Be the Best Tapas Restaurant

Hey, everyone, it's Chris. And today I wanted to share a really great metaphor that I heard recently around maintenance care and returning patients and how you can build a thriving reputation in your community over time. Now, this one comes from Jerry Kennedy, who runs the Rocket Cairo podcast. Used to be the black sheep Cairo, who you may have heard of before he had me on as a guest recently. His podcast, that'll be out soon. But this was actually before that I'd heard of Jerry. I'd known him for a while. I really liked his stuff. And I remember one conversation, he was talking about patients returning for care and patients either returning for maintenance or coming back symptomatically. And he compared this to a restaurant. I think he did it really, really well. He said, if your chiropractic clinic is a restaurant, let's say you're a tapas restaurant. The way most chiropractors go about, you know, building a reputation is that it's a bit like if you go to the tapas restaurant and you order some tapas and you have a nice meal, you give them a good experience, and then the owner comes out and goes, why don't you come here every week forever? Like, why don't you make this the restaurant you always come to? You've had a lovely time. We know you love tapas. We do great tapas, you know, come here every week, come every month. Make this the restaurant you always come to. You would feel a little bit weirded out by that. And it's very, very few people are going to go. You're right. Yeah. You know what? Every time we want to go out to eat, I'm going to come to this restaurant. Most people won't do that. That's what we do when we try to get maintenance care and really get them to understand it right at the start and say, you should keep doing this. You know, the restaurants I go to, I go to a selection. But I can tell you the tapas one that I love is top of my mind. Every time I think of all tapas, I'm going to go there. That's what we want to be doing with our patients. We want to be top of mind whenever they think, oh, I've got a problem. Oh, that chiropractor. Yes. I'm gonna go see Chris. Chris is my person whenever I have a problem like this. Now, some of them will choose to come back regularly for maintenance care. Some people will go, I love that tapas place. We go there every month. That's absolutely fine. Others will go, yep, when I'M in the mood for tapas. I'm gonna go there actually tonight. I fancy Italian. I'm gonna go there instead of. That's absolutely fine. As long as you are the tapas restaurant that's top of their mind. That's what we want to do as chiropractic is be top of their mind. When they think of chiropractic, be the first clinic that they think of. When they think of manual therapy, MSK care, whatever it is that your patients think of you for, you want to be top of mind. Does that mean that they are going to come back every time you recommend it? No, some of them will, and that's great. And we should definitely recommend it for people we think that could help. And we should definitely leave the door open to those people. But also, some people don't want to pass every month. Some people just don't want to come back every month. And if you try to do that, it's a bit like the owner saying, come here every month, Come here every month, come here every month. It's going to put you off. You're going to feel they're a little bit needy or they're just after your money. It's going to throw you. And you're probably going to go, yeah, we went there. The food was good, owner was a little bit weird, vibe was a little bit off. We're actually going to go to another place. And I can tell you, I have seen patients who have seen other chiropractors in the area who got really good results that they were very happy with, but they came to see me because the other chiropractor in their perspective was telling them to come back, was telling them to come back for maintenance and said, if you don't come back, this will get worse. And one in particular I will never forget, she said, and he was right. Yeah. Four months later it came back and now I'm back to square one. And I asked her, I said, you know, why are you coming to see me? You know, you went to this other person, they got you really good jobs. Oh, it's great. No, they really helped me out. It was so much better. Really good. They gave me exercises to do. They really took care of me. You know, why are they then coming to see me? I'm a random chiropractor. They're taking a complete gamble on me when they have someone that they know and trust. And she said, well, you know, he said that if I didn't come back, it was going to come back. And he did. And I'm a bit embarrassed, to be honest, so I thought I'd rather try somebody else. So not only did this chiropractor do a great job getting them better, they also predicted the future and said it's going to get worse if you don't come back in for some maintenance. Lo and behold, it did. But because of the emotional experience, she then went, I'm going to go see somebody else. And that chiropractor, who I know is a good chiropractor, has lost out on that patient. So think about that. If the tapas restaurant kept saying, come back, come back, come back, you're going to get a little bit thrown. Be top of mind whenever they think of tapas, whenever they think of chiropractic, be the person they think of. Offer a great experience, make it easy for them to come back. But equally, don't be pushy because you will lose a lot of them that way. So give that a try. That podcast on Rocket chiropractor should be up very shortly as well. I'll send you guys a link I thoroughly recommend checking out. Jerry's a wonderful guy, really, really smart. Knows a lot about effective patient centered care as well. So check that out and I'll see you soon for another video.