You have a vital healing message to share with the people in your community and you’ve decided to take responsibility for creating greater practice success by more effectively spreading that message.

Now, what action steps can you take to begin increasing your influence and impact and have your office start bursting at the seams with new and ongoing patients?

Today I’m providing an overview of some of your options and then I’ll delve deeply into each one in the coming months. We’ll also explore a number of other possibilities you may never have considered. Some of the ideas will be presented through video posts for greater clarity and ease of application.

I’m excited to shed light on these powerful strategies that will help bridge the current gap between your incredible services and your public who’s suffering with pain and illness, living far short of their potential, primarily because they aren’t hearing your voice or understanding the message.

You may decide that some of the methods aren’t for you. That’s fine. There will be so many choices that you won’t need to apply all of them anyway to markedly increase your effectiveness. However, I strongly encourage you to be open to consider the value of each.

If some actions seem to induce fear, such as public speaking or media engagement, I recommend that you acknowledge your emotional reaction, then be willing to take the risk to learn and develop some of the necessary skills. Do this even if the approaches seem to run contrary to your primary nature. I promise that you’ll gain confidence, move more swiftly toward your goals, and be glad that you stepped out.

Please don’t let your fear of the discomfort of new experiences or a concern about what other people will think stop you from your personal and professional growth. The learning and implementation will empower you and help generate the necessary energy to create the practice of your dreams! Choose your action steps by what could be most effective rather than what keeps you safe but playing smaller than you need to.

At Synaptic Success we won’t push you too hard, but we will be in your corner encouraging you to “Go for it!” while providing the tools and insights necessary for you to succeed.

There are two primary directions of focus after you’ve clarified your passionate message, target market and service emphasis, and determined your UCA (Unique Competitive Advantage). Explore other posts on the site for details on these elements.

1. In-Office Actions
2. Community Outreach Strategies

In-Office Actions and Considerations:

• Make sure that you love what you’re doing everyday!
• Find, hire, and train the right staff for the right positions
  
• Express the promoter/persuader extrovert within you (or adapt to this style if necessary)
• Bring your passionate, high-energy, focused self to each patient encounter
• Be a strong and professional leader, leading and connecting from your caring heart
• Uncover your prospect’s perceived needs, then determine how to enhance their quality of life
• Bring competence and confidence
• Give hope – What’s the biggest promise you can give with certainty?
  
• Create WOW customer experiences
• Always have a no-cost something (educational opportunity) to invite people to at your office to learn more about what you do and how you might help them – Include some demonstrations and conclude with a no-cost or low-cost follow-up action for further engagement
• Have ongoing referral opportunities
• Conduct regular classes/orientations for all new and prospective patients and their family, friends, and co-workers – It’s best to have a foundational basic program and then advanced presentations for those who want to know more – Tell them it’s the most important visit they’ll ever have with you (because it is) and expect them to come
  
• Bring in guest speakers in related fields for additional health programs
  
• Conduct a 3-4 time per year PSW (Pain Solution Week) as a special discounted occasion for your patients to invite others to meet you and get a complete evaluation
• Improve/master your skills in influence and persuasion
• Interview patients who experience overt positive changes under your care – With their permission write, display, and publish their testimonials
• Call your patients at specific intervals to express your appreciation for the opportunity to serve them and to gather feedback on their experiences – Rejoice in the positives and make upgrades in your systems with their constructive criticisms

These are just a sample of the many attitudes, behaviors, and action strategies you can adopt and apply in your office to create a powerfully rewarding and lucrative practice. Pick a couple of them to prioritize first and begin your new practice life today.

We will be amplifying these areas with details and nuances in upcoming posts.

Join me next time in Part 2 for a discussion of essential community outreach actions that will expand your success and ability to thrive.

Talk soon.

Video Blog:

Transcript of Video Blog:

Today, we’re going to talk about how to differentiate yourself from every other natural health practitioner in your community.

The bane of all business owners is a public who sees their product or service as generic. This phenomenon has certainly not eluded the natural health care field, as practitioners struggle to set themselves apart from the ocean of alternatives available to each patient.

