341- Generating Monthly Recurring Revenue with The Payday Practice
11 Nov 2025 · 0 min
Dr. Jeff Langmaid explains how chiropractors can build stable income through recurring revenue. Three models: maintenance memberships, supplement subscriptions through a 5,000-SKU catalog, and health coaching. Even small adoption rates can cover monthly expenses and smooth out practice income swings.
Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now, here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.
Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. And on today's episode we have a very special episode. We're going to talk all about monthly recurring revenue. And this ties directly into the release of my new book called the Payday Practice. You can pick up a copy for free right now@the smartchiropractor.com thepaydaypractice. I'll drop that link down in the episode show notes. And this is an episode that hopefully can open your eyes to a new opportunity in your practice to reduce stress, to increase revenue and and to serve your patients at the highest level possible. I think this is the most important conversation we can be having as chiropractors. I'll detail that out in this episode as well as some of the models that we've seen be very successful in chiropractic practices that generate monthly recurring revenue that meets or exceeds your monthly expenses. We'll talk about that in much more on today's episode. Before we get started, I wanna say a few words about the smart chiropractor. The smart chiropractor can power your patient journey to provide you with more qualified leads, more new patients, better retention and more consistent reactivations without spending any money on advertising. You do not need to deep discount your way to practice success. What you do need to do is teach and invite consistently by being present on social, on email, by having content that draws in more of your ideal patients. You can do that and we can help you. That's at the Smart Chiropractor. That's the smart chiropractor.com again, the smart chiropractor.com but as I said at the top of today's episode, we're talking all around monthly recurring revenue and having a payday practice. This seed was planted years ago. Jason and myself, my partner in the Smart Chiropractor. We have been working on this book for literally years and we are super happy to finally get it released. It started by us saying what would if Seth Godin, if Gary V, if Tim Ferriss created a chiropractic practice, how would they go about it? And it was very clear very early on that they would create membership, subscriptions or continuity programs that generated monthly recurring revenue. Why would they do that? Because that's one of the best ways to diversify your income stream, create stability for growth and and decrease vulnerability with any business. So it just makes sense. And how and where have we seen this? We've seen this all over the place and I'm sure you have as well in businesses as diverse as Amazon, Netflix, Disney plus, HBO Max. And if we move directly into healthcare, we've seen the rise of companies like Athletic Greens, Ritual, Hims, Hers Peloton. All of these companies are behemoths and they are built upon monthly recurring revenue through memberships. We just had a discussion with the highest ranking chiropractor at the joint chiropractic franchise. 85% of their revenue is generated through memberships. They were the world's first billion dollar chiropractic company. So this does not mean that you need to dramatically change what you're doing in practice or you shouldn't do fee for service. What it does mean in my mind is, is that you need to start thinking about ways that you can generate monthly recurring revenue so that even if 10 or 20% of your revenue is generated on a recurring basis, that can dramatically decrease the stress you have in your practice. And the goal here is to cover your monthly expenses with the recurring revenue. Because once you can cover your monthly expenses with recurring revenue, now everything else is profit. If you think about your practice right now, the challenge with a 99.9% fee for service model is that whether you have your best month ever or whether you have your worst month ever, the first of the month is start over again. And that is a super tough way to practice. And it really limits your ability to grow and scale when every single month you need to start over with monthly recurring revenue. That's money that's coming in on a monthly basis. You're not having to make that exchange, it's automