169: Chiropractors - Increase Your Patient Visit Average (PVA) with Dr. Fred DiDomenico

Hey, guys, Billy Sticker here with Chiral Candy. And it is such an Honor to have Dr. Fred D. Domenico with me today for this podcast episode. We were just talking and he's been on the show. Didn't realize it had been this long ago. It was over almost five and a half years ago since he's been on. But he is with Elite Coaching, one of the premier coaching groups in the chiropractic profession. And his doctor, doctors just crush it. We actually are working with some that work with him and it's just an honor to have you on. Thanks for taking the time.

Thanks, brother. I was very honored when you reached out to me. You know, we had a great time last time and you've done so much to add value to the profession that I appreciate who you are and you know, the things that you're doing to help general public get in there, get into chiropractic care. The most important time, in my opinion, the most important time in history right now to be under chiropractic care 100%.

So let's talk about that. You know, we're, as we're recording this, you know, one of the great things about podcast is somebody may listen to this two years from now, but as we're recording this, it is. We're August of 2021. So, year and a half, give or take since COVID first showed up on the scene, how did some of your doctors kind of handle everything that was thrown at them?

Well, you know, I felt like we were a little bit different because you hear about all these docs that struggle. And I know there's lots of coaching groups. I'm sure every coach group has docs that just did really well or weren't affected. You know, we have a very different model. You know, I remember going through coaching when I was practicing. I practiced for almost 15 years. And you know, they give you scripts and they do all this, but nobody, no coach could tell me why did one person commit, bring their family, change the way they live their life and another person walk out on day two or quit when they're out of pain? They would give me scripts, but. But I never understood and I couldn't find the answer to that question. So after four coaching groups, I started studying human behavior. You know, attorney Robbins says power of your life is determined by the power of the questions you ask yourself. So I asked myself, how do people make life changing decisions? And how can I get at least nine out of 10 patients to look at chiropractic like I do? Because if they did they would live it as a lifestyle. So I started studying human behavior. I adapted this whole patient management system. My practice went through the roof and then I developed a lead coach. And we look at it like this. A person comes in, they have back pain. We literally have a literal or metaphorical 5 minutes to completely change every belief system about their life, every belief system about their healthcare and how they want to raise their family and spend the rest of their life. Right? But nobody teaches that you are really a self empowerment coach. You know, that's what Tony Robbins is doing. That's what NLP does, that's what Landmark does. That's what all these people out in the world are doing, except for chiropractic. So I look at it like chiropractors are really self empowerment coaches with a healthcare application. We got to change their belief system. So in taking docs, to answer your question, taking my docs through the boot camps and through the coaching, you know what our goal is? We build 90% lifestyle cultures mean 90%. Lifestyle is a mindset. Life time is a condition. You know, you all hear patients where it's like, well, I've been a chiropractor all my life and man, when my back hurts, you're the first one I go to, right? You're like, oh my God, that's going to be work, right? So lifetime is a condition, but lifestyle is a mindset. And so we know how to shift people's mindset, how to shift their subconscious beliefs, how to literally inspire them to pull that power that's in every person. You know, Tony Robbins has thousands of people that walk across 2000 degree calls. Every person has the power to make a life changing decision right now and literally wire that into their mind. So that's the way they want to live their life. So to come full circle out of, you know, we probably have 150, couple hundred active clients. I mean we have a bunch more that have been in longer that I don't talk to as much. Right. But I mean active. So there was maybe three that were stressed. I mean there were people in very, if you want to call it liberal states where their clinic was shut down, New York, Michigan. But they never worried because now here's, you know, I use an example of a dude, Ben Gillis in Michigan. So he sees, you know, pretty good volume, 500, 550 a week. And 80% of his people were all on lifetime, lifetime care, that lifestyle mindset. So during COVID so they only saw maybe 130 a week. But the minute Those people never changed their mind. The minute any restriction was lifted, within a matter of a couple weeks, he's back to 500, like, you know, and same thing in New York, right? And it's not that they couldn't see him in those states, if they had a busy parking lot, other people would report them, you know, and so what they did was they shut down. I only had one clinic I know of that actually shut their doors. That didn't have to, but they suffered. So. And then there were other people. The interesting thing was there were other people in liberal states where they didn't change anything. And sometimes healthcare officials would show up to their clinic, the police would show up to their clinic, the state board would show up to their clinic. But is illegal for any of those people to shut them down. They walked in, they walked out. Nothing happened. Their practices grew through the roof because there were people in every demographic, there are people that don't buy into all the things that are happening. And so what happened was, you know, the people that believed that wanted a lockdown, you know, yeah, maybe they stayed home, but other people came in droves and they broke ridiculous records because the general public was looking for sanity. They're looking for a place where they could be normal again. They're looking. They were actually looking for a place where they didn't have to wear their mask. Right. They're looking for their place where they could be human again. And they're. And the people that didn't listen to anything, nothing happened to them. Now I hear other stories. Nothing happened to them. And they're doing it better than they've ever done because people. Go ahead.