Think about some of the phrases that you hear out there.

• “You ought to see a chiropractor.”
• “Have you tried acupuncture?”
• “I think I need a massage therapist.”

Where in these statements do you hear anything about the unique offerings that one practitioner offers over another? The task of differentiating you and your practice from everyone else in the market is fundamental to your success.

The first step in the differentiation process is the development of what I call your Unique Competitive Advantage, or UCA. Before I tell you what that is, I want to focus for a moment on the word “unique,” which is often misused. Unique doesn’t mean extraordinary, or amazing, or exceptional. It means “one of a kind.” So when we talk about a Unique Competitive Advantage, we’re talking about something that nobody else offers.

The Unique Competitive Advantage is the distinguishing benefit you hold out in all your marketing, advertising and sales efforts. It is the philosophical foundation of your practice, and its essence should pervade everything you do.

To help you determine your Unique Competitive Advantage, I’m going to ask you one thing. Master this question and you take a quantum leap in your ability to create success as you’ve never imagined it. This is the single most important question because the right answer to it, as I’ll demonstrate, is the key to the marketing vault. It doesn’t just marginally increase things, it multiples them far beyond the ability of most people to even conceive. It’s that important.

Here’s the question:

• “Why should I, your prospect, choose to do business with you versus any other option available to me?”

And, when you have a great answer to that question, you can absolutely dominate your market.

Your Unique Competitive Advantage is a forceful statement that succinctly describes why a person should favor you with their patronage. Your UCA is what you say to your past, present, and future prospects and patients that is compelling, that is magnetic, that cannot be ignored, that must be responded to, that draws them to you like a moth to a hundred-watt bulb.

Once you develop your UCA, you must then incorporate it into every aspect of your marketing so that every point of contact contains the opportunity for your public to associate that unique offering with you or your practice.

I’m going to give you an example to consider, a model of one of the best UCA’s invented in maybe the last thirty years. What you want to do with this model is you want to take it home and lay it down next to your own Unique Competitive Advantage and see how they compare, and if they don’t compare very well, then it’s a good time reconsider your marketing message.

“Many people’s sense of worth, the value they place on the image of the self, is directly related to the number of situations in which they are in control, which means that many people have a problem with their self-image, because they are in control of so little.” – Edward Hall

A doctor’s presence in his or her office is an aspect of practice that I think is too infrequently discussed. There are many elements we could consider, but here I’d like to focus on the seemingly mutually exclusive attitudes of being professional and personal. This is important because as a doctor you can easily miss the balance that best supports patient healing as well as your successful and shorter journey to the practice of your dreams.

I’ve been off target to one side or the other at various times in my 27 year career, but I believe I’ve been more consistently piercing the bull’s-eye in recent years.

Allow me to explore this concept a bit and then I’d like to hear your comments. Click on the Discussion Forum link in the Resources box to start or engage in the conversation, then look forward to our upcoming Business of Life Expert Interview with Bill Esteb as he examines some of these issues.

As doctors of chiropractic we are health care professionals. What does that mean? It means that we have great knowledge and skill and earn a livelihood in our particular healthcare field of endeavor. It also means that we are expected to know more than most people in our area of expertise and be able to teach others since the word doctor comes from the Latin meaning teacher. And yet, we are still people. We equally share a common humanity with those we seek to help. However it’s not uncommon for doctors to forget this element.

On the one hand we could attempt to maneuver people and control outcomes like the great Oz from behind the curtain (eventually revealed to simply be a man) or we could befriend and hang out like buddies with all of our patients. Or possibly there’s a more balanced way of being amongst people that’s seriously professional but deeply caring and personal, more like Mother Theresa? This middle place is also appropriately lighter and more fun, at least on occasion. Laughter does contribute to healing.

There is somewhat of an expectation that a doctor should be able to have a controlling influence over their patient’s condition and restore them back to health regardless of the degree to which they’ve drifted. Control means to have the authority or ability to regulate, direct, or dominate.

