353 - Where You Should Be Investing Dollars in Your Chiropractic Business for the Best ROI

I remember, Dr. Stephen, I was told early on, like when I launched my business first time, that the best investment that I could do is to reinvest in my business. That would be the smartest thing that I could do of all of the investments I could make. It was just number one investment you're ever going to do is to reinvest inside into yourself and into your business. So, number one, I just want to speak to all of you for listening in. Hey, you're making an investment in yourself right now just by— tuning in.

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.

I'm Dr. Stephen Franson.

I hope you are feeling remarkable today. You are remarkable. That is who you are. And it is an honor for me to be here in the studio with you, Dr. Stephen, with all of you who are tuning in today. Hey, if this is your first time listening to the Remarkable CEO Podcast, Welcome aboard. We have been at it for years, and if this is your first episode, that is amazing, and we're happy to have you. So welcome. If you're a regular listener, hey, welcome back. Thanks for joining us today. Dr. Stephen, you and I, it's a privilege and an honor for us to each week come to the table and bring a message that we feel is needed in the marketplace. We hope that our messages serve you. They inspire you. They challenge you. They help give you some better clarity and greater direction in terms of how to move forward in creating a more remarkable business and a more remarkable life. And today, we're going to talk about something that I learned early in practice. We're going to talk about the word investment. I remember, Dr. Stephen, I was told early on, like when I launched my business first time, that the best investment that I could do is to reinvest in my business, that that would be the smartest thing that I could do of all of the investments I could make, it was just number one investment you're ever going to do is to reinvest inside into yourself and into your business. So, number one, I just want to speak to all of you for listening in. Hey, you're making an investment in yourself right now just by tuning in. And we're going to get in between the ears and then hopefully some of it will drip down and drop down into the heart. And then totally some of it will extend all the way down to your hands and your feet. We're going to do something about it because we don't want to just give you guys information to chew on and think about. We want to give you things to to take action on. And Dr. Stephen, I believe this episode, we're going to do that because our topic is about investing in your business and where to find the greatest ROI.

Yeah, man, I'm psyched for this conversation. I love talking about money because money follows value, right? So, and it's a really easy way for people to understand is like, okay, so I'm in a position where I want to be able to add more value into my community, right? So, money follows value. So, when you take that perspective, it's like, I raised my kids being like, hey, you want to make a lot of money, solve a lot of problems. You want to make a lot of money, help a lot of people, right? So, it's just like that. He's like, if you have the attitude in your life of like, I'm going to solve a lot of problems and help a lot of people, right? You'll have more money than you know what to do with. Like, it's just such a great way to go through life or start life is like, man, I really want to make a lot of money. Awesome. Figure out how to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. Go help a lot of people, right? So, my kids have heard that from me more than one time. So, this conversation is going to be all about all that. Of the above, right? Because at the end of the day, money does follow value, right? So I love that you leaned in on investing in yourself first, right? So because we are in the catbird seat, guys, right? So you're a business owner. So what you have to recognize is that almost all of the financial advice that you hear out there just doesn't apply to you. I don't know if anybody's ever told you that before. It's like most of the advice that you hear in the marketplace is for what I call the civilian, not the business owner, right? It's just like you've You gotta recognize that you are in the catbird seat. You have the opportunity as a business owner to really chart a different course, right? So, I'm a big believer in having an investment strategy. I love the law of dominion. You hear me say that all the time. It's like, God's gonna bless you with abundance categorically where you display and demonstrate the capacity to manage well the things that he's entrusted you with already, right? So, having an investment strategy with your treasure is such an important part of that. And it's, I think it's probably the most obvious way to demonstrate the capacity to manage well what you've been entrusted with, right? So to look at it and be able to say, okay, so I want an investment strategy that I'm going to optimize that, right? So money is a heart issue. It's like whatever you end up doing with the money is what's important, right? So it's always a heart issue. I want to see everybody here increase their abundance, right? So I want chiropractors to be abundant. right? So as a business owner, you have the ability to chart a different course. So we're going to introduce this concept of ROIC. You've heard us talk about it before, but let's unpack it a little bit, this whole concept of return on invested capital. And in this episode, we're going to unpack where are the opportunities where you can really invest in your business, right? So Dr. Pete, there's lots of ways you can invest your money. We've talked about this in the past. It's like you've got lots of options, right? So optionality, Where should I put my money? Whether you've got an extra $5,000 or $50,000 or $500,000 and you're trying to figure out how to invest that, man, there's lots of choices out there. You could put it in the stock market and invest in the S&P 500, right? So you could put it in real estate, right? So you could give it to your brother-in-law for his, you know, his new fireworks stand that he is going to open up. So he is like, you can put it into an insurance policy, a whole life insurance policy, right? Or you could be investing it in your business, right? So in the business that you own, right? So I'd love to say that there's a reason to invest in all of the above, right? So maybe not the fireworks stand, right? But you know, you can put money into the stock market and the purpose of investing in the stock market is to mitigate inflation, right? So yes, you should put money into real estate, right? So the purpose of investing in real estate is to mitigate taxation, right? So, Investing in your business is so that you can create wealth. It's about building wealth, right? And insurance, of course, is just protecting that wealth and your future generation's wealth, right? So I'll always look at the platforms and say, what am I trying to accomplish? And recognize that there are different opportunities out there. But I want to encourage people to make decisions based on their unique position of they can get the greatest return on their invested capital in their business. right? So if you look at the S&P 500, you go back the last 10 years, 50 years, you're going to see somewhere around 9% to 10% return on your money, which is fantastic, right? So if you look at real estate, same thing, 9% to 10%, 10.5% return on investment over the last 10 to 50 years. So, you know, looking at whether it's commercial or residential, but your money's illiquid, right? So if you look at investing in your own business across the average of industries, you're going to see around 35% return on invested capital, right? So we're comparing 9% with 10% with 30%. 5% when you're talking literally apples-to-apples comparison. Dr. Pete, we're in the catbird seat. First stop with my money is always investing in my business.

