As we promised HERE’S PART 2… at our recent 007 Mastermind we held a Q&A session with Ryan and our four marvellous winners of our
Business Genius Award. The session was packed with golden nuggets for running a successful practice and
tips to get the best out of your team. The session was so long that we’re going to give you the best bits here in two parts… the first part was in last month’s newsletter (issue #42).
Ryan Rieder: I know sometimes when people join us, it’s not always about revenue growth per se. Sometimes we don’t create any growth for our Inner Circle members but what we do create is a business, which is a profit-making enterprise that works without you. But Felicity, your husband was an accountant? What does he do within the business?
Felicity Crone: He was yeah, we call him ‘the finance team’.
RR: So, tell us what you gained in the last year?
FC: So, in terms of monthly run rate it’s very close to double what it was when I started. So, yeah I can say it’s been a pretty good year.
RR: So, both Oliver and Felicity are also part of my Platinum group. So, Felicity, how would you say Platinum is different from this environment?
FC: Platinum is a lot more intense than this. It’s really good fun actually, you get a lot of time with Ryan, and he looks on a much more individual basis on what you might need. And you’ve got the space there to just say and pinpoint what your exact problems are in your business. It’s much more boring aha, but this is something that Ryan has really helped me with because all this boring stuff are things that I would, hand-on-heart, never ever do. Like I had done all the calls and everything and gone ‘oh yeah that seems like a really important thing to do’ and obviously didn’t do it. And Ryan goes ‘you need to do all this stuff before you come to Platinum events’.
RR: Oh yeah, tell them how much prep you have to do before you arrive for Platinum?
FC: Heaps and heaps of it.
RR: My advice to them is that they carve up an entire day to prep for Platinum before they even arrive, there’s that much emphasis put into gathering all the documents and figures needed to really learn from the classes.
Oliver Crawford: It’s more than a day haha!
RR: Haha! But here’s the thing, often this environment is about consumption, getting ideas and going through ideas. Platinum is about implementation; we go deep, we go into your numbers. Some people don’t like having that amount of accountability, but I can tell you right now, everyone should have that level of accountability in their business. We meet three times a year at Platinum and at those events, we go through all of your challenges. It’s not a level of comfortability but it does really help everyone who can step up to that level of leadership within their business.
So, guys, if you had to start again right now from scratch what’s the one thing you would use to help you that you’ve learnt from your journey?
FC: We only kind of started doing marketing when we joined the Inner Circle and I always thought that luckily where we are based, we won’t struggle for new patients, but that’s stupid to think like that aha. And I realise that now. Because now I’m like ‘we have no worries at all’ and if we need a tonne of new patients I know that’s easy to do and with marketing, you have so much more control. It’s like turning on a tap. So, I would be much more confident doing marketing from the get-go now if I had to start again.
OC: So, for me, I’m a big fan of the virtual consultation, that Felicity calls the ‘free phone call’ aha. But it’s such a simple thing and I make so much money from that you have no idea.
RR: The funny thing is Oliver, when you said “free virtual telephone consultation” you immediately lost half the room and then you said you make so much money from it and boom everyone wants to know what this thing is, so tell us.
OC: What is it really is this thing on our website, this floaty button thing, that says “click here for a free virtual telephone consultation that leads them to a form to fill out. They enter their name, contact details and what their problem is. You want to collect the data to be able to sell to them, but essentially it says that we’ll call them in under an hour to have a chat with a chiropractor and they can do that through Facetime, WhatsApp or the phone. And then you just have a chat with them, and they’ll tell you their back hurts and you’re just nodding along like ‘Uh-huh uh-huh, oh really?’ aha. You know, you’ll ask them about their lifestyle, other symptoms all those things while being empathetic. You always need to remember that it might take eight or ten minutes on the phone with them, but you can tell them at the end that they have enough symptoms it sounds like to warrant coming into the clinic for a full consultation where you’ll do a deep dive into their history and examination to find out exactly what’s going on in their spine. “It sounds like something isn’t right and it sounds like I can help you but we’d need to do an examination. Is that something you’d be interested in?” And they’ll say yes and maybe ask how much that would be and then at that point I’d hand them over to one of the receptionists and that’s it. Basically, it helps to build a bridge between the prospective customer and turns them into a customer. You want to make it as accessible as possible for someone to reach out and contact you. So what if you have to do a 10-minute phone call.