Oh, I was going to ask. So in general, are there some key things, let's say when somebody signs up with you guys, are there some patterns that you see as far as mindset goes from the offices that are struggling? Because I would imagine when somebody is doing fantastic, they're not necessarily looking for a coach. Right. A lot of times it's whenever numbers are down, you know, they're just not meeting revenue or they're like, okay, you know, or overhead. Do you see some specific mindset issues that need to be worked on? Or is it just everybody's a little bit different?

No, I think there's very specific, and I think it's conviction to purpose and the chiropractic principle. And chiropractic purpose. You know, I always go back to a spiritual basis where spirits have a human experience. I mean, chiropractic principles based on universal intelligence. And we're Innate intelligence. Our innate intelligence is what healed. We are innate intelligence in a physical body. Whether you call it innate intelligence or spirit. But we come here for a purpose. You're a chiropractor. You chose this time in the history of the world to be in your physical presence in this planet. Why did you do that? Why did you, of all the things you could have done, you had to come into this life to be a chiropractor. So the people that are more convicted to purpose tend to be more successful because they have more courage. Now, I'm not saying you should or shouldn't wear a mask. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't close down. You have to make that decision yourself. But what I will say that I have doctors that come to me that are highly successful as a business. You know, they can get people started. But the reason they come to us is we help build 9 out of 10 of your patients. We help build lifestyle, 90% lifestyle cultures, meaning we can get 9 out of 10 into that lifestyle mindset that will save for you for years. Now I have doctors, we just had a couple doctors join. They're already making over a million a year, but they don't like their pva.

Gotcha.

And so that's our specialty is we know how to create from day one how to wire someone into that lifestyle mindset and then keep them for years. And our goal is to do that with 90% of your patients that walk through the front door. And so you got to know psychology and you got to know human behavior. If you don't, if you think you're going to throw a few scripts at them or you're going to talk about their back pain. I mean, you're going to talk about it, but you're going to focus on it like what a lot of groups do. Ms. Jones, well, how's your back pain affecting your life? You know, then you're associating back pain with a pain with an emotion that's wiring into their brain and you're wiring them for short term care. So, so to answer your question, going through Covid, we didn't. The majority of clients, I had maybe five that struggled, but it was those people that lived in fear. The people with purpose didn't struggle. The people that knew how to create that lifestyle culture, even though they had to back off the volume, they never once worried because they never thought their patients would leave. They just had to shut, limit their hours for a little bit or limit the type of people. So we didn't really feel the brunt of that.

That's good. What are. If you have some tips. So let's say that, you know, somebody's listening and they're saying, you know what? That's my PVA isn't where I want it to be. Do you have a couple of key suggestions? I mean we're not going to get deep into, you know, boot camp level stuff that you guys do, which you have one of those coming up next week and then in a couple of months you have some more coming up, which we'll talk about at the end. But what are some key things that they can do to help get that number up?

