overhead is 22,000, then you're not gonna have enough margin to pay yourself your taxes.
Build an emergency fund, be debt free, reinvest in your business. All the things that you need to do in order to have a successful business.
So if you're in a high overhead area, then you may need your practice to grow more than 35 K to bring on an associate, right? So that's a really key piece making sure that you, you know, when it comes to finances, you've checked both those boxes, $35,000 a month, 50% or less overhead. So that's, uh you know, when we look at overhead. So might, you know, be wondering like what is overhead? Well, overhead includes everything that's necessary to run your business, right? So this includes your payroll, your rent, your utilities, your marketing equipment supplies, insurance, consulting services, basically all your expenses, right? All your expenses, you want it to be about 50% of your total revenue or your total collections each month in order to have that type of uh stability in order to bring on your highest paid team member.
So that's box number two, real straightforward, collecting at least $35,000 per month, 50% overhead or less. Right. It either is or it isn't. That's what we found. If, if, if you're not, both of those aren't clear or both of those aren't.
Uh Yes, then you may, you're gonna have some issues with this box number three, team and systems, your team and your systems have to be right in order to bring in another doctor.
If you have a team that isn't in the right position when it comes to motivation or training, it's likely not gonna work well.
If you don't have systems that are clearly defined for your entire new patient journey in your existing patient journey, then bringing an associate into that world is also most likely not gonna work well.
And so let's talk about both of these things, team and systems and what needs to be true for this for you to check this box. So is your team motivated? Right. Are your team members hungry to help more people? Are they saying? You know what I man, we need to get more new patients in here. We need to get people to refer others. We need that, you know, we we want to help more people in our community. Are they driven by that? Are they excited by that? Right? Or are they just, you know, just happy when you have a slow day so that they can work? Not as hard, right? Are they incentivized to help more people through performance bonuses and recognition? Right? Are you, do you tie how hard they work at the things that are most important to your practice to their income? Right? Are they, are you, you know, for instance, do you give them bonuses when they schedule new patients when new patients show up when people start care because of what they've done to help them uh through those those initial new patient stages? Right? And do you have a success story culture? Right. So where you're consistently capturing patients success stories through reviews and video testimonials and stuff and you're celebrating them as a team to keep everyone focused on the mission, right? So that's part of that motivated team.
Are, could you say yes to all these questions, our team members are hungry, our team members are incentivized to grow and our team members are excited because we're consistently helping them to remember what we're doing and the impact we're making in the community.
The other part of this team box of checking the team box is, are you, do you have a well trained team? Right. So do you do weekly team trainings with role playing and feedback? Right? Do you do that as a regular cadence in the practice where you're consistently training with your team? Do you have a system to track and record new patient phone calls? You know every one of our clients who is running one of our systems as part of their dashboard, they have a call, tracking numbers and call recording so that every single one of their new patient phone calls that come into their practice is recorded.
And so they have the ability to hold their team accountable and to have transparency around new patient phone calls. Do you have a system like that? If not again, be a great thing to talk with us so we can, we can help you with that because you another part of this well trained team is, do you have a culture of accountability and transparency? Right? Where your team is, they're motivated to get better, they want to have accountability and transparency so that they can be better on the phone.
They want to make sure that when they're talking to somebody that's sick and suffering that they can help them to get hope and healing in your practice, that they can schedule that appointment and get them to show up.
Do you have weekly team mem team meetings that are actually effective? Right? Do you have, do you, do you do meetings together or are they a good opportunity to move the practice forward or is it just a time to complain? Right.
A well, so a well trained team is a huge part of making sure that this is gonna work for your practice. And then the other part of this is systems, right? Do you have clearly defined systems? Do you have clearly defined systems with checklists and milestones and scripts for the entire new patient journey for the existing patient journey? Because if you bring an associate into a practice that doesn't have a clearly defined system for how to handle a new patient journey, an existing patient journey, then they're not gonna feel well supported, they're gonna feel like they don't know what to do and that's gonna not give them the confidence that they need the clarity.
They need the certainty they need to be successful in your system. Are your systems documented? And do you consistently update those processes? Do you utilize your systems in your weekly trainings? Do you use your systems to hold your team accountable to the standards? Right.
So these are all part of having clearly defined systems. For instance, one of the systems that's absolutely crucial to your practice is your new patient phone call, right? If, if you your patient phone calls not right, you can't do anything else, right? You can't do a consultation or exam or x rays or report if the person doesn't schedule the appointment. And so we have a a really nice checklist for you.
If you go over to our website upper circle uh marketing dot com, practice growth tools or if you just click on uh resources, you can find it there too. Practice growth tools and you can download. This is a free download new patient phone call checklist.
Great, great resource for you for you to use at your front desk in building a really solid system there. So highly recommend that for you.
So another part of system development that's really important, especially when it comes to bringing an associate on is to develop systems that don't depend on your personality for success, right? So regardless of your personality, in many ways, your practice is a reflection of you.
So when you hire an associate, they're not gonna have the same personality as you, right? This is why it's crucial to develop milestones, checklists and scripts for every aspect of that new patient and existing patient journey, so that you can train your new associate on the systems rather than having to be just like you, right? Huge difference, you can show them, hey, this is the system, this is how we do this, not how I do this, but this is how we do this as a team.
This is what we do in order to make sure that all the milestones are reached so that they can better, you can define those milestones and help them to reach them during the system.
Uh so that they can commu communicate effectively in their, in their own way, their own personality within your system, right? So that's a key piece of this having a system rather than just having your personality drive it. So here's an example of this, a new patient consultation.
So it's a basic system, obviously, you can develop this a lot more. But if you take a picture of this, you can, you can look at this and see that this is uh something that you could start with.
Uh when you're building a system for a new patient consultation, one, you know, with any system, you always want to have a goal in mind. Like what's the goal of this, of this part of our new patient journey? Right.
And so for a new patient consultation, what's the goal? The goal is to agree to an exam, right? You want, you want them to move to the next stage in the process and be excited about it, right? So that's really the goal of a new patient consultation.
You have a focus of that of that particular system, which is to listen more than you speak, right? Ask questions and listen. That should be the focus of a new patient consultation.
And then you wanna have a, you know, some avoid uh what what you wanna avoid during that system.
And for for the new patient consultation, you wanna avoid minimizing words like OK, when they say, yeah, you know, I've been having migraines for the past 10 years and you say, OK. Right. You don't want that, that's no good, right? So you wanna, you wanna make sure that you avoid minimizing words and you want to have efficiency within a new patient consultation approximately seven minutes is an ideal new patient consultation, but no more than 10.
When you go beyond 10 minutes, you're you've lost control of the, the interaction with the patient and the effectiveness of that new patient consultation goes down dramatically. And so having some milestones in place when it comes to a system like this, for instance, greeting.
How does, how do you, how do you greet the patient? What do you do when you go into the room that they're there in for that consultation? What is the first question? That's a milestone, probing for head and neck injuries, right? That should be a milestone of every new patient consultation. You should be talking to them about head and neck injuries from their past beginning to connect head and neck injuries to current health problems through questions and then transition to the exam.
So that's an example of milestones within a system, right? So do you have these types of things? Do you have this laid out? Is this clearly defined within your practice? So that when you bring an associate on, you can show them this and, and walk them through this and train them on it and give them feedback on it so that they can be successful within your system. So box number three is team and systems.
Do you have a motivated and well trained team? And do you have clearly defined systems for the entire new patient and existing patient journey? All right. So that's the first three boxes. Now, let's move on to box number four. But first, here it is.
Again, if you want our help docs, we would love to help you. We're all about helping you grow your practice wherever you are in your practice journey. If you're looking to bring on an associate, we'd love to chat with you and help you through that process.
If you're looking, if you have some issues with building your systems and your team, we would love to help you with that. If you're looking to grow the practice in any way, shape or form, that's what we do every single day.
So box number four expectations, we're gonna talk about how to set clear expectations for not just your, your associate but also for your whole team making sure that, that everybody understands what their expectations are for results and for success within your practice.
So we're gonna talk about job scorecards. We're gonna talk about having a role description for your associate, talk about a position, agreement with Kras and Kpis and talk about an offer letter. This is all part of Box number four expectations.
So first of all job scorecards, again, we have a really great tool that you can get over at our website upper cervical marketing dot com. Practice growth tools or just click on uh resources. You can find our practice growth tools there as well. Job score card template, right? Easy download it, start using in your practice, use it with your cas and then you can adapt this for your associate, right? It's a really great tool.
A job scorecard basically is a way for everyone, both you and the team member to know clearly what success look like looks like in that role. And we recommend, you know, using that job scorecard every month.
So every month you review the scorecard, you go through the measurables, you check off the me and you, you know you write down the metrics, you go over that with the team member, give them feedback on how they did, how they can improve next month.
That will help you to keep really focused on what success look like in that particular position. And that will help drive this success in the entire practice.
And it's really gonna set you up if you start using this with your cas for when you bring on an associate, you can already have this type of a culture that's focused on transparency and accountability by using this job scorecard. Secondly, role description, right? I say role description, not job description, role description means that for this role within your practice, like we've been talking about with your core values, your vision, your mission, your purpose, right? Your specific practice. What is this role look like for your practice? Right.
So starting to create this role description, right? You just wanna start writing down what is an associate going to do within your practice, right? Just start writing down what results you're looking for them to accomplish. How are those results going to be measured? How are they going to be supported? What can they expect from you as the the clinic director? What can you expect from them? All? This should go into your role description for this position. Just start writing this stuff down.
Then you're gonna use this when you search for an associate on job boards and other advertising means you're gonna use this role description, you'll be copying and pasting this a lot of different places as you go through and look for an associate.
Another big part of setting clear expectations and checking this box is making sure that you have a position agreement, right? So we talked about job scorecards, position agreement is what the associates and you can use this with cas as well is agreeing to do within your practice, right? So this is part of your onboarding process. When you bring an associate into the practice, you want them to sign an agreement of what they are doing, what if they're going to do in this role, right? And so this the position agreement will always include Kras and Kpis.
These are key results areas and key performance indicators, right? So key results areas are, what are the results that you're looking for that associate or, or s team member to accomplish like on a daily basis? What are you looking for them to do, right? What, what is the, what is results look like? What does winning look like for them? And then how will that be measured? Right. So every Kr A should have at least one KPI A measurement that says this metric will tell us if you're hitting that result.
So again, we got a resource for this, right? We got tons of resources to help you. And so if you go over to the website, you can get our hiring resource kit. It includes a position agreement uh template in there.
You can use it with your existing team members and you can definitely use it with associates as you bring them on and you hire them, you can have this clearly defined what the, what the position look like looks like and uh what results and measurements you're gonna be using.
The last part of setting clear expectations is having an offer letter, right? So an offer letter goes with the position agreement. So, you know, just, just so clear on the the stages of this, right? So role description would be used as you're gathering information for this for your uh you know, this position for your advertising, for everything you're doing on the front end, looking for an associate.
You're gonna take some of that information from the role description and create a position agreement with clearly designed uh Kraskpis for that position. And then you're going to then also take some of that information from the role description and put it into an offer letter, right? An offer letter is basically you offering them the position, having a clear picture of what is, you know, what they're going to be paid, what their bonus structure is, what their benefits are, what their PTO policy is, all that kind of stuff, paid time off policy, vacation policy, that type of stuff, right? So thinking through that as you're writing down your role description, how much are you gonna pay an associate? How are you going to pay them? Right? Is it gonna be a base plus plus, uh you know, some kind of a AAA commission type of a role or is it gonna be, you know, all base or you know, is it gonna be all commission? You know, there's, there's a variety of different ways you can do it that uh again, it depends on your practice, depends on where you are financially, it depends on a lot of different things.
And if you want to have a conversation specifically about that, reach out to us and we can talk through your specific situation. So once you have all this clearly defined though, you'll put this in an offer letter when you offer them this position.
So it's good to think this all through now. So box number four was expectations, job score cards. You want job score cards for all existing team members. If you're not already using job score cards, get the template, start using them with your existing team members.
And then when you bring on that associate, you can use them as a feedback tool every month, roll description for the associate position agreement offer letter. You can get all those with our free resources over at the website up cervical marketing dot com.
And uh you can see that again, marketing dot com to help you. And as always again, free practice strategy session, schedule it with us.
We'd love to talk with you more about your specific practice situation where you are right now and how best to help you go to the next stage box, number five, new patients, right? New patients are key.
You've got to have enough new patients for not just you but for your associate as well when you're bringing on an associate. So making sure that you have digital internal external marketing systems to attract enough new patients to fill both of your schedules, right? So that's what this box is all about. So, you know, for 10 years, we have been known as upper cervical marketing. We've helped tons and tons of doctors, um bring hundreds of thousands of new patients into practices is what we've done, right. So we're all about this.
We understand what it's what it's about to brand yourself as unique upper cervical specialists that you are.
We're the only agency that that does this specifically that focuses on you upper cervical specialist and So we understand how crucial it is, how important it is to brand you both online and offline as the unique upper cervical specialist that you are, that's congruent with how you practice who you are as a doctor and all of that.
And so that's a crucial piece of this is if your branding is not, right? And you bring an associate into this, then you're gonna have some issues with that, right? It's it, you want them to come into a, a well branded practice, well established practice online, well, uh you know, connected practice in the community so that they can step into that and be successful in your, in your world.
And so, you know, a big part of this is having effective digital marketing, right? So, you know, with our, with all of our clients, we we encourage them to, to record videos and I, you know, I encourage you to record videos, whether you're a client of ours or not recording short videos, frequent last question videos, condition specific videos, your story type videos, upper circle specific videos, record video, testimonials.
We talked about that before. Success stories focus on the before and after state. You know, if you get two a month, you get 24 a year, that's, that's awesome. And you want to put them everywhere, right? I mean, we obviously with our doctors, with our clients, we help them with this tremendously Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, youtube, everything, right? So you want you want your your practice to grow online and it will also help it to grow within the practice as well.
Another big part of this is the internal system, right? So not just the digital system, but also the offline system within your own practice, right? Do you have a clear process for educating patients through the entire process that leads to referrals? Right.