So, let's talk about investing in your business. As you are listening in, this is a conversation that we want to have with you today because if you've been listening to the previous few episodes, I would say actually most of our episodes, Dr. Stephen, in 2026 have been really business-focused. Data-driven, numbers-driven, money-focused, profitability-focused conversation. So, we have been in a groove, I would say a groove of dropping lots of gold and lots of content. So, if you haven't listened to some of our previous episodes, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them because they actually build on one another. And some of the things that we're even going to talk about in this episode, we've touched on in some of the other episodes that we've done. So, we're going to talk about where to find the greatest ROIC, return on invested capital, Let's start with the first area. And Dr. Stephen, one of the things that we teach the CEOs who we work with is that when they ask the question, well, how much should I be investing in my marketing? That's a great question. I think we've taught people to ask that question as well because I don't know if people thought to ask that question before. So, you should be asking the question, well, how much money should I be investing in my marketing as an example? And there's layers to that question. So, we'll keep it simple. We recommend at a high level, 8 to 12% of your top line revenue goal. And again, that's a, that's a good starting place for this conversation. There are those who we know and we work with who would push the envelope on some of these things as well. And then there are some that are more conservative. So you've got higher risk takers on the high end, and then you've got people that are a little bit more conservative, maybe on the lower end, but there's a huge area of opportunity right here. So Dr. Stephen, let's talk about the first area where we can find the greatest ROIC, and that is in our marketing. And then in our lead generation.

So, you know, this is an important thing. Like where you left it is some people are more risk tolerant, some people are less risk tolerant. I really would love to pull the emotion out of this, right? So to be able to say, it's like, once you figure out your marketing, that 8 to 12% of your top line revenue goal is part of a projection for your budget, right? So that's at a minimum. So you, what you should be saying to yourself is I need to optimize my marketing so that I know that I'm going to get a strong return on my investment. And if I'm going to be earmarking 8% to 12% of my top line revenue goal for marketing, right? So here's what I very often see is doctors are terrified at the idea of like investing. They start doing the math on what is 8% to 12% of my top line revenue goal look like? How does that look like on a monthly and a quarterly basis? Like, holy crap, I'm not even close to that. I'm only spending like $1,500 on my, you know, my fractional digital marketing expert. That's the agency fee. And then I spend another $2,000 on ad spend. And then I spend maybe another $2,000 a month on, on the various marketing elements of my brand. So I'm, I'm spending, you know, somewhere $3,000, $4,000 a month on marketing and they're not even close to where you want to be. That's not even sustenance level.

Right.

So as far as never mind growing a business and what makes matters worse, Dr. Beat, is most of that money there. Lighting on fire because they don't know what they're doing in marketing. They don't even know that they don't know what they're doing in marketing because they don't know how to measure their marketing. They don't understand the economics of my, like, what are the metrics? What are the KPIs I should be monitoring? You know, we've gone deep on those in previous podcast episodes, as you've said, right? So you can go back and you can look at it like the marketing metrics conversations. But at the end of the day, you need to understand CAC, cost to acquire a customer. You need to understand LTV, lifetime value, and you need to understand your LTV CAC ratio. And if you don't know what those numbers are, you're guessing. And if you're guessing, there's no way you're optimizing it, right? So Dr. Pete, you want to dial in that LTV/CAC ratio and you get more specific with LTGP/CAC ratio. So LTV is lifetime value, guys, to cost to acquire a customer, right? So lifetime value is like, what does the average customer pay you over a lifetime? In other words, if you look at your lifetime value of a patient, What do they pay you over their entire arc of their entire relationship with you? That's your LTV, your lifetime value. And the CAC is the cost required customer. In other words, take all of your marketing and sales expenses in converting a customer. In other words, converting a new patient. That's your CAC or cost required customer. You want to look at those as a ratio. Let's say if you have like, I have a $400 cost required customer as my CAC, and I have a $4,000 lifetime value of a customer, you have a 10 to 1 ratio LTV CAC, right? So it's, 10, 4,000 to 1, 400, right? So 4,000 to 400 is a 10 to 1 LTV CAC ratio, right? So I know I can be blinding when I start rolling through these numbers like this, but I want you guys to understand, it's like, if you don't know these numbers, you don't know if you're performing right, right? So do you have a 3 to 1? Do you have a 6 to 1 LTV CAC? Do you have a 9 to 1, 12 to 1, right? So, and what is good? What should you be shooting for? Dr. Pete, we want to see our docs getting somewhere between a 6 to 1 and a 9 to 1. LTGP CAC ratio. In other words, lifetime value times gross profit gives you LTGP. At the end of the day, you have to know your data. It has to be, it has to be data-driven or there's no way that you are optimizing it. So, at the end of the day, what you want to be able to do is track these metrics, understanding what your cost to acquire a customer is, what your lifetime value is, what your lifetime gross profit is, so that you know, is my marketing performing the way it should be? Once you optimize it, then you push much more money into it. Like you're probably going to end up doubling or tripling your marketing spend, right? So this is again, is the double whammy. You know, you're lighting money on fire because you're guessing and you don't really know what you're doing in marketing or measuring your marketing. So now you're wasting those monies and then you're also opportunity lost, the opportunity cost of not investing in marketing that works. Where you can really grow the practice, right? So first stop in marketing in your practice is get your marketing dialed in and then probably double and triple your investment and drive real growth and profit in the business.

Yeah. As I'm listening to you say this, I'm just reflecting on our own business and I'm reflecting on so many businesses that we get visibility into on a daily basis. And, you know, this is a, this is a point of exposure. So if we just covered that today, we're going to hit on a few more things. For you today, but that one alone is going to be a game changer. If this is 2026 and you're listening to this episode and we're in the beginning of the second quarter at this point. So you have an opportunity right now to shift the energy in your business by reinvesting in this area to really grab the marketing side and go after this. I'm going to encourage you guys to really get some good counsel on this and start investing more into this because I know you're going to jump in here, Dr. Stephen, because what I've seen is that I've seen the other side. Once doctors decide to go all in and do it and overcome the— like you said, pull the emotion out of it and just make it a numbers conversation. Where I see a lot of doctors are stressing— so if you're stressed listening to this, if you're stressing a little bit hearing Dr. Stephen and it's hitting you where it needs to hit you, hopefully you're not stressing because you've been guessing because you don't know. You've got to have visibility into these numbers. We need to know these numbers. We need to be able to have an intelligent conversation with you. You need to have an intelligent conversation with yourself and with your team so that you know, hey, based on the numbers, I know exactly what I'm doing here. I know exactly the investments that I'm going to be making in my marketing. And I know what my— I know my LTV/CAC ratios. I know where I'm at right now. I know what my top line revenue goal is. And I know that I'm not where I need to be in terms of my investment. And as a result on that, because of that, I'm going to choose to consciously make the investment, invest those dollars and then track it. So it's huge.

For anybody who is right now just freaking out, just hearing this first of 4 bullets that we're going to cover. If you need help with this, we will help you. Like, if you're like, oh my gosh, this is awful. I don't know what I'm doing. You know what? You're not alone. This is like most people listening right now are like, oh my gosh, I don't know any of those numbers. Let us help you. There's a link here somewhere in the show notes. Set up a call with us. We will talk you through this. We'll teach you this, right? So bring your metrics. If you don't have metrics in the call, we'll teach you how to get your metrics, what metrics to track, what they mean, and how to influence them, right? So we're here for you guys. Just click the link and schedule a call with us. So sorry to interrupt that, Dr. Pete, but I just, I don't want to leave people hanging out there.

No, you're good. And actually, I, we, you know, Dr. Steve and I, we've, we've both, we've had calls over the years with folks that are listening to this podcast and it's always, I love it. It's always energizing. So Definitely reach out to us. We are— we're here. I mean, we're here to serve you. This is why we exist right now, is to serve this profession in this capacity.

So, 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 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.

That's number one. Number two, Dr. Stephen, and we've talked about this a lot over the last months and particularly, and we hit this quite a bit at our immersion. I would hit this in recent episodes, which is Number 2 is adding on bolt-on business or additional profit centers, value centers, profit centers into your business. Now, coming from Dr. Stephen, you would have never maybe expected to hear this coming out of that man's mouth. You might not have expected to hear this coming out of my mouth and you think Dr. Stephen, Dr. Pete, TRP, it's all about chiropractic principle, chiropractic lifetime family wellness care. Guess what? What you need to know about us is that it's not about the offering, it's about the positioning. And you'll hear us say that a lot. We know what the main thing is. And the main thing is the main thing and that's not going to change. And so, the only time I have this conversation with a client and we begin to actually execute on this is when we've got the business dialed in, the main thing dialed in, and we're ready for adding on a bolt-on business to add on another value center, profit center. I have multiple doctors last— so, last year was 2025. And I added a tremendous amount of profit centers to businesses last year that have been working with us for months and years. And I'm doing it again this year, but it's a readiness consideration. It's, do you have your business in the place that it needs to be? And are you ready to bring this on? So, Dr. Eric Janowitz, let's talk about the second way that we can be investing in our business and you could be investing in your business this year and where to find the greatest ROI, return on invested capital, by adding a full-time business or profit et cetera.

Yeah, and we've had this conversation in quite a few episodes previous to this, so if you like this topic, it's very easy to find, uh, episodes where we've just had a dedicated conversation around this, right? So ultimately, you said it already, which is the main thing is to keep the main thing, right? So this is not about the offering, it's about the positioning. So I love the expression that you can't fire a cannon from a rowboat, and so many chiropractors out there are trying to do just that. right? So, you bolt cannons onto battleships, right? So, and when you hear battleships, what you should hear is infrastructure, systems, processes, procedures, culture, team, having a culture of training, having a culture of implementation, integration, right? So, reporting systems and meeting rooms, that's a battleship. But beyond that, there is a spirit, of the, they understand the principle, right? So part of being a battleship is the main thing is the main thing, and that's well established, right? So that is the essence of having a battleship, if you will, right? So it's not just the metal, right? It's, it's just, it's not just the structure, right? So it is the culture and the essence, the paradigm of that practice, right? And then, and the leader and everyone on the team understanding that the main thing is the main thing. You can't just be adding things into the practice just to make more money, right? So that is off purpose, right? So, and out of integrity, in my opinion, right? So we can bring things into our practice to make them available to our patients. Think about, I mean, you come to the Franson house, man, we are a hardcore principled chiropractic family. I can tell you that right now. And we use all that shit. So it's like, you go to my house, we are, if it's in the wellness lifestyle, it's in the Franson house, right? So it is absolutely, part of our process, our day-to-day. So, if it's good enough for the Fransens and we're using it to support our adjustments, to amplify our adjustments, and to accelerate our adjustments, why wouldn't we make that available to the families that trust us to help them get the best possible outcomes? The onus is on us to position it properly so we don't create confusion in the marketplace, right? So, confusion never converts and it certainly never reconverts, right? So, make sure that you keep the main thing and absolutely, bolt on those products, services, modalities that you know will accelerate the patient's results, the clinical results, and just recognize that what you're taking on is the responsibility of positioning it properly, Dr. Pete. This is all about patient education and it requires extraordinary discipline.

So one of my favorite conversations that I get to have with docs is about their physical space. So one of the things we do when we first onboard with a new client is we have them send us their floor plan. It's just part of the, I would say, the gathering of the paperwork when we first start working with a new client. We look at stats, we look at floor plan, a bunch of other, there's several other things.

We want to look at your team and understand your marketing.

Let me see your care plans, things like that. So the physical plant, this is our next area, Dr. Stephen, we're going to be looking at reinvesting. And we work with an amazing, one of our success partners, Davlin Design. I love the conversations I have with Glenn David. He's been serving the profession for a long time. And what he talks about is a functional audit of the business. And that's what we're recommending right now is that you take a really good hard look at your physical plant. You take a good hard look at your equipment that you have right now and say, "You know what? Is this optimized functionally? Is it optimized for growth, for maximum output, right? Or is there a dysfunction in the design, in the layout, in the flow? Or is there a dysfunction or a breakdown in the equipment or a lack of equipment. I'll give you an example, Dr. Stephen, in my own office. This was a game changer for me. So, we grew fast if you remember early years. And, my first practice that I had built, it's like 1,785 square feet. And, I remember within 1 year when patients start coming in, it's like, "Man, you guys are— there's a lot of people in this place. You need a bigger office." I'm like, "Bro, I signed a 5-year lease. It's year 1. I'm going to be here for a while." I think. So anyway, I realized, so we made so many modifications to that office. By the time I left, I still remember, I'm like, God, how many times did we knock down walls, put up walls, paint, repaint walls? It was just fun. But man, it was the Wild West out there. We were just hanging on for dear life. But I'll tell you what, every year we were remodeling our office. Every year because we needed, it was like, it's not working. This isn't working. All right, that wall's got to come down. We're going to shift this one. We're going to change where we do this appointment. It's got to happen over here now because That's not working. It's taking too much time. It's interrupting flow. We need that space for something more important right now. We went down, we went from 2 bathrooms to 1 bathroom. I mean, we took everything and we just optimized. Get that toilet out of there. Every single—

That's now a hot seat.

100%. This is a conversation you want to have about your physical plan and doing a thorough audit of the space. I remember when I just added one more adjusting table. And what a difference that made, you know, opening up that room just for one more, like, oh my God, like it was game changer. I was like, ah, this is so much better now. I could walk between 3 instead of just 2 tables. And then eventually I had 4 and it was like, wow. So looking at your business in terms of how do you invest, where to invest, we talked about the greatest investment is investing in your business with the greatest ROI. So analyzing your physical plant right now, and equipment. And I'm just going to give them a shout out because Dabbling is awesome. If you guys are looking for somebody to give you a— it's a free assessment. They'll do this audit. They do it for TRP docs. Let them know that we sent you. Have a chat with them. Throw them your floor plan. Say, hey, we're running into some bottlenecks. We're not sure what to do. They'll do it for you. And I love those guys and what they're up to as just an example. But Dr. Steven, I know you've got some thoughts on this because this one is, you know, just a low-hanging fruit.

Oh, it's right back. I'm going down memory lane there. That was just awesome. Right. So, you know, we have this Rubik's Cube troubleshooting process that we take everything through. right? This is just a framework to be able to say what's going on. Is this, you know, you go through the 6 sides of the room. Is it a vision problem? Right? So is it a leadership problem? Is it a systems problem? Is it a people problem? Is it an energy problem? Like going through it. There's actually a 7th side of the Rubik's Cube, Dr. Pete. And it's like, this is a Sawzall problem. We need, we need to saw a hole in that wall. And anybody that's ever been in exactly knows what I'm talking about. It's like, you need to, we need to cut a hole in that wall right there. Get out the Sawzall. And we had so many Sawzall weekends where we're just like, that's got to go. I'm Is this a structural wall? Like, I don't care. Just cut a hole in it. Just a little passageway, right? So, it's so fun to hear that because ultimately, guys, there's an actual container, right? So, the natural state of our practice is growth. So, you need to look at your physical plant and look at the crazy 8. You know, one of the crazy 8s is your flow, your layout, right? And then the other one is your flow, like how things flow through. And when you're moving that many bodies, and it's all relative, right? So, it's like, there are bottlenecks in your practice that is costing you flow, right? And flow is really expensive. And then equipment, like you said, going from 2 tables to 3 tables to 4 tables, right? So maybe you have, you know, I'm finally going to put in a digital X-ray suite. Oh my gosh, people referring people out for X-rays, how inconvenient that is for everybody, right? So it creates wicked friction when it comes to people converting to care and staying under care, right? So, or maybe you have 2 inside subluxation stations, right? So you have 2 HRV measurement machines or 2 thermal imaging machines. It's like, Like, just think about it. It's like, man, if we do just double it up and have 2 progress exam centers, right? So whatever it takes, like invest in the equipment that you need to deliver the best possible care and increase the creative vacuum for your business to be pulled forward and grow into. It's like you are just stepping on dollars to pick up nickels. You should be looking for ways to just invest in your physical plant and equipment so that you can serve more people, right? So you have Throughput and throughput drives output.