Well, first of all, the more you let me, I have 20 things going through my mind at once. How you wire them, what you teach them on day one is what is neuro emotionally wiring. So when people come in in a highly emotional condition, which their back hurts, they come in, that's why they're coming to see you. They're injured, right? So they come in in a highly emotional condition. Whatever you teach them on day one is what's going to wire into their behavior. Into their behavior. Like a lot of coaches say, well give them what they want and then teach them what they need. Ms. Jones, how's your back pain affecting your life? Well, I can't pick up my kids. The problem is in three adjustments they can pick up their kids. Doc, you're the best. My back pain's gone. So if you're not communicating that lifestyle mindset right from day one, that will be the decision they will tend to make and that will determine your pva. Now anybody can start a patient, you know, I mean you can start anybody. All you got to do is say you got back pain. Yeah, we fixed that. Here's 12 visits, right? I mean your PVA isn't going to be good, but anybody can start anybody. That's easy. The principle of chiropractic says lifestyle. So your pva, if you take the office visits per week divided by new patients. So if you see 200 a week and you get five new patients, you got a 40 PVA. What's that mean? The average person is going to stay about three months. And that's what I learned when I had coaches when I was practicing before I studied human behavior is one day I looked at my practice, it was like Wednesday night at 5:30 and I thought how many of these people were with me six months to a year ago? And I saw 70, maybe only 30% were with me for less. It wasn't even a year, and I thought, oh, my God. And I did my PVA at a 40 PBA. So basically, I had to build a new practice every three months. And so I'm like, forget it. I'm done. I'm tired of working hard. And that's when I started studying human behavior. And within that was when I started doing that. That was the fastest growth. I didn't do one bit of marketing, didn't spend one second marketing. This was way before Facebook ads. I would definitely do what you do now. You have to use social media today. So what you're doing is phenomenal. But we didn't have it back then. So I went from a 40 PVA to a 70 PVA. And I was turning away 30% of my patients because I was not quite as good as I am now. So if they wanted just back pain relief, I wouldn't take them. So we would accept seven out of 10. We would get 10 new patients a week on average. And I was seeing 700 a week. So that's a 70 PVA. 700 divided by 10 is 70. So basically, there were some that quit it too. Some that were saying for 150, but the seven out of 10 would stay for an average of 100 visits. But you got to count all 10. So you either out in two days or you're in for 100. We didn't have any difference.

That's so good. And, you know, just talking about changing their mindset, right? It's education at a. Just a core, fundamental level. One of the things that we talk about a lot is, you know, just to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit on what we do. I know this podcast isn't necessarily about that, but it ties in with this. We don't want people saying yes to an offer, right? Because then they show up and they. They don't. Or they don't show up, right? Or if they do, they don't accept care. They're just not the right people. But one of the things we talk about is if you look at your favorite patients, the ones that you see the schedule that day, and you just light up, right? Those are the ones who get it. They drank the Kool Aid. Like, those are your people that are there. Those are the 90%, right? And it's because they have that mindset and they have that education. And so normally that education does start on your day one or day two or in those first couple of days. But what we say is, what if you could start it a couple of weeks before they ever came in or a couple of months before they came in. And so that's some of the things that we want our docs to do is take that messaging, put it in short videos, get it out to your community because you are going to have people that resonate with that because there are people driving past your office right now that they want what it is you do. They don't know what's called chiropractic. Right. They want that lifestyle. They don't want to be taking medication. They want a healthy, vibrant family. They don't know it's chiropractic because they think it's neck pain and back pain. Because that's been the messaging over the years. But when you can take that core belief and you can package that and start getting it out there, that's when you're gonna help attract those type of people who are gonna want to be those 90%.

Well, yeah. And I mean, you have to video market because you gotta build your culture outside. I mean, people are thirsting for this information. You know, you gotta be careful about the vocabulary now because of all the censorship and you don't wanna lose your social media accounts, but you can do it on email and have your patients share. So you have to video market today because you're building relationships with people you don't know. And so the next thing is, I just want to get into a little more principle here.

Absolutely.

And that is the world is in fear and now a lot of people are sick of it. But there's an outside in approach. People are thirsting for the inside out. And there's one thing, you know, I talk to people a lot, chiropractors and you know, what information are you giving your patients? There are some docs that don't want to approach the whole Covid topic. They don't want to approach the vaccination topic. And there's other docs that can't not approach it or talk about it. But right now, you know, a person that doesn't have the right information is playing Russian roulette with a, with that chamber that's got six chambers in it. And you're putting, with, with the jab, you're putting three to four bullets in there. You're not, they're not playing Russian roulette with one bullet, five open chambers. I mean, that is a. They're making life and death decisions. And when we look at what's coming down the road with possible passports and all these things, there's people that don't have, they don't know what they're doing. And they're doing things out of convenience. And when you're creating synthetic DNA and synthetic spike proteins and synthetic mRNA, you're setting people up for autoimmune disease and cancer. And these people are not going to be with you in two years. They may not be around. So that doesn't even include the immediate reaction, because with every. With every shot, they. The side effects are far worse. You know, there's people that feel great with one shot and they're sick with two, or they die. And now they want to do boosters. And then they're going to say, you need boosters. Every six months, you're going to inject your body five times. You're not going to live. It's not going to happen. And if you do, it's got to be the grace of God, because what they do, I mean, I don't even need to go through. Do I even need to go through what they do in the body? So. So now it's not a time for responsibility, to give information. This is a time for leadership. And if we don't, as a profession, take a stand, this will be a crucial mistake. You will not have the same practice a year from now. At least. The same people, I tend to find, ask a lot of chiropractors what percentage your patients are vaccinated. And typically, what I hear is about 40%.

