The Stop Doing List

Frequently to grow your upper cervical practice you may be focused on what you need to do. But it may be more effective to think about what you need to stop doing. Wherever you are in your upper cervical practice whether you are a solo practitioner with no staff or a clinic director with five associates and five staff or anywhere in between the key to continuing to grow is a stop doing list.

A stop doing list is the things that you need to stop doing in order for your practice to grow. There are only so many things that you can do each day. In order for your practice to go to a different level the value of the things that you do each day need to be higher than they are now.

The practice of delegating will elevate you and the person that you delegate tasks to a different level. This will expand your practice and your ability to serve more sick and suffering people.

Let’s talk about how to do this. How do you determine what is most important for you to stop doing in order for your practice to grow?

Ask Yourself the Three Key Questions

When deciding what to delegate start by asking yourself these 3 questions:

• What are my top five value-producing activities in my practice?
• How do I bring the most value to my practice?
• What can I do that no one else can do?

Some answers might include:

1. Strategy
2. Vision Casting
3. Team Member Development
4. Team Training
5. Adjusting Patients (if solo practitioner)

Note that a value-producing activity is something that you do that produces the most value for the practice. Remember you are running a business and if you are spending the majority of your time on activities that do not increase the revenue and profit of your business it will not be a success.

Create Your Stop Doing List

Once you figure out your top 5 value-producing activities next you want to establish a stop doing list.

A stop doing list is a list of things that you want to either immediately or with time stop doing.

Here are some possible activities you may want to include on your stop doing list:

• adjusting patients
• doing consultations
• doing exams
• taking x-rays
• doing a report of findings
• gathering video testimonials and promoting them
• doing re-exams
• talking to patients about finances
• leading staff meetings
• search engine optimizing your website
• doing bookkeeping
• creating Facebook ads for chiropractic marketing
• managing the schedule
• doing a patient orientation class
• doing screenings
• updating your website with new content and testimonials
• meeting with other health professionals
• submitting your website to online directories
• casting vision and communicating it to your team
• creating and modifying systems
• posting to social media
• creating email follow-up sequences
• creating and modifying a marketing plan
• filing
• creating and promoting videos
• budgeting
• addressing patient issues
• educating patients about their health
• preparing for talks
• doing reminder calls
• executing an online review strategy
• doing community talks
• training your team
• creating a monthly email newsletter
• writing checks
• executing a referral strategy
• creating landing pages
• payroll
• doing the referral paperwork when referring patients to other health professionals

And there are many other tasks that need to be completed by you or someone else every month in your practice.

Do, Delegate, or Outsource

Once you have your list the next step is to put the list in 3 categories:

1. Do
2. Delegate
3. Outsource

Focus on the areas that you bring the most value to as the ones that you should do. Focus on the ones that require additional training or expertise to outsource and delegate the rest to your existing team members or future team members that you will hire. A “delegate and elevate” philosophy can help take your practice to a whole different level.

Once you have broken down your list into the three categories next you want to put the delegate and outsource tasks in order of priority. What are the most important tasks for you to delegate first? Second? Third? And so on. Do the same thing with the outsource list and prioritize based on what’s most important to get off of your plate first.

When you delegate responsibility to others on your team it elevates them to a different level and also elevates you in your ability to take on the more important responsibilities for the practice and your personal life.

Remember delegation does not mean abdication of responsibility. It is still your responsibility to lead, manage, and hold your team members accountable to results.

If you would like a great resource to help you create your own stop doing list grab our free resource.