GENIUS OF THE WEEK: Donald Francis

Could you tell me a bit about yourself? 

I’m Donald Francis, I’m a second career chiropractic. I used to be a soldier for 15 years. I went to Palmer College of Chiropractic, where Chiropractic started. I graduated at the age of 36 and moved to the Scottish border, where my wife is from, and I’ve been in practice ever since. It’s been 13 and a half years, and I own two practices.

From a technique perspective, I grew in SOT (Sacro Occipital Technique). I practice on the philosophical side, what some people call vitalism, so I practiced on that, not the symptom-oriented chiropractic. 

Why did you choose Ryan as a mentor? What’s the story there?

I’ve known Ryan for about 11 or 12 years now and have been watching him for quite some time now. I was circling the wagons for quite some time. We weren’t doing badly as a business; our best year was short of 7000 a year turnover. I had some very good friends who were part of the Inner Circle who persuaded me to come over. 

We already had a good product, but the teachings have really enhanced our business. I initially thought to join Ryan for at least a year, but I’m realizing not to limit myself to that, as the help has really systemized my business and put things in better order. 

I’ve had a new practice manager, Lauri, join us about 9 months ago, and I wanted to include her on the process. So, we go through the process together now and Lauri can do the day-to-day management, while I have been allowed to step away from daily management tasks and I can focus more on the leadership. 

What has been your big AH HA Learning Moment?

By being a part of Ryan’s world, several things have changed. He made us put up our prices. In this inflation age that was vital. It gave us the courage to do that. 

The second big thing was to know your numbers. So, we record everything now, just to focus on that now, it’s called Pearson’s law. 

Another recent learning is to begin with the end in mind. 

So rather than trying to see, we are selling bigger blocks. We don’t have to discuss it. We’re not fully pre booked,  but at 80% to 90% pre-payed or pre booked, so we are up for our biggest collections this year now. 

How would you say your business has changed since you met Ryan?

The first is, we use the Done For You program. The new thing is that we have a new source of patients across both practices, so we focus on business. Lauri and I care about that, and many chiros don’t care about the business. We could do better; we must understand how to be profitable. That has been the biggest change. 

What has been your biggest win?

Making practice a lot more fun by systemizing it, so that every patient encounter is a patient encounter, not a discussion of plans or money, so we have systemised it.

So what’s your next now for you and your practice?

We haven’t done a quarterly yet, so we are going to instigate and plan that. I think that will be great. We aren’t using CRM at the moment, so we need to do that.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining Ryan?

I think Ryan and the group are good value for money. There are two aspects, there is Ryan and there is the group, so you get value out of both. Anyone who is thinking of doing it, needs to come in and give the best shot because you can’t turn around completely in a year. We still haven’t done everything we learnt from Ryan yet. I would say don’t do everything immediately, the information comes so fast, so relax and take the time to implement it.

What else do you get from the teachings etc.?

I’m really happy to say no to someone who doesn’t know what we sell. I’m happy for them to say no and move onto someone else. Instead of trying to turn everyone to convert, instead of trying to convince them, so since then I have sold bigger care plans.

Another thing is that Ryan has probably given us as a blueprint of how to scale to where we want to be. So, I think by next year we should be having a record year by how we are going. If we don’t do a million pounds next year, it’ll be quite close to it.