You're referring to that. The COVID Yeah, the COVID vaccination.

Yeah. So now if you look about 150 million Americans, there's 330 million Americans in this country. About 150 have been vaccinated. That's about 40%. And these are the people that are in the practice. Where do you think their health is going to be down the road? Especially if they keep getting boosters? And, you know, who knows? Right now there's a bill. This is August 2021. Biden put a bill in there to make all air travel that you need vaccination passports. If that becomes a law, it's going to be. There's going to be a revolution. And in my opinion, chiropractors need to be at the tip of the spear. If you don't want that attention, then you're gonna suffer watching your patients suffer.

Yeah.

So we need to take a stand as a profession.

Yep. I've actually heard the number was up to as many as 70%.

Okay.

I don't. I don't think. I believe that. I think that might be the media trying to say, hey, everybody else is doing it.

Like trying to do a majority.

Yeah, right. And that's. It's just. It's just insane. We know a young girl, freshman in college, and she's a swimmer, fantastic swimmer, and that's why she's actually going to school. Well, she's going to school for education, but, you know, she's swimming at this particular college. But there was talk about not her not being able to do certain meets, and her parents, you know, they don't want to get the vaccine. But she kind of begged her parents, please let me get it. That's the only way I'm going to be able to swim. And it's like, no. You know, and then, anyway, just. You think of all these stories out there that we just don't know what's going to happen. Like you said two years from now, what are the effects of this going to be?

Oh, it's gonna be huge. So here's where I believe we have a responsibility for leadership. And, you know, there's certain things like you can. You can put videos out on email, you can have gatherings in your clinic, so you can do them in person. I mean, you can't. There's certain things you just can't do on social media or you lose your accounts. Right. So, I mean, there's a lot of censorship and you just got inside. I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't do. What I am saying is that I don't want to be that person that goes through this knowing what the principle is, knowing what your life purpose is, and then having the regret of not doing something. I would rather gain the courage to do what's in my heart than to have. Than to experience regret. I'd rather go through the pain of courage than the pain of regret. And that's just me personally, and I hope that you're the same now, not you, the listeners, but there's also. Now there's the Chiropractic Defense Council, ironically, the CDC and Baron Hoag started it. Right. It's go to, I believe it's defendchiropractic.org and they're asking for $33 a month. And they're putting, for. They, they put together a legal team that is going to the states that are demanding the chiropractors get vaccinated. And they're beginning a legal fight on a federal level. Well, on a state level, but across the states, there's Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, California right now. And they're going to these states and developing legal teams in those states. But they need donations. Go to defendchiropractic.org, it's $33 a month and they need 5,000 doctors paying 33.33 bucks. So just go do that and you know, be a part of the movement. If you're not going to do it legally, which that's, that's a big tab. 33 bucks a month.

That's great. I don't even, haven't even heard about this yet. I'm going to get you to give me their information. I would love to do what we can to help support that.

Oh yeah, well, I've already joined. I know Baron personally and people on the board. I know personally. So we got the inside scoop right away. But you can go there. Defendchiropractic.org just go contribute.

Absolutely. Well, let's talk about some of the events you have coming up. What would that look like? And for people who just want to know more about what you do.

What.

Would happen at an event?

Well, we got a boot camp. Boot Camp 2 is coming up. So we have Boot Camp 1. Boot Camp 2. Boot Camp 1 is day one. Day two. And really what is a professional self empowerment leadership training? I mean you learn how to take a patient doc, crack my back. My wife couldn't get it. I mean we all hear those stories, right? And how to take them through preconsult consult exam day 2 rof and how you literally shift their belief systems, focus on overall health, focus on full spine and posture where they come out of there and through the communication principles and psychology principles that we use. While you're delivering the scripts that anybody can learn, they want to live their life differently. So that's day one. The one we have coming up on August 27th through the 29th, so it's next week is retention Boot camp. We teach you how to get above all time and money and how to put a person into such an empowered state that time and money doesn't matter and then how to perpetuate that for years so they develop that lifestyle mindset and stay with you with their family for years. So Boot Camp 1 gets them in the program. Boot Camp 2 keeps them for life and shifts their whole mindset. We also have a series coming up in Austin in December. Go to elite coaching L I t e coachingllc.com look under boot camps you can get all that, you can get the information there. And then, you know, we're very specific about who we take because we actually guarantee the results. So we guarantee a 30 to 50% growth or an increase of lifetime patients, that lifestyle mindset, 30 to 50%. That means three to five more out of 10 will go into that lifestyle mindset. And so what we do is you fill out a survey, we get on the phone, we talk about what it is, and then if everything's a good match, you go to the boot camps, we coach you, and you'll see a significant increase right away, right from day one.