So that new patient phone call like we talked about so, so important, we help doctors with that all the time.
This is one of the areas where we see the most problems with upper cervical practices is this with, is with their new patient phone call and a lot of times they, you just don't have any idea because you've never heard them right? You just hope for the best.
You may have given them some training, maybe train them on the regular. But unless you're actually hearing those new patient phone calls, which you get with, you know, with our system and our dashboard, you don't know, you really don't know how it's going, right.
How many of those calls are they missing? I mean, how many of those calls are they losing? Right. They're getting on the phone with people who are excited to come into the practice and they're talking them out of it or they don't answer their questions, right? Or they just don't lead the, the, the call in the right way and the person never goes to the next step.
So making sure that that is solid is so, so important and then going into a system with the consultation, exam, imaging and report where a patient goes through that process and really has a clear picture of what's going on with them, how you know their past history is leading to their current health issues.
And they've got that clear in their mind and then you give them a plan, you give them a care plan, you give them a, a clear plan of what it's gonna take to get them uh to a place of, of, of healing, a place of, of health, of place of stability that that brings them to that next stage.
And then you gotta make sure you're doing progress exams, right? So many doctors we talked to don't do progress exams or don't charge for them.
And so making sure that you're doing progress exams, helping them to understand, remind them where they were, when they started, where they are now, how much progress they're making so that they can consistently understand that, get that type of uh understanding.
And also it's a great opportunity to capture success stories and also to capture referrals, right? So this whole process when done well will generate referrals at every stage.
And then lastly, that patient education system that overarching system that makes it all work together, that you're consistently communicating your unique upper cervical approach, you're talking them through that whole care plan and you're working on them, understanding it in a deeper and deeper way so that they consistently refer others to you.
Another huge one for external marketing within your community is to build a health practitioner referral network. We have AAA podcast. If you don't know that we, we have our UCM podcast, our several marketing podcast. Uh We've done nearly 200 episodes of it. Highly recommend you listen to it.
It's fantastic and we get, you know, it's free, you can listen to it all you want. And in episode 40 of our podcast, we talk in detail about how to build a health practitioner referral network. Encourage you to go and listen to that podcast.
It's a great one and you know, to build a health practitioner referral network, what we recommend is doing a provider night or a study group within your practice.
And, you know, bringing in 10 to 15 health practitioners into your community or from your community into your practice on a monthly basis or quarterly basis.
And, you know, really getting them into, uh you know, building relationships with them so that you can begin to refer patients to them. They can refer patients to you and really get a good feel for that.
And so, you know, when you look at this building the health practitioner referral network, I mean, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta get out there and talk to people, right? You gotta meet these commu, these practitioners and so scheduling appointments with them and then getting into their offices, talking with them at lunch or in their office or whatever.
And just basically saying something like this, we're doing a study group or provider night at my practice on, you know, Tuesday, November, whatever, November 6th and, and at seven o'clock and we'd love to have you there.
It's a way for us to build relationships, but it's, it's, it's not what networking, networking is like stepping into a pool, piranhas. Everybody wants to eat each other, nobody wants to give. Right? So, and everybody just wants to take, but this is gonna be designed for collaboration.
It's going to be designed on relationship building, that's longer term. It's gonna be built upon creativity. And, you know, you just say, you know, that's what we're gonna be doing starting this month in my office. Would you like to be involved with it? Right.
Would you be interested in coming? There's gonna be certain people, they're gonna resonate with that, they're gonna wanna come to this type of thing.
It's highly, highly effective if you can get them into this into this on a regular basis and there's gonna be some others that just don't have the time or energy for it.
And so getting out there meeting people starting to connect with as many as you can, you know, you want to invite 10 the first month into your practice for this, the first one that you have and then the next month go out and invite 10 more, right? You wanna create enough diversity, enough pool of people who are coming in and out and uh try to refer other practitioners uh that attend right away too.
You wanna make sure that, you know, you're keeping them in mind, you refer to them as you can and just making sure that, you know, you're, you're thinking about them and their practice and what they're doing as well.
If you want a deeper dive on this, wrote a blog post about this, the steps involved, you can go to that, that website right there. That's uh that blog post has a more deeper dive on that.
And of course, episode 40 of the podcast also will dive into how to build a health practitioner referral network. So again, doc just wanted to thank you so much for spending this time with us today.
This was a, uh I, I hope it brought you a lot of value. If you check these five boxes, I can almost guarantee you're gonna have a great and successful associate experience.
And so if you need help with any of this and help with any of these boxes, schedule a pre uh free practice strategy session over upper circle marketing dot com, we can talk more about our growth systems or growth sessions or, you know, associate cas whatever the situation is, we wanna help you grow and So thank you again for spending this time with us.
We uh we, we, we love you, we love this, we love upper cervical and as we always say, go team upper cervical.
