352 - 7 Places Money is Hiding Inside Your Practice Right Now

you can't volume your way out of a broken business model, right? You can't adjust your way out of a jacked-up financial model, right? So that just makes people say, well, do more, do more, do more, do more. But we know the truth is, is when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you want to do is stop digging, right? So that's where so many chiro's find themselves.

Hello and welcome to the Remarkable CEO Podcast. a show dedicated to chiropractors who want to transform their job into a business so that they can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one.

With your hosts, Dr. Pete Camiolo and Dr. Stephen Franson. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable CEO Podcast, chiropractic's number one business podcast. I'm Dr. Pete Camiolo.

And I'm Dr. Stephen Franson.

What if we told you that there is profit hiding in your business right now? Hey, Dr. Stephen, I'm excited to have this conversation with you because we know that there is profit that's hiding in your business right now. And we are here today in an investigation to find some money. Hey, what if we could find money today? Just today? What if this podcast today, Dr. Stephen, in the next 20, 25 minutes that we're together, what if you walk away from this moment and you know that you can find money and you know where you can find profit in your business? Dr. Stephen, our goal today is that by the time this episode ends, you will be able to confidently leave this moment and say, "I'm going to go find the money because I know I've got hidden profit inside of my business." Dr. Stephen, I'm thrilled that I get to have this conversation with you. As always, great to be in the studio with you. It's springtime in North America, which means it's baseball season. And it's great to be together today.

Yeah, man. Awesome. Just back from the road trip, delivering all this amazing new remarkable business content. So we are ready for today's conversation. The theme of the business immersion was growth is the natural state of a chiropractic practice. Profit is not, right? So just helping people understand the truth is profit's unnatural, right? So as your business grows, as your practice grows, it becomes more complex, it becomes bigger, and there's a lot more moving parts. It becomes more expensive, right? So, and that erodes typically will erode your profit margin if you're not actively fighting to protect profit, right? So this is something that you need to be doing actively, intentionally. Man, you need to be vigilant when it comes to protecting profit. This is not a passive experience. It's very much an active experience. So we're going to have that conversation today to help docs, you know, it is springtime. So go on that Easter egg hunt throughout their practice because it's hiding all over the place inside of the business and inside of the practice, right? So I've got 7 bullet points on this slide in front of me right now. That I'm going to go through. And it's literally, this slide I'm looking at right now is worth, I would say, $250,000 to $2.5 million a year to our listeners, right? So people that are listening to it right now is like, yeah, I'm talking to you right now. It's like literally on this list, there's no question about it. This is like, there is probably $250,000 to $2.5 million. You're somewhere in there depending on the size of your business right now where it's just like, it's just hiding all over the place, right? So, today's conversation, congratulations, you're about to get a raise, right? So, yeah, the podcast is free, but good ideas are great, implementation's everything, right? So, at the end of the day, this will either be informational, entertaining, while that was interesting, man, what a terrible disappointment that would be, Dr. Pete. I want you guys to implement this, right? Put it into play so that you can just get the rewards, right? So, you're delivering a huge value, why not capture a huge value? Excited to get into it.

Yeah. And I think, like you said, everybody's going to get an upgrade. Everybody's getting a pay raise today. Like, you know how that feels when everybody wants to get a raise. You know, this is yours right now. So listen up. You know, it's not— nobody ever comes to you telling you, you get a raise. You know, they're just coming to you asking you for one. We're here telling you this is where you're going to get yours. So if that's not enough to lean in and listen up, I don't know what is, Dr. Stephen. So You know, like you said, each one of these is probably worth, you know, because you gave some ballpark numbers, I'd say there's millions of dollars that are hidden right here inside of the 7 things that we discussed prior to this podcast recording that we're having here today. So I'm excited. Let's get into the first one, Dr. Stevens. So the first one is what you're charging for the services you're delivering. I want to just kind of kick this one off because this is one that I actually find come up in conversations on coaching calls a lot. I'll ask them, tell me about your care plans, tell me about your practice, tell me about— help me understand more how your practice works, how the money works. And you realize very quickly, like, oh, uh, yeah, we do this, we don't charge for that, we do this, we discount that steeply, we, uh— and you realize, like, really quickly, like, hey, hey, time out. Like, right away, we're going to be able to find, uh, we're gonna be able to find some money. So the first one, Dr. Steven, is charging for your services, the services you are actually delivering. This isn't adding anything new. This is saying, what are you currently doing right now that you're not charging for? Dr. Steve, you want to unpack that a little bit?