That's great. I'll go ahead and put links in the show notes. So even if you are listening to this, you know quite a bit after this recording. This is something that they do fairly frequently. So you'll be able to find out, you know, the next events they have coming up and what it will look like, how, what you need to do to apply to see if this would be a good fit for you. Thank you so much for coming on today. You know what, let's do this. This is something I used to ask a lot, and I haven't asked it in quite some time. But let me ask it of you. You're starting over in practice, okay? You're in a new town, you've got all the equipment you need, you've got your facilities, all that, but you don't have any patience. Day one week, one month, one. What do you do to launch that practice?

Well, first of all, you can get patients for free. I would definitely be using your social media program, no question, because you got certainly be making videos and establish an email list. But one of the things, one of the things that gets people to a huge start is, and this isn't any big surprise, but it's a grand opening. And so one of the things that's different that we teach people is how to build relationships with businesses. So the mantra that we recommend that you take is they say you add value. So you say we add value to the health and prosperity and the businesses in the community. So the problem is doctors want to go in, they want to do a screening. You know, business look like you're coming in taking bread off their table. So if you go in wanting to bring bread, so you have a grand opening and let's say you're a gym, they would say, hey, you know what? We had value to the. We add value to the health and prosperity of the business and the community. You know, we got a rehab system because of. Because you know what we do, we get such phenomenal results and helping people recover their health. We have people that come from all over the county and they want to use the businesses in the area. So we're launching this whole thing, we have a grand opening. I'd like you to be a sponsor. Is there a gift certificate you can give? Because we want to send you our patients. Would you like us to send you our patients? Who's going to say no to that? Right, right. And so now what are you doing? You're giving. Oh, by the way. And then you solve their problem. Oh, by the way. We have a few different programs. We have a train, the trainers program. Now I study cbp, so I say so. You know, we use the latest research and technology in spinal rehabilitation that isn't available to trainers. We could, we could. How often do you trainers meetings? Once a month. Well, would you like me to come in for 15 minutes and give you the latest research on spinal biomechanics that your trainers not only would love, it would make them exceptional in their industry. Now what are you doing? I'm selling them benefits. Oh, by the way, we also do complementary postural evaluations on your members. And if we do that and we find a structural problem, would you like us to refer them to your trainers to help you build a training program? Now what are they going to say to all those questions? Of course, of course. So what's the free postural exam? It's a frickin spinal screening. Now if you go in there and say, well we can do spinal screenings in there, what are they going to say? I've had chiropractors in there, they jerked us off, you know, something happened. But if you go in there with something of a benefit and then the last step is, by the way, have you ever been a chiropractor? What was your experience? So you go three steps, you get, you get them to donate something, you solve their problem. Like you give a talk in their business and then you get the decision maker as a patient. So we have a three step process. So even if you don't have, if you're starting a business, then you want it, you definitely want to do this. So in the last two practices that I've started, this is what I did. How we built our practice, we get the team members and the businesses patients. I mean I did a lot of things right, but I walked into businesses. So both of them, the first week open, we broke 100 a week. I've had other people that have gone through great grand openings. You get 20, 30 patients your first day open. And I've had people collect, you know, 40 to $60,000 over the front desk the first month open. But they, but you have to build your practice before you open. If you're going to open and then you're going to try and build your practice, you got a whole lot of crickets. You got to build your practice four to six weeks before you open and then open with a grand opening and have the businesses. You should have 15 businesses not only contributing to your grand opening, but you already built reciprocal relationships with before you open.

Good stuff. Thank you so much for being on today and I will put a link to the, to your website in the show notes so if anybody needs anything, they can reach out. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Sorry, that explanation might have been a bit longer than.

No, great. No, no, it was good. Good stuff.

Thanks. Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate your audience and if there is anything that certainly we can do to help you, even if it is not with coaching, but if we can just create a movement that makes a difference in this world today, let's come together.

Absolutely.