But how much control is appropriate or does a doctor truly have over another’s state of well-being? What behavioral posture does a doctor tend to take toward their patient when control becomes too much of the focus? How high is the pedestal that that orientation fosters and what does this doctor do to minimize the risk of falling down to the patient’s level?

Video Blog:

Transcript of Video Blog:
Today we’re going to answer a very basic but important question: Just what in the world is “marketing” anyway?  When you think of marketing, what comes to mind? An advertisement? A direct-mail letter? Yellow-page listings?

If I mentioned “public relations,” you would probably agree that that was marketing, too, right? How about your printed materials, or the sign in front of your office? But if these are all different aspects of marketing, if marketing encompasses such a wide variety of disciplines, then how can we define what it is?

If you type the phrase “definition of marketing” into Google, you’ll get some interesting results. Here’s one:

“Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.”

Wow. That’s a mouthful!

The American Marketing Association says that “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Well, that’s a little better. . .

Here’s one that’s simpler still: The Chartered Institute of Marketing, defines marketing as “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”

There’s nothing wrong with any of these definitions, except that they’re a little bit hard to carry around in your head for easy reference as you’re planning your activities. So here’s my definition of marketing,  which is as practical and fundamental as I can make it:

“One of the biggest factors in success is the courage to undertake something.”– James A. Worsham

What are you undertaking right now? Are you stretching beyond your comfort zone to make a greater impact, experience a deeper sense of significance, and reap a more abundant financial reward through reaching more people with your healing message of hope? Or are you merely thinking about taking some forward steps while staying safe playing small in the familiar, even if you’re not satisfied?

Living courageously is really about finding and feeding the “Braveheart” within you so that you are increasingly able to face and even welcome challenges with confidence and determination. (I wholeheartedly encourage you to listen and apply the truths shared by Margie Warrell in our first Business of Life Expert Interview. She wrote the important book Find Your Courage and it is imperative that you find yours to truly succeed).

I haven’t always courageously embraced my mission with the zeal that I do today. It has come in installments in my life, frequently propelled forward through tragedy and other difficult circumstances that I’ve chosen to rise and grow through …and quite honestly I still have my moments. But I never stop reaching.

Will you rise and keep climbing toward your mountain peak? Dr. Paul Stoltz in his excellent book The Adversity Quotient provides a mountain climbing analogy in discussing the pursuit of your dreams. He differentiates between three types of people whose identity is revealed when the going gets difficult, as it inevitably will. He challenges you not to be a quitter, or even a camper who settles for modest progress and a mediocre level of achievement and satisfaction, but rather to remain a climber seeking to realize and fully express the potential within you for as long as you live.

Sharing the health- and life-changing gift of chiropractic with a world in desperate need of help is a mountainous undertaking worth giving yourself to. It’s a contribution with such powerful potential.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t pretend to know the first thing about what doctors do. But I have spent my life studying marketing and to be frank, that’s something not many doctors know much about.

So we’re going to have some fun exploring the wonderful world of marketing and in the process, we’re going to show you how to create amazing systems that:

• Make your job easier

• Save you money

• Increase your profits

• Help more people benefit from your healing wisdom

To those who don’t make it their business to master it, there’s nothing more confusing than marketing. In my 20+ years of consulting, I’ve only met a handful of business owners who could even properly define what it is. That’s why we’re going to start with a definition.

What is Marketing?

Many people use the term marketing interchangeably with advertising, sales, public relations (PR), or promotion. Others think it is the umbrella that encompasses all these concepts. If someone tells you they are a marketing rep, they could be a salesperson, a copywriter, an order taker, a manager, a PR person, or any of a dozen other jobs.

So what is marketing really?

Communication is a foundational element of life, growth, and all relationships, and yet it is so minimally understood and frequently poorly executed. Communication is the act of making something known or common to others. It requires both “sending” AND “receiving” components.

Neurons transmit intelligent information from one area of the body to another. They carry specific targeted messages involved in perception, integration, and responsive action. However, en route to their final destinations, the messages must jump across synaptic canyons via neurochemical transmitters to effect changes at adjacent nerves.