Yeah, it's, I mean, there's a, I'm glad you drilled into that a little bit because it would have been very easy to just sort of misunderstand that, right? So we're not talking about adding new things, right? So we'll get to that conversation, right? So what we're talking about is there a, the things that you're already doing that you're not charging for. So it's like that, hear that loud and clear. We're going to have a pricing conversation. We're going to talk about adding different value centers to the business and profit centers. We're going to talk about that. Right now, what we're talking about is not changing anything except for you should actually get paid for the things you are doing already. Right? So what that translates into, Dr. Pete, is pure profit. There's no, there's no, overheads associated with what I'm suggesting right now. It's not, it's not adding anything except for the consciousness that you're delivering value. You should capture value because you're not charging for it. You are at best devaluing it, right? So if you start to look around and be like, man, there's a lot of money laying around throughout the practice where, and I'm not talking about nickel and diming people. I'm talking about actually charging for the value you're delivering, right? So there's so many of you that are not really charging for day 1, day 2, the new patient process or report of eyes. You're not really charging for progress exams or progress reports or re-exams or re-reports or re-X-rays or, hey, extremities, we're going to do an extremity X-ray. Don't worry about it. I'll just take an X-ray and then I'll adjust your ankle. And literally all this stuff that doctors are doing all the time and just throwing it all in there and be like, ah, it's just included. We don't charge for that. So I was at the dentist last week. So I grew up in a dental office. Some of you might not know that. So, I actually still see the dentist that my mother was the office manager for 50 years, right? So, 49 years, she retired in her 50th year. We actually brought her into our wellness center. She's still working. She just works at our center now. So, for 50 years, my mother ran this place. So, I'm in that office. So, when I walk in there, I'm like a celebrity in that place, right? So, everybody loved my mother. So, that all transfers to me, right? So, it's like, oh, you're Mickey's son. You know, that never gets old. They take such good care of me, they love me, I'm so appreciated. And, when I got on that chair, Dr. Pete, was I had chipped my front tooth, I had cracked a back molar. So, if you remember, I took a surfboard in the face in Australia a couple years ago, broke my nose, knocked myself senseless. And, when I did that, it turns out I clacked my teeth together so hard when I got hit that I cracked my back molars and they've just been kind of falling apart over the years. So, I had I had a tooth fixed and a tooth crowned and all this stuff to get my teeth cleaned. All this was going on. And guess what? They were so nice to me. They love me, man. I had such a great experience. And at the end, you know what I got? I got a bill. You got a tooth cleaning. We fixed that front tooth. We fixed the cap. We corrected that. Like literally every single thing was delineated and there was a charge associated with every single thing that they did. And guess what I did? I paid them for the services. I was like, there was no like, ah, you know what, we'll just throw that in there. And as chiropractors, we need to stop doing that to ourselves. Right. So that broken business model is like, yeah, just throw everything in. Again, I'm not talking about nickel and diming people. I'm assigning value to the things that you're doing and claw back that revenue, which will be pure profit right to the bottom line.

All right. That was great. I love that story. And I love that for chiropractors because I know so many of you needed to hear that today. So you're welcome.

You're welcome.

Number 2, increasing your prices. So we'll double-click on this. And again, this is such a value, such a blessing. So many chiropractors just honestly need permission for this, right? They just needed a little bit of permission. And this happens a lot with our docs is to recognize your staff needs to be paid more. The cost for everything is going up. Your rent continues to increase incrementally every single year. The cost of living continues to go up. All of that. The price that your marketing agency is charging you continues to go up. The cost for a lead continues to go up. Everything is going up, but my prices aren't. No, absolutely not. Nope. I'm going to hold those steady. Really? Tell me more about that. You know, it's like, why? And you realize that, and again, wherever this comes from, this mindset, this belief system, is something that we need to break. And so we're encouraging you to, what we would say, reassess, reevaluate your prices, reevaluate where they are at and be open to raising your prices and having a system for this. So it's not emotional or dramatic or even reactive, but proactive. Come up with a schedule, a fee schedule, come up with a schedule for how you increase prices incrementally over time. Something that you feel really good about. That you feel like is aligned with your core values and your practice model, you know, so that your care plans and your fees continue to remain purposeful and profitable and possible, that they meet these criteria. However, they have to be profitable. And that's what we're talking about, Dr. Stephen. So it could be as simple things like this came up today or this week, I think somebody was saying, we're gonna have an external marketing team that's gonna go out and do external marketing events. So normally our special that we run is let's say $49. And so, but this person's gonna need to be compensated and paid. So that's gonna eat into that little bit of the cost that we get, the value that we get is already distributed. So a simple solution was instead of your special rate, which normally it's $199 going down to $49, why don't you go $69 and then that extra $20, now you've found a way to reimburse, to pay the value of commission for that salesperson, MBDE, who's out doing these external marketing events. Is a simple way to say you raised your price on something that no one's actually gonna ever know the difference that your special was, used to be $49 back in 2025. Now in 2026, it's $59 or $69. The same thing, but it enabled you to build your team, reimburse that person. And now this is an example of not necessarily, increasing profit per se, but you should be able to at least retain it because you just adjusted your prices. So prices, increasing those, looking through all of the fee schedule and everything that you are charging for and say, what could we adjust? What prices need to be adjusted? Which ones can we and should we be increasing and putting those on a fee schedule, putting those on a plan? Dr. Steven, I know this is a second way we can do it.

Yeah, priceology is a science, Dr. Pete, and price testing to see what the market will tolerate. This is an extraordinary body of scientific knowledge. The research shows that you could increase your prices by 15% and 65% of your customer base wouldn't notice. It's not that they wouldn't stomp their feet, quit, and leave. They wouldn't notice. You gotta hear that, right? It's like, you have to appreciate that every increase goes straight to the bottom line. And, you know, in that example, I would take that $149 and make that $399. And I would make that discounted price down to $99, right? So this is like, like literally guys, you got to push these prices up. If you have a product that costs you $90 to deliver and you charge $100 for it, you have a $10 profit margin, right? So, or a $10 profit and a 10% profit margin. You hear that, right? So if you take the price to $105, you've just increased your profit to $15 or 15% profit margin. You've just increased your profit margin by 50%. If you charge $120 for it, it still costs you $90 to produce and deliver that product. You now have a $20 profit or a 20% profit. You've just doubled your profit margin. So just these incremental price increases, guys, we're trying to get a business that's going to be somewhere between 12% and 15% net profit margin at the bottom. At the end of the day, every 2%, 3% that you can claw back is really significant. Especially when you start looking at a million or a multimillion dollar business, right? This, this is significant, right? And when I, when I say net, net profit margin, you know what I'm referring to? Fully loaded books, like you're getting paid for the work that you do, your salaries in there, et cetera, like net, and you get distributions of profit out of that bottom line, that net, net, right? So conversation for a different day, but we're having a business conversation here.

right?

So increase your prices, see the power in that. That's always first stop. And like you said, it should be a mechanism that's built in. We increase our prices every year. So that's just what we do. That's, there's a mechanism of that because every single thing in your life is more expensive every year. Why would you say my patients know everything in their life gets more expensive every year except my chiropractic care? Like, how have we adopted that mentality? So, we're telling you right now, increase your prices every single year.

All right, Dr. Stephen, if that wasn't something you needed to hear, maybe this one is. The third, fixing your money model. Let's talk about financial plans. Now, this is different than your care plans. These are your financial plans, but they're directly connected. And we're going to hit probably, we'll probably knock out two here, Dr. Stephen.

Let's talk about— Yeah, I think that's a good call. Let's talk about—

Yeah.

Care plans and financial plans at the same time. So this would be bullet points 3 and 4, right? So bundling your services creates a care plan, right? And then the care plan is the clinical recommendations, whereas the financial plan is the financial agreement that's a reflection of their commitment to their care plan, right? So we are very careful to tease those things apart, right? So your care plan is the clinical recommendations for care and the financial plan is the resultant financial agreement that reflects that commitment, right? So bundling. So when you start bundling together services, an example of that would be, let's say we're straight adjusting, right? So it's like you could pay per visit, right? That would be the worst case scenario, right? Or you could be like, yep, your recommendations during this initial intensive care is 34 visits over the next 4 months. That would be bundling your services, right? So if you started to include other products, goods, services. Hey, we're going to do orthotics. You're going to get this Dental Roll pillow. And we, you know, we have Softwave or Shockwave or decompression, whatever it is, laser, you know, because we're going to bring in these supplements, whatever you're doing. So bundling those services together, that increases basket size. It increases their stick rate, right? So when you start bundling services together, and then we can combine that to financial plans, making sure you're laying out financial plans intelligently. There's great ways to do your financial plans. You could offer prepayment, you could do pay per service, which would be a terrible way to do it. Or you could do down payment plus payments, or you could do equal payments. You know, the, my favorite one is the down payment plus payment model because it accomplishes a few things that are, I'm going to go over them very quickly because they're, this can't be a comprehensive conversation of this. But when you do down payments plus payments, let's say that same 4-month care plan that we just talked about was $3,000.

Right?

So for that 36 visits over the first 4 months, right? So let's say, let's say it's $3,000, right? So down payment plus payments would be, let's put 50% down. So $1,500 down and the next 3 payments, month 2, month 3, month 4 is $500 apiece, for example. Right. So it's $1,500 plus $1,500. This is your $3,000. So down payment of $1,500. You get that on day 2 during the conversion. So what that does is it accomplishes 3 things. Number 1, people have an emergency unexpected expense credit card that they use or a slush fund that they use, an emergency fund or rainy day fund, whatever you call it. That's what they use to pay for. Hey, my water, my water heater broke, my transmission blew in my truck, or I got some kind of health thing that's going on. That's what that money's for. They use that for the down payment. And they also like knocking down their monthly payment, right? So they have a smaller monthly payment. And here's where I think this is most aligned with our philosophy. If you're a wellness corrective care chiropractor, right? So as you get people to adopt a financial program, that's a reflection of their clinical program. If we want people to get regular chiropractic care over a lifetime, we're going to want them to have their chiropractic expenses built into their monthly budget. So now you've got a monthly commitment going on that's on a credit card that every month it's hitting their credit. So when you convert them into their next care plan, like into corrective care or into maintenance care or into wellness care, now you've got a relationship with them where they're used to having a monthly charge. So Dr. Pete, that's a huge one. We'll talk about monthly recurring revenue from the perspective of just business first, which is if you have somebody on monthly recurring revenue, research shows that it increases your stick rate by 2 to 3 times. In other words, 200 to 300% increase in stick rate, which is massive, right? So, but it's not as big as what it does to LTV or lifetime value. Lifetime value, somebody who's on a subscription basis, auto debit, monthly recurring revenue increases their lifetime value by 800%. 800%. There's nothing you could do to increase somebody's lifetime value by 800% other than that, right? So, and that's from an economic perspective. From a philosophical perspective, I think that there's a monthly recurring— monthly recurring revenue is the most aligned financial plan you could possibly do with people. The most aligned financial model. Because if you want people under regular chiropractic care, then what our job is to do is to make it easier for them to get, stay under regular chiropractic care. So what we want to do is knock down the friction. And the 3 leading causes of friction that work against people staying compliant and staying under care is number 1, time. People are busy, they're overwhelmed. Number 2, inconvenience, right? So that's the number 2 reason they don't start care. And number 3, money. You don't want them to having a transactional relationship with you where every time they're thinking about coming in, they have to have a transaction or they have to keep transacting to stay under care. So use these monthly recurring revenue models to help a person stay under care. I think it's very much the most on-purpose thing we can do from a business perspective. Hey, Doc, Stephen Franson here. If you're like me, you know that we're in the business of saving lives. And when business is good, everybody wins. That's the good news. But here's the bad news. Most chiropractors don't own a business at all. They own a job. It's a job they love, but it's a job. And far too often, it feels like that job owns them. Is this true for you? Do you own a business or a job? Have you built and do you run your practice on brute force? Does it rely fully on your time, your effort, a pound of your flesh. Are you responsible for all growth, for all new patient generation? How about new patient conversions? Is it all up to you? How about patient care and delivery? Are you a sole practitioner, an owner-operator who owns the practice but is also the only one that is head down and bum up taking care of all the patients? Is revenue generation or collections all up to you? Let me ask you the most telling question: Doc, what would happen if you took 90 days off? What breaks? In my experience, most on-purpose chiropractors do not lay awake at night worrying about their practice. They worry about their business. Let's slay that dragon. The Remarkable CEO Program has helped hundreds of chiropractors just like you turn the job that they love into the business that they've always wanted. Are you ready to run and build your practice on leverage instead of brute force? Do you want to create the scalability and durability that will allow you to make a bigger impact and a bigger income? What would it mean to grow your practice, increase your productivity and your profitability? Do you want to get your time freedom back? Are you ready to turn your pirate ship into a battleship? If this sounds like you, then the Remarkable CEO Program is for you. Just last year, 53 of our Remarkable clients received the the 7 Figure Club Award, meaning they hit the million-dollar mark for the first time or their next million-dollar level, be it $2 million, $3 million, $10 million, up to $36 million and growing. Now, Doc, is it crazy to imagine that your practice could be next? Click the link below and learn how to apply for the next cohort of the Remarkable CEO Program. We look forward to working closely with you in creating the business that supports Your Remarkable Life, not competes with it.

You know, Dr. Steven, even just coming out of our immersion and the conversations and the meetings that we're having, you know, on the, on the backside, there was just so much gold. It was such a— what a gift to bring this to the profession, to chiropractic. So many great conversations and so many people are finding that this is one of their areas that they had opportunity. You know, this was a, this was a point of constraint. It for sure was. And they were finding, they're finding money right there. And I can't wait to see the reports 3, 6 months 12 months from now. It's just game—

it's game changer. Yes. And how much about their practice have we changed so far? Think about that. Like, how much have we changed?

Nothing, right?

Except for your income and profit.

Yeah, exactly. So like we said at the beginning of the episode, you can thank us afterwards. So the next one, fifth one, and this one is something that I think a lot of On Purpose chiropractors immediately go to as maybe the only one, but it's one of them. It's just the fifth one, which is increase in your volume So, the effectiveness and efficiency of the services that you provide would enable you to do that. So, it's not adding more hours, it's adding more in your hours. It's how many people can we see in the time we blocked? It's not adding more days and more shifts and lunch hour and after hours and weekends and Sundays. And we're not asking you to do that. We're saying, how can you increase your volume? And you do that by becoming more effective and efficient. Both. If you're sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency, that's actually bad for business. It's off purpose and bad for business.

That's right.

You're going to lose customers. So we have to become more effective and more efficient. And you're talking to two guys that love volume. The only game we've ever played is volume. So when you play volume game, it's actually a really great game to play because it's a mirror. It's a litmus test. You are very accountable. To this, to effectiveness and efficiency, because you can't— some people say, oh, you could serve— this is the old school, the thing we used to hear, Dr. Steven. Oh, if you're serving that number of volume, either not charging them or, you know, you're just a revolving door practice or whatever. And we would hear all these things. It's like, actually, the more people you see, the more I know my people. Like, you don't know your people. You're not going to be able to know the patients if you're serving that many people in a given day. And I said, I said, I would go toe to toe with anybody that's seeing 100% a week, 300 a week, 400 a week, 500 a week. And you bring me in, I said, I know my people better than you know your people.

100%.

And it's because the only way you're going to serve more people is you got to know them better, but you got to know them faster. You got to know them better, faster. And you got to be able to, you got to have a deeper connection, but it's a leadership connection, not a friendship connection. It's a, I know you as your leader, and I know that I have a purpose in your life, and I'm going to stay in my lane in your life. And that's going to enable me to know you exactly how much I need to know you. And you're going to know me exactly how much you need to know me. And we're going to get some great work done together. And then you're going to tell the people that you know because you're like, that guy, they do it over there. You should go see them. And so the reality is, is when you grow, let's say, Dr. Stephen, this year, if you're listening to us and you're at 400 a week and you say, man, we've really been just aiming towards that 500, we'd love to be able to break through that, that 500 mark. Let's just say if you're a clinic listening to us right now, The way you're going to grow, create more profitability is that with the very team that you have, with the very office that you have, with the number of tables in Just Notarium you have, with all of that, without adding anything else, well, we could grow another 100 visits. We just, we find inefficiencies inside the business. We find issues with your flow. There's 8 areas where we're going to analyze that are interfering with your optimization of your flow. And the crazy 8, we're going to get in there. We're going to figure where those are and we're going to We're going to make the necessary adjustments and immediately you'll be able to grow 100 visits and it's going to be easier to see 500 than it was to see 4. And your staff is going to be like, Dr. Pete, we just saw 500. That was— I felt like it was a breeze. Like, that was easy. Or like, yeah, it gets easier as we get better because we got better. We made it easier for the people to be patients here. We talk about how it's doctor training, team training, patient training. It's about patient training at that point when you start reaching certain volumes where to grow to the next level. It's just we create a better system to be a patient. We create a more remarkable experience for the people. And that comes from the top down so that they have that experience. And then we execute on that. But it's amazing because if I grew, if you're at a $50 collection visit average and we just increase your visits 100 visits a week and we do that for 50 weeks in a year, and that's what all that we did without changing anything else, Tell me where that money is going straight to the bottom line. Dr. Stephen, it's, I love the volume one. I know it's one of seven, but man, that number 5, because for us, we're impact players. I'm an impact player. I play for impact and I need to know that we're making a bigger impact. And that's immediately a way, Dr. Stephen, where we make a bigger impact, make a bigger income, and more importantly, make a bigger profit.

