This month we spoke to someone truly special, as not only is she a valued Inner Circle member but she’s also one of our Done For You clients and in one of our Platinum Mastermind Classes. Yes, it’s none other than Charlotte McCrossin.
Charlotte runs her practice with her husband Paul, and both have been in the Inner Circle since 2018; they were part of the first cohort of people to go through the very first New Patient Avalanche course. And Charlotte cites their ever-growing team as the reason why they originally signed up. “At the time we had quite a few associates and we were worried about how we were going to get enough new patients to feed them enough appointments, but truthfully in a really short amount of time, we went from worrying about that to never ever worrying about new patients. I mean it’s just not something that’s a thing with us anymore.”
She brings up something Ryan once told her as a piece of advice for someone just starting out on their journey in the Inner Circle. “I remember Ryan saying that when you can add new patients into your business at will then that will give you a certain amount of power and confidence. And we’re definitely in that space. We have the confidence. Since then along this journey we’ve sold the original practice in London where we had all the associates and opened a brand new one here in Hitchin, North Hertfordshire.”
Charlotte and Paul undertook to open their new practice in quite difficult circumstances, opening their doors in December 2020 or as Charlotte describes it “the start of lockdown three”. “I think that’s a big testament to the confidence that we have because I don’t think there’s a riskier move than opening during a pandemic but with the confidence that Ryan’s given us and knowing that we can add the patients when we need it has really worked out.”
Opening the practice also saw Charlotte and Paul become one of our Done For You clients, our marketing service where our expert team do the marketing for you from seasonal campaigns to Eventbrite event pages and spinal screening ads on Facebook. “We started with Done For you at that time because we were like ‘Ok, we need not just a few patients here but a whole practice’s worth of patients really quick’. And so, the strategy that we used was doing spinal screening and posture days. This has helped the practice go from a standing start to around 130 patients last week and it’s been purely built on posture days and Facebook lead-gens, and nothing else.”
Charlotte also explains that before using DFY that she would do the clinic’s Facebook ads. “When we first did the New Patient Avalanche course, I had an idea of how to run the Facebook ads myself, but there were times when you’d have a really good one and then others when it wouldn’t be as good. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough with Facebook to know why, so it was a bit hit and miss. Starting in Hitchin we knew that we needed DFY from the outlay. At first, we were a bit worried because of the cost and Paul is more sensible than I am with the purse strings, but truthfully within a month, it was like, well, this just pays for itself. It’s one less thing to think about, and when you’re setting up a new practice there’s a lot to think about.”
In terms of what that means to the business’s bottom line, Charlotte is quick to show where they’ve been able to get to in such a short space of time. “The strategy is really working especially as we’ve gone from starting out to a £250,000 in turnover business in a year. We’ve got some aggressive plans to really grow and expand on that. Like we decided we wanted to join Platinum because we want to take this business to the next level.”
One of the things that our Platinum Mastermind Class members talk about frequently when they join is the sense of peer accountability, where setting yourself targets sitting around other business owners helps you to achieve your goals and Charlotte and Paul McCrossin are no different. “At our first Platinum Mastermind in October Paul was seeing around 65 to 70 patients a week and we need him to get to 90 before we come back for the next mastermind in February, and our associate was on about 30 a week and we wanted her to be at 50. I’ve looked at the numbers again recently and Paul is at 85 in the book this week and our associate has got 50, so we’re kind of almost there and it’s not even February yet. So, you know this stuff works. There’s no doubt about it. I think with platinum it really is about having that accountability because no one wants to come into that room with everyone else and say they haven’t been able to do it. When you sit back at that table there’s nowhere to hide.”
Going back to how they both started working together Charlotte describes how Paul is the chiropractor and she “looks after everything else”. “Paul opened the first practice in 2000, when it was still part of a group of practices and eventually bought it from them. And I was working in the city in banking in sales on a trading floor, and then we had our first child. Afterwards, I went back to that career and realised it just wasn’t compatible with being a mother sitting on a trading floor and coming into work at 7 am, it’s just not sensible. So, I left, took redundancy, and joined Paul in 2016.”
The reason Paul and Charlotte moved to Hitchin after selling their London practice is incredibly unique. “The reason is that I also run a jewellery business,’ Charlotte explains. “Which is also the oldest family-run jewellers in the UK, we’re on the eighth generation of the family to run that. Hitchin is where I was born and bred, and the jewellers are based here. We thought it would be nice to have the practice here too, so we could run both businesses in the same place. We actually found a site for the practice and agreed on the lease in March 2020, but surprise surprise everything kicked off thanks to Corona, and I said to the agent that I wasn’t going to sign the lease because we were going into lockdown and managed to negotiate 18 months rent-free which was very handy. We then took out a commercial business interruption loan to pay for the fit-out of the practice, so we were able to take advantage and really get things started right with the new practice.”
On some of the biggest wins that they’ve both seen since being in the Inner Circle Charlotte highlights price rises as a big one. “We raised our prices in London and nobody complained, which gave us the confidence to take the same prices over to Hitchin and that was fine again. I also really love marketing, that’s really my thing. I absolutely love screenings so for me the posture days are just brilliant. We try to make them really high energy and lift the mood up with some dance music.”
Another strategy they’ve been trying recently is reviews. “Social proof is definitely important and we’re having a campaign at the moment where we get everybody to write reviews to win a hamper. I was just reading the reviews out in the team meeting earlier and just seeing people getting great results is amazing because we’re getting a lot of referrals and people finding us on Google because of the good reviews so I love seeing it come back around full circle.”