All right.

So last one, Dr. Pete, hiring and developing your team of A players. How much can we say this? How often can we talk about this? It's A players only, period, hard stop. If you don't listen to us when we say that, everything else, just delete it. Just delete it. Save us all. Just delete. So nothing else matters. A players only, period, hard stop. A players cost more. So it's going to be, you know, 20% above market, right? So, you know, if you're trying to hire an associate doctor, you're like, well, I want to hire an associate doctor for, you know, $65,000 base plus bonus. Good luck with that. So at the end of the day, those, you know, the joint right now is hiring doctors right out of school for $104,000 starting salary. Right. So there you go. This is going to suck up 700 graduates. It's like they can make 100. What are you paying your people? Right. A-players. Find your A-players. You got to pay them to pull them into your business, right? And you got to pay them to keep them. But you know what? If you look at the economics of this, we all know the truth. And one A player does the work of two B players and probably does the work of three C players, right? So guess what? You still win. Just do the math, right? It's A players only. And you want to be tracking the metric we want to be looking at is there's two numbers we want to pay attention to, which is RPE, revenue per employee ratio, and PPE, which is profit per employee ratio. You want to know that you're optimizing your people. In other words, you're getting the greatest return on the invested capital in your business. As you hire people to create greater capacity to serve more people and deserve and deliver more care, that's investing ahead of that growth, right? So to pull the business forward, your revenue per employee is the threshold. It's what's going to inform, am I getting the return for my investment? I want to see $250,000 in annual revenue per full-time employee equivalent. Am I seeing that out of my people? Number one, that tells you whether you're being effective or not, right? Whether your people are being effective or not. If you see that your numbers, man, I'm actually over that $250,000, I'm at $360,000 per full-time employee. It's like, well, then you are stressing your team. They are overwhelmed and they're pumping the brakes, right? So you have key man risk, right? So that's called being tall, but narrow and you're ready to topple if you lose one key player, right? So, you, it's time to hire. In fact, you're late to the party, right? So if you're down to $125,000 per full-time employee, you're what's called wide but thin, right? So you don't see the revenue underneath the people that you should be seeing when you're talking about $250,000 as the remarkable standard for revenue per employee. So that's measuring effectiveness. PPE is measuring efficiency, right? So that's the profit per employee. And what you do simply there to calculate that profitability is you take that RPE, your revenue per employee ratio, and you multiply it by your gross profit margin. That's gonna give you your profit per employee. So, at the end of the day, guys, listen, no money, no mission, no profit, no purpose. These 4 bullets, marketing, lead generation, bolt-on business and profit centers, physical plant and equipment, hiring and developing your team of A-players. This is where you should, as the business owner, take advantage of the fact that you are in the catbird seat and you should be investing in your business. You should be optimizing your ROIC, your return on invested capital.

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.

All right, TRP crew. I'm Dr. Rachel Hovey here, and I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Kendall Price here. So Dr. Kendall Price is with Elevate Media, and we have been a privilege of viewing you guys over the past couple of months. And like probably many of us CEOs listening to this, we have been flooded with different marketing agencies and all the digital stuff that we can do. So I would love to hear more about what you guys do and just about your company in general.

Yeah, well, thanks, Doc. I, I think that The biggest sort of differentiating point between Elevate and a lot of companies out there, it's kind of— I mean, besides the sort of nuts and bolts sort of things that we do, it's the approach that we take in that I don't want to be a marketing, digital marketing vendor for you. I want to be a growth partner with a practice to actually help them grow because I understand what it's like to run a TRP practice. Understand how the systems and philosophies work. And so doing that, we can now plug into running paid ad strategies, we can plug into helping with Dinner with the Doc stuff, we can help plug into, you know, health talks and SEO and AEO and making sure you show up in your local presence. So we understand what it is like to run a practice. I mean, I ran a six-figure-a-month practice before I sold it, and, you know, and before I took over doing what I'm doing now. And so I understand what, what is required. And I think that one of the things that really makes the differentiator is just communication, making sure that we're staying on top of talking with our clients on a week-in and week-out basis to understand how the market is shifting to help clients get the best results for sure.

And especially in this digital world where it is changing so quickly on all the things. Again, speaking for myself and experience, so we, we've used some other digital companies in the past and all were fine. But one of my favorite things, I feel like what you guys do is you really listen to us. And you, I think, being a chiropractor, understand how we all feel like we have the most unique practices, right? But we do want our ads to feel like they're ours and not just like copy paste. And then you get targeted the person 20 miles down the road. That's the same ad, right? So maybe speak to on how you guys feel you're able to connect with the client on that level and what you do like above and beyond, because I do feel like you do.

Yeah, so I mean, I think the first thing is understanding who a practice is and understanding like, are we the type of practice where it's like, look, I love slaying subluxations and that's all I want to do, or like I'm decomp and soft wave and chiro and all of these things, like understanding what it is that you are trying to accomplish and then tailoring solutions to actually work. Because we've worked with practices who do all of those things and we know what works And so like it's sometimes the difference of like, okay, here's my brand, here's straight marketing, what we know is going to work, and then taking those two things and blending them together to get the result where it's, yes, we're getting the results, but we're also keeping on the brand of where we need to be as a business. And I think that is something that not a lot of agencies, they only focus on this, but the middle ground is where, where that really focuses. And so our approach is tailored that way where, you know, we sit and we look before we ever start running an ad, we go in and we look at the market demographics in your area because, you know, someone who wants— I mean, I know that you guys are— you guys do a lot of peds and prenatal and those sort of things. That makes sense in a suburb where there's lots of families. That doesn't make sense if you're right outside of a— or you're living in an area where it's nothing but elderly people. It's like those two things don't match. And so being able to, to like, okay, I understand, here's what we need to— how we need to focus the strategy. Beyond that, you know, I think that one of the other biggest differentiators besides what I already mentioned would be in communication with our team, because you meet with us weekly or biweekly, is we have a call center that is trained on how to move patients into practices. That's not just someone calling and saying, yeah, I saw you submitted your information, let's get you scheduled. It's building emotional connection, finding out what's going on with them, you know, what makes— what's their motivating factor, and then positioning them. So it's, it's the trust-building process. And so I always look at Elevate— we're a marketing system for digital, and there's a lot of pieces, just like when we do our day ones or our day twos, or how we see people from R1 through R4. What are we doing to be able to get patients in the door? And if you don't have a system for that, Even when it comes to digital, you're already behind the game because it, it, there are multiple steps along the way.

Mm-hmm.

Well, and conversion always starts from trust retention. All the, every, it starts from trust, right? And if you guys can build that from the beginning with the ads, with the new patients, the calling in and having that like TRP, like groundwork, that makes a huge difference for us with that conversion down the road. It's all, it's, that's 100% about it, right?

Yeah. And you know, so I, when we get on with new clients, I, I sit down and I go through and I explain to them that like, look, if a patient sees your ad at a 1, they're not going from— and they walk into your door at a 10, they're not going from 1 to 10 with a 30-second ad. That's where we need to build resources in the middle for our booking and landing pages to like, this is where we build intention, this is where we build trust. This is how we get people to answer the sort of questions of who are you? What do you do? Why should I see you? What do you stand for? What do other people say about you? Because when we have those, Now when we get into text messages and calls and emails and the things that we do to bring patients in the door, it all works together as a system to get that person to the 10 to walk through your door.

So one thing I do love about you guys too is when we have our 1-to-1 calls, you come in, you're like, let's switch this up, let's change this, let's put money here, let's, you know, and as a CEO, obviously a big thing when you're investing into this is like, what kind of ROI do I get? So how do you guys determine that and how are you constantly changing it? And what do clients like maybe can expect when you guys have ROI and new patient recognition, that type of thing?

Yeah, I mean, so number one, how we are looking at things and trying to drive the decision is, is like you hired us as a fractional CMO in your practice to be able to say on a digital perspective what's working, what's not, to be able to look at this and say, well, hey, we had great numbers come in from this ad and this one not so much. This— we're going to turn this off. We need to create more content like this. Because that's what's bringing people through your doors. And, you know, one of the things that we do that's a little bit different is we aren't optimizing for cost per lead. We're optimizing for cost per show. Those numbers are important for us. But here's the thing. If an ad— if you've got 2 ads running and one, one has 10 people that opted in and the other has 5, but all 5 of these showed and none of these showed, this ad is better than this one. And so most marketing agencies are going to say, let's ramp this, and I'm saying, let's ramp this. And so that, that plays into the overall picture, and we send that back, that information back to Facebook to say, this is what we want. And so that helps. And so, so I run these numbers about every 90 days. Our average client is going to see about a 4x return on their investment. And I mean, we've got some that are doing 15 X, great. Obviously they're doing a lot of things really well. Great markets, great marketing, great everything there. Some markets just aren't like that. You know, I, I always say like some of the markets in Phoenix or like Little Rock, Arkansas, like it's crazy how like I would have died to have the sort of numbers in practice that they do. But some markets are just a little bit tougher. And so, but yeah, that's, I mean, our expectation, like I'm not really happy if someone isn't there. Like, and that's what I'm striving to make sure that we can do. And then, you know, and then when we sit and we look at our ROI and our investment dollars to be able to say, okay, where do we put more money to be able to optimize this? It needs to be strategic and systemized to do so.

Absolutely. Cool. And as you look at the world of technology and everything advancing very fast with all the AI, all that kind of stuff, What are you guys, you know, seeing with the profession going forward in the future that you're working on to keeping you guys staying relevant and fresh?

This is a great question. It's funny, I actually was just on a, on a call yesterday with one of my mentors and business coaches, and we're talking a lot about what's happening in the SEO, AEO, you know, answer engine optimization. So being found in ChatGPT and Grok and Perplexity and all of these things and how One of the things that I am seeing so prevalently in our profession especially is the sort of cookie-cutter websites that, you know, people are paying $200 a month for these companies that, that you don't own your website, you don't own the content, you don't own any of it, you can't optimize it properly. And it's a big problem because when they go in and make changes to websites, all of it's the same. And what's really detrimental about this is a lot of times that information can't be indexed because it's copywritten by the company. And so that's one of the things that we're seeing a lot of in how do we help patients to be able to make sure that when someone is looking for a, a non-branded search, meaning someone is searching for chiropractor near me Minneapolis, are you showing up for those things and where are you showing up? And so And the other, you know, kind of where the puck is going is about 5 to 15% of the US population right now is using things like ChatGPT or, or any sort of AI engine to search for things. Are you showing up there? And so we've, we've really honed in a really specific process to be able to do that that really focuses on improving Google Business Profile and optimizing that for engagement and authority. We obviously doing the things on a website to be able to fix that. And then the third thing which nobody is doing is we write syndicated press releases that go out to news, TV, radio stations every single month that consistently drive the authority signals for Google that say this is a really high authority website, we should continue to rank them higher. And what's cool about this is like, it's like I've got— I was actually looking at one. We had an office that started with us. She's a pregnancy and prenatal office in the St. Louis area, and she went from not ranking for anything within like 90 days to where she's on the top page for like 50 out of the, you know, 95 keywords that, that she wanted to rank for. And so it's just cool when you can see that and you're like, okay, here's where you were, here's where you are. And she's like, that's insane. But it's just building the strategy. And so AI, if you're not staying consistent and you want to be able to be found, Google has changed their algorithm so much that it's really, really, really important to do that. And, you know, we've got some other things that are kind of— that we're toying around with around AI avatars and things like that that are hopefully— I'm going to say by end of year, we can, you know, we can start being able to launch to clients. But AI is here to stay and it may take over the world at some point. But for right now, we should all be using it as a tool to get better results. It's not going to replace us, but it can help us to be more effective and more efficient.

And exactly like Dr. Kendall said, if you're not using something digital right now, you're behind. But there's no better time to start now and just set up an interview, learn what you can do, see what you guys can offer. So, Dr. Kendall, how can our listeners hear some more about you guys and even get in contact with you guys too? I know you're at immersions all the time too, so that's a great place to speak with you. But even on top of that, Yeah.

So I mean, the best way is goelevatemarketing.com. So just goelevatemarketing.com. Obviously you can go to the success partner page on TRP's website and you can get in touch with us that way. You can always shoot me an email at DrKendall@goelevatemarketing.com. Yeah, those are the best ways to get in touch with us to, to be able to start a conversation because the world of digital is changing and if you're not changing with it, You're probably already behind.

Amen. We'll end on that. Well, thank you, Dr. Kendall. Let's see you guys later, Dr. Eric Janowitz.

Thanks, guys.

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. And if you'd like to connect with us personally, direct message us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Now go and be remarkable.