If the gaps aren’t bridged, critical information for ongoing adaptation and health will be missed.

Just as information must flow unimpeded within a person for optimum well-being it must also be freely and clearly communicated between people to

The needs in the world around you for expanded health and vitality are vast–and greater than at any time in history. Increasing numbers of people are drowning in chronic pain and disease, losing hope, and finding no true solutions. They are desperate for answers and guidance. Their failing health concerns are simply being answered by new medications to mask and manage the symptoms (which are actually their inner-voice clues calling out for help). I know this because I’ve been caring for them for over 26 years in practice.

Please note and remember newscaster Walter Cronkite’s declaration that “America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”

People that pass by you every day are sick and dying for answers…answers that you (and possibly only you) have. How long might they live without a solution and continue to decline before help arrives?

They need to hear your message of hope and real healing. They need to return to wholeness of body, mind, and spirit, and the dominant allopathic models of our day CANNOT get them there…BUT YOU CAN!

There is an incredible NEED…AND you have a SOLUTION.

But will those in need hear your clear voice of wisdom to point them to understanding and to a life-saving or at least quality-of-life saving action plan?

They are waiting to receive…like a neuronal dendrite awaiting the next important neurochemical transmission of intelligent information to jump the gap from an adjacent axon to keep the body-mind orchestra playing in tune.

They are waiting for your intelligent guiding information and instructions.

They are waiting for SYNAPTIC SUCCESS to occur!

I tell the stories and pertinent insights of three dozen patient victories in my book Where Does It Hurt? I spoke and they heard…because I took the risks of putting myself and the message out there over and over again.

The people struggling with pain and illness may not be hearing you for a number of reasons. Here are six actions that will help you to be heard:

1. You must speak a clear message that addresses the solutions to their perceived needs that’s based upon true healing principles and that sets you apart as a unique voice amidst the drone of lies, half-truths, and inadequacies.
2. You must live your core passion that will give you the necessary boldness to step out and automatically inspire those around you who are ready to take your recommended action steps.
3. Your speaking, writing, and other communication skills may need some knowledge or training upgrades so you as the messenger don’t get in the way of your life-transforming message.
4. You should keep up sufficiently with the latest body, mind, and spirit healing research and technology that will fuel and power your ongoing message outreach.
5. You need to take advantage of the powerful yet inexpensive marketing techniques, strategies, and platforms to project your clear message on a consistent basis to your potential audience.
6. You must speak up–confidently and often. The world outside your office may not know you exist.

There really is no point that you’ll reach when you can decide you’ve finally arrived, that there’s nothing more you need to learn and no further actions you can take that will open the doors to your success. There will always be newer technologies and developing insights and hopefully you’ll maintain an insatiable thirst for making a difference through serving others.

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor; to be given a chance to create is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is gravy.” – Actress Bette Davis

The Business of Life Expert Interview Series

One element of the Synaptic Success membership program that just makes me leap into the air with ecstatic joy is the Expert Interview Series. I never cease to be amazed at how many incredibly interesting, insightful, and inspirational thought and strategy leaders there are in this world that have powerful pearls of wisdom and effective action steps to share about how they’ve achieved extraordinary levels of success.

I’ve done the work of personally interviewing dozens of them (and I’m adding new recordings to this expert library every week) and I’m jazzed to bring two of these expert interviews to you each and every month across a vast array of topics that will challenge and lead you to new heights of business and personal life success.

These experts are the top people in their fields: best-selling authors, professional speakers, worldwide celebrities–all inspirational and fascinating. This interview series would be the envy of Larry King or even Oprah. In fact, some of them have actually been on Oprah.

I cannot wait to share their amazing insights with you as you continue to take this journey with me each month.

I will also be distilling the truths and pertinent applications from each of my expert interviews and translating them into very user-friendly, ready-to-go action steps to help you create the practice and life of your dreams!

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

I will help you develop your dreams, help you walk confidently toward them as I do with mine each day, and give you all the strategies and encouragement you need to meet your previously unexpected levels of success.

I’m looking forward to sharing this journey with you. Let’s go