So, I think that there's a perspective to look at this question. And there are levels to this one, right? So there's levels and layers to this one. And here's why I say it that way. I can't tell you how many chiropractors come to me now who, you know, now that I do more and more work with like enterprise doctors, like, so they have multi-sites and they, and people see, see that we're coaching like corporations and franchises and, you know, these people who have 3 practices or 63 practices, it's like multi-site practices. And they're like, oh, I want to get into that game. And I'm not discouraging that by any stretch of the imagination because of what you just said. We're impact players. We want to democratize chiropractic. We want to see it spread all over the place. And the way to do that is we need to have multi-sites. If God is calling you to that and you have developed the business chops and you're hardwired to be able to do and run an organization like that, I would love to help you optimize that. Trust me. Okay, so don't hear any negativity with this, but here's the sobering question that I start these conversations with. Have you optimized your one clinic yet? Like, listen to that question. It's like, so you want to have two clinics now. All right. So, okay. So, or you want to open a third clinic. Have you optimized the clinic that you have now? Right. And they'll look down at the floor and I'm like, you know what your answer is. I was like, so you think you're the way you're going to actually quote quote unquote grow is just opening other clinics. And that's going to be your idea of growth. Listen to me. First thing you want to do is optimize one location, then multiply that, right? So you better be able to look at this thing and be able to say, I'm going to optimize this location. And what I mean by that is looking at it and saying, have we optimized this space? Remember, we're having a conversation about profitability, right? So it's like, why not optimize one space optimize its impact and its income, right? Its profitability. And then multiply that. Because what's going to happen as soon as you have 2 clinics, you just doubled your overhead and tripled your headaches, right? So you split your energy, your focus is all over the place. And what very typically happens is if you're not ready yet, because if you can't optimize 1 clinic, you're not ready to try to optimize 2, right? So worst thing you'll do is then open a 3rd. Now you got 3 that are suboptimal, right? So it's like, Can you see where if, if we're optimizing for profit, you need to look and be like, what would it take for me to optimize where we are right now? And very often the first answer is let's increase our volume, right? From where we are right now. And then it might be, let's increase our hours. Let's increase the size of our team. So we have the capacity to serve more people inside of this one brick and mortar that, by the way, we have one rent, we have one set of utilities. We've got this space. Most chiropractors I know, I was like, we were like all day Monday, half a day Tuesday, all day, half a day Wednesday, all day Thursday, half a day Friday, closed Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday. It's like, like when we were in Singapore, we had 19 practices in downtown Singapore. They had to be open 7 days a week because they were in malls. It's a non-Christian country. You could get people to be there on Sundays working and showing up for adjustments. It was like there was no Sabbath. It was 7 days a week. And we had 4 doctors. 2 shifts, AMs and PMs, do the math. You get 28 shifts right there. And that's optimizing a physical plant. And I'm only saying that to stretch people's— I'm not telling you right now to get in there and work 7 days a week. I'm asking you how much more meat is on the bone before you start thinking, oh, I'm going to start opening multiple sites. Like, let's optimize the space you have. Do you have 3 doctors in a rotation right now? Are you just cranking it out and optimizing it? It's a question we need to look at. It's like, have you reached your volume capacity and maximized and said, now I have to open another clinic, right? So because here, what you're going to have is you're going to create a cash cow that's throwing off tremendous profit. And now you're going to have the monies that you'll need to be able to tolerate the growth process of that second, third, and 13th clinic as you go. So Dr. Pete, looking at that volume in stages to be able to say, first, let's optimize the time that we are seeing patients now, then let's expand our time, then let's expand our team, maybe then it's add days, Okay, great. We have maximized, we've optimized this space, this overhead that I'm already paying, optimize my profit. Now it's time to scale.