RR: To be honest I can see you all nodding thinking ‘oh great this is going to take up more of my time’, however just consider that those people who sign up for one of those free telephone consultations, and this is similar to investing in a newsletter kind of thing, that their lifetime value probably goes through the roof after having one of those calls.
OC: Definitely, I think it’s all to do with having more contact points and stages with potential customers.
RR: And how many new patients do you see from that?
OC: Oh around four to six new patients every week, and like I said they’re usually very good value customers to have in terms of what they’re willing to spend on treatment.
RR: And that’s the thing guys, cause I’m telling you that they’re people who won’t come in for the in-house health talks, they won’t download your free reports, they won’t sign-up for one of your seasonal campaigns but they’ll click on that link for a free telephone consultation and boom they’re signed up for care.
And Paul, I guess my question to you is what differences have you seen between operating gyms and helping Lou with the Chiropractic side of things?
Paul Green: That’s an interesting question and yeah from owning three gyms some of the differences I’ve seen are VAT and that is a big deal, 20%. I pay through my gyms but you guys as Chiropractors don’t pay that and we don’t pay through the clinic and that hurts every month aha every quarter! I guess there’s so much crossover, we’re all in the wellness industry so naturally, there’s crossover in what we both do in terms of how we approach things. But some of the other fundamental differences are that competition is a little less on the Chiropractic side at the moment than it is on the gym side and ticket price. You guys as Chiropractors are able to charge a lot more than we are in the gym industry perhaps because it’s a commodity. To clarify there are personal trainers out there who do charge more than Chiropractors per ticket prices but it’s a very small niche that they’re working in. But I think people are going down a road now of budget gyms that reduce people’s expectations of what they should be paying for a service. You know, if people think they can be paying £15 a month for a budget gym then why should I be paying £150 for a month’s membership so there’s a different expectation.
RR: Sometimes you really learn more from outside the industry than inside the industry, and what we’ve learnt from the gym industry is that it’s polarised. So you have a low-ticket gym group at £15 and then you have the top end of the market like David Lloyd around £80 to £100 per month, but if you’re in the middle you’re screwed. If you’re that £40 band you’re in a bit of trouble, obviously that depends on the area. But something I learnt from a gym chain franchising meeting was that at the low-end you don’t have the swimming pool or the sauna and hot tub and if you’re high ticket you do have those amenities. And the issue is if you’re charging £37 or £40 per month you can’t have those things so you can’t appeal to both markets. This is something that in the Chiropractic industry we’re able to control the narrative here a little bit more but over in America, they’re trying to polarise it a little bit.
So, Lou tell me what’s it like being a business owner, taking your practice from scratch to those numbers Paul was telling us earlier. What have you learnt?
Lou Edwards: I’ve learnt that I’m pretty resilient and in terms of learning I took around 4 or 5 months off during covid time and really spent that time planning for things within the business and learning from everything you guys provide with the Inner Circle. So, I created all the cultural aspects, the meetings, the scripts you need on a day-to-day basis within the clinic.
RR: What about you Gareth, what are your reflections on the last two years?
Gareth Ward: I think one of the things I’ve learnt, besides the resilience thing Lou spoke about which goes the same for me, is that building a team is super important. We’ve had some issues on that front, especially recently, probably because I’m quite trusting and always give people the benefit of the doubt. But always when it comes to things involving patients that’s a big bugbear for me because if people are paying for our services then they should feel like they’ve been to the Ritz Carlton you know somewhere that just blows their socks off and that reflects in our reviews and results. But also learning to delegate has been a big thing for me as well, I thought that being a business owner meant I had to do everything myself and now it’s knowing how to delegate the rights tasks out amongst the team. We let go someone recently and I’m not panicking about it, we’re training up one of the CAs to fill in some of those responsibilities until we find someone new and using Ryan’s team to help train them on the calls, but you know one thing I do want to change is that we have a waiting list for patients and I don’t want that. I want to be able to see everyone who wants care, so expanding space and team is definitely something we’re looking at in the future.