And I want to add one more point to this, Dr. Stephen, because it's so solid. As you add in more providers, it's optimizing each provider's production, productivity. And I just want to make sure that everybody heard that. So, and that's a really important topic because that's one area that I spend a lot of time working with. CEOs on is how do you optimize each one of their providers in terms of their knowing whether their capacity is and where they're at in terms of their capacity, meaning volume of services delivered. And that's the game that we're in in chiropractic is delivering world-class chiropractic adjustments. So, that is a key and that is one you have to keep your eyes on and there's a lot of layers there in terms of training and finding the right people, putting them into the right role, training them to do the right work the right way. And there's so much opportunity right there in that space. So, that one is big. And that leads to this next one, Dr. Stephen, that comes up a lot, especially in the more recent years, which is adding profit centers. I loved your talk. So, I'm going to let you run with this. I'm going to pass you the ball. On Saturday— on Thursday night, actually. I love that we had a— so, when we kicked— so, historically, we've started all of our immersions either Friday morning or Friday midday up until this point. Well, this— this year, we decided that we were going to make our immersions more robust. So, we went to a 2.5-day model. So now, we're gathering on Thursday afternoon, evening, and then we have all day Friday, all day Saturday, and it's awesome. We're doing that here globally. And so, we had an opportunity Thursday night. And so, Dr. Steve and I had an opportunity to share a message. And this is really in alignment with your message, so I'm going to let you have it, which was really about adding more value centers into your business or profit centers into your business, value centers that will become profit centers. And, this is happening a lot right now, Dr. Stephen, in chiropractic. And, you and I are— we come from the principled chiropractic background. And so, we're very dedicated to the principle and to the adjustment and all this. I'll let you jam on this for a minute. But, what I'm seeing right now is some really good things for the doctors that are ready for this. You talked about readiness to expand into a new allocation. This is another readiness one, like what your readiness score, like your aura gives you. What's your readiness score for adding in value? And to eventually be profit centers. Because if you're not ready for adding a value center, it will never become a profit center. Dr. Eric Janowitz, you want to talk about this 6th one here?

Yeah, 100%. So, it's one of my favorite subjects to speak on. I think this is where there's literally a collision of all of our passions when it comes to practice and business, right? So, it's like this is what God has given us this territory to teach, I think, right? Because at the end of the day, you started it with The chiropractic business model is broken, right? So when we talk about that, it's like we inherited a broken business model, right? So now let me say it this way, with all due respect, it's like there's a difference between owning a job and owning a business. So if you are a chiropractor who owns a practice, you're an owner-operator, single doc, you own the practice and you are the single doc that's head down, bum up, taking care of all the patients. You have an awesome practice. You have a great job that you love and you love the work, but it's a job, not a business, right? So, and you could have a beautiful life it's a lifestyle business, right? For a lifetime, right? But at the end of the day, it's like when it comes to the end of your career, somebody else is going to want to come in and take over for you and buy your job. It just, it just doesn't exit very well, right? So it's, you have a lot of exposure, but it's not really sustainable, right? So there's all kinds of impacts that that makes. But at the end of the day, I don't want to disrespect the single practitioner, the owner-operator that works. The chiropractic model is set up for that. A single doc who gets paid really well throughout their career and they have 2.5 CAs that they hired that support them, right? So that's what the business model is designed for. That business model breaks as soon as you start hiring other professionals, right? When you start bringing on associate doctors, for example, right? And the more associate doctors you bring on, the more the model breaks, right? Because at the end of the day, there's not enough margin in the chiropractic-centric, meaning adjusting-centric practice, right? So what ends up happening, Dr. Pete, is after 6 months or 9 months or 3 years, the owner doctor turns around and is like, my gosh, this business is busier. It's gotten bigger. It's more complex and more expensive. But where's the profit? Right? It's like I'm eroding all the profit. Right? At the end of the day, this is a big problem. Right? So they start resenting the associate doctors. Right? And they're like, why don't I just adjust everybody and keep all the money? Well, they're right back to having a job again and not a business. Right? So that's what I mean by the business model is broken. The truth is, is that there's just not enough profit margin in it. Right? And you can't volume your way out of a broken business model. Right? You can't adjust your way out of a jacked-up financial model, right? So that just makes people say, well, do more, do more, do more, do more. But we know the truth is, is when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you want to do is stop digging, right? So that's where so many chiro's find themselves. And some of you are listening right now being like, bro, you're talking right to me. That's exactly where I am right now. So what ends up happening, Dr. Pete, is these are smart, hardworking entrepreneurial people who are on purpose, right? So but they stop and be like, I need to start adding things to the practice so that I can make more money, right? So I can claw back some profit. And I'll tell you right now, adding things to your practice and to your recommendations so that you can add more revenue is off purpose. That's out of integrity, right? So you don't add things so you can make more money. You bring elements into the practice, whether it's goods, services, modalities that will help the patients get better health outcomes. And you want to bring these things in to support the patient care, right? So it's not about, hey, let's just add this because I can make more money. That's not going to get you there. You want to be able to add whatever it is that you believe is going to drive better health outcomes and monetize that. And very often when you add these products, services, and modalities, these are all done at a much higher profit and a higher profit margin. So this is how you claw back profit and claw back profit margin. right? So adding these other goods, services, and products, right? So at the end of the day, the most important thing is your positioning, right? It's how these ancillary products, services, and modalities are positioned that matters the most, right? So it's not your offering, it's your positioning. Because when you start throwing everything at the kitchen sink, what happens is you create confusion. right? So you start confusing yourself as the provider, you confuse your team, you confuse your patients, and you confuse the marketplace. And at the end of the day, Dr. P, we have a simple and elegant solution for humanity called chiropractic. It's the chiropractic that is our unique success proposition for humanity, right? It is a simple and elegant solution with a simple and elegant story that can be viral because people understand it and it's different. It's our unique uniqueness, right? So, and I'm talking about chiropractic. I'm talking about the principle. I'm talking about above, down, inside, out. I'm talking about innate intelligence. I'm talking about the nerve system, the spine. I'm talking about subluxation. I'm talking about the adjustment. That is our uniqueness in this marketplace, in this crowded and confused marketplace, right? So, making sure that you keep the main thing, the main thing is the main thing, right? And not creating confusion. Because confusion never converts and it never reconverts, right? So, we want to make sure that we are leading and whatever we wrap around the main thing, these products and services and modalities are all positioned properly. And they're positioned in such a way that they're either supporting the adjustment, they're accelerating the adjustment, or they're amplifying the adjustment, right? So, we call it the pivot foot, right? Like in basketball, you got to keep your foot planted, You can move the other foot all the way around, but if you ever pick up your pivot foot, then it's traveling, right? So the whistle blows. So the foot stays planted on the principle of chiropractic. That's the main thing. And then you can go 360 degrees around that and make sure that whatever you're recommending is to either support, amplify, or to accelerate the adjustment inside of one sentence, Dr. Pete, and making sure that what you're doing is Yes, it's driving better health outcomes. Yes, it is driving better profit and profit margins. But at the end of the day, it's so critical that you recognize there's a slippery slope. You do not want to create confusion. The secret is it's not in your offering, it's in the positioning. And the main thing is to keep the main thing.

Please stick around for more business insights from this week's bonus interview with our remarkable success partner, dedicated to helping you more successfully help more people. Enjoy.

Hey everyone, welcome back. This is Coach Day with Remarkable Practice, and I'm very excited to interview Margaret with Fortis. And I have interviewed her in the past, but I'm excited to learn some of the new features that Fortis unveiled or kind of teased us with the last time that we spoke. So I'm excited to hear that. And I'm also excited to hear Margaret's story. So I'm going to let her speak. But I know that she doesn't come from just any sort of background, like she's actually been where the CAs are. So I'm going to stop right there and let her tell you all her story. So welcome, Margaret.

Yes, thank you, Dr. Kevin. I appreciate you having me and I'm really excited to be able to join you and the entire TRP Tribe today. What's really cool And I think unique about my story is that before I ever represented Fortis, I served chiropractic for many years as a chiropractic office manager. So I didn't come into this industry from payments. I came into it from the front desk. I lived the chaos and I handled the money conversations and I trained the team. And I really saw firsthand what happens when the right systems are in place and what happens when they're not. Right. I've learned through the experience that the systems you implement and the mindset that you operate from, you know, really do directly determine the impact that you have in the community around you. And, you know, as we know, when the right infrastructure supports your mission, that's when growth really becomes natural. When it doesn't, even great doctors get boxed in, which I'm sure you guys have seen. And that's why I'm so excited to be here with TRP, because I know your focus is really removing that box. So I'm excited excited to, you know, share more about Fortis and not just as a payment solution but as an infrastructure that really empowers CEOs and their teams to expand that impact with confidence.

That's terrific. And for all the CEOs out there that are listening in on this, if you want scalability, you have to get the money right and you have to be able to collect the money right. So that, that's what I absolutely love about Fortis. And I'll, I'll give them the compliment that I've used Fortis for years now, and it's that amazing software that runs in the background that just it's there, right? You never have to worry about it not working or failing. We've never had an issue. So I can speak from personal experience the tremendous value that you guys create. And for me, it's like not ever needing to worry about it, right? It's there, it's operating. And, and that's what allows us to have the not only the durability, but also the scalability. So let me go and ask you some questions here, Margaret. So what is the specific problem that Fortis really does solve? Right? So all businesses they exist to solve a problem for another person. What is it that you guys solve for the busy chiropractor?

At the highest level, we solve constraint. You know, most chiropractors are capable of serving more people than they currently do, but they're constrained, and their lack of operational leverage really has them constrained by inefficient systems, by transactional energy at the front desk, by unpredictable cash flow, by burnout, right? And the real tragedy isn't lost revenue, it's lost impact. You know, when a practice is stuck in a pay-per-visit reactive model, it forces the team to spend their day talking about money instead of mission. And that's when your culture shifts, and not in a positive way. So Fortis really removes that constraint. We build automated recurring revenue infrastructure and seamless payment experiences that allow practices to operate from stability instead of survival. And when revenue becomes predictable and invisible, as you're saying, right, the energy at the front desk and, you know, the energy coming from leadership shifts. And when energy shifts, culture strengthens. And when culture strengthens, growth accelerates. So we don't just process payments. We build a financial infrastructure that allows doctors to expand expand their impact.

That's right. And you hit on something that I think was crucial, and it probably landed right between the eyes with a lot of people that are listening, which is like how that pay-as-you-go model can disrupt everything, right? And it shifts the culture of what your, what your staff is doing. And you, you lived that, right? So I mean, rather than them focusing on like promotion of what's going on in the practice, they're, they're focused on collecting payment and, you know, reconvincing that patient to, to come back in and And that's a heavy lift. Like, those are the cinder block patients rather than, you know, building, building the wellness culture. So I couldn't agree with you more on that. So what is the ROI or the return on investment that the CEOs listening can expect from investing in Fortis?

Well, I know, Dr. Kevin, you and other TRP coaches know and understand that ROI is not just margin improvement, right? It's optionality. When you're implementing the right systems, you create leverage. So I want to be able to talk about ROI in 4 different dimensions. One, cultural ROI, right? A-players don't leave because they hate chiropractic, right? They leave because systems suffocate them. And when your front desk, as you were just mentioning, right, when they're spending all day managing those microtransactions, navigating those money objections that really should never be on their plate, right, your A-players start to shrink. To their surroundings, or they walk. And TRP CEOs understand something that most leaders don't with the TRP coaching, and it's that your A-players who drive, you know, they're the ones who drive outcomes. Not always your marketing, not always your tech stack or your scripts, right? It's your people. So you have to protect those A-players as the invaluable assets that they truly are. Recurring revenue and automation don't just streamline the workflow. Flow. They reduce the cognitive load. They eliminate the daily friction. They prevent that burnout, right? And they shift the conversation at the front desk from how much you owe to who else do you know that we can help. It really does. Yeah, it protects your culture and it moves your team away from that transactional type of energy to transformational. And you know, when your team owns the mission with you, That's when you really scale.

That's right. Everyone in the boat rowing in the same direction, right? I mean, that is such a crucial thing. And when they don't have the tools to do that, I mean, that's, that's paralyzing to a team and to the growth and the trajectory of a practice. So well said on that. And so I'm excited.

Oh, I did have 4 operational or ROI pieces that I wanted to connect on. So the second one was, uh, the operational ROI. So, you know, the predictable recurring revenue really does change how the leaders are leading. Instead of them asking, you know, are we going to hit numbers this month? You know, they really start to ask, you know, how do we expand next quarter? It's a shift from survival thinking to strategic thinking, and it means everything. You know, by implementing the automated payment plans for corrective and wellness care, care plan compliance improves, the collections stabilize, lifetime value increases, and cash flow becomes predictable. And predictable cash flow gives you confidence, right? Confidence to hire, confidence to market, confidence to expand. So it really is important for the infrastructure that's going to be supporting growth from launch all the way to exit.

And I, I, I mean, you guys make it sound like a no-brainer, and I, and I think because it truthfully is, like, this is such an integral part of growth. You know, it's, it's the next question that I get really excited about because we were talking about it beforehand. Um, so let me go and ask you this, uh, so, you know, considering, you know, what is important next, and as you guys look ahead and assess the needs of our profession as chiropractors, how are you helping doctors be prepared to succeed in the future?

Yeah, so we have some really exciting things, and one story that actually happened just this week, um, it was the real story from just Monday this week where a high-volume practice that collecting $140,000 per month in credit card volume, thought that their rates were really competitive, but they reached out to see if they were truly getting the best rate available for their technology needs. So they were already running recurring payments and had integrated payments and were just kind of shopping around to make sure they had the best rate. Well, we ran a statement analysis, and when we did, we found that they were overpaying by nearly $7,000 per month, not annually. I mean, most gyros would be extremely excited about $7,000 annually. No, this was per month, and that's over $250,000 across 3 years' time. And that's not a minor optimization, right? That's another associate, that's expansion capital, that's marketing fuel, that's exit leverage. So I mean, I can just have The, the CEO's kind of dreaming and imagining what it would be like to build if one operational shift returned a quarter million dollars back into your mission. And most CEOs don't know what margin that they're leaking until someone shows them. And the final place for ROI is really in reliability, right? And this kind of touches back on what you said in the very beginning when you were giving your testimonial about using Fornace. Cash is oxygen. You don't notice oxygen until it's gone, right? But we've seen other gateways, and actually just within the last 2 weeks, we had another gateway in the payment space that went down for 14 days. Weeks, weeks of no collections, no deposits, total operational disruption. And when that happens, it's not just inconvenient, it's destabilizing, right? Payroll is still running, rent is still due, marketing bills still hit. So Fortis has earned industry recognition for industry-leading uptime and next-day funding. So just as you said, we've never had an issue, we've never had a downtime, right? That's because our system is award-winning in that space, and we understand that reliability isn't a feature, it's infrastructure. And if your payment system isn't reliable, And then you really don't have a scaling business, you have a risk.

That's right. Well said. Well said. I know we only have a couple minutes left here, but you did make mention of something on a cell phone that maybe our viewers would be interested in hearing about. Could you speak to that for just a moment?

Yes. Yes. So with our chiropractors, we understand that they're going to be out in the field, right? They're no longer confined to an office. They're in their communities, corporate events, dinner talks. On social platforms. And so we want to make sure that payments can travel with them. And so that's why we've built advanced payment technology that are designed specifically for Kairos. And one of those new features that you're mentioning is ready for early adopters, and it is tap to pay on iPhone. So any Kairos that are going to be using our Fortis mobile app can actually turn their iPhone into a tap-to-pay device, no terminal. No hardware, no friction, keeps it very smooth and allows those practices to be able to operate intelligently as they continue to scale and make an impact in their communities.

It's amazing. That really is. And I look forward to using that personally. I mentioned I have a Dinner with a Doc next month, and, uh, and I'll certainly be using that. So thank you for that, Margaret. What's the easiest way for our listeners to get a hold of you, to get more contact, and, and, you know, potentially take a look at their numbers?

Yes, the simplest way is to go to go.fortispay.com/trp. You can book a strategy call. We'll review your statements, we'll identify any margin leaks, and we'll show you exactly where opportunity exists. No pressure, just data, just insight. And if you're interested in becoming an early adopter for the Tap to Pay on iPhone, we ask that you email Cairo at support@fortispay.com, throw in a subject line, early adopter, include your website and best contact info, and we'll guide you from there.

That's terrific. I'm going to be doing that as well. So, Margaret, thank you very much for your time, and, and I appreciate all the knowledge.

Yes, thank you, Dr. Kevin. Have a great day.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Remarkable CEO Podcast. Remember, what the world needs now is chiropractic, and what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, share with a friend, and leave us a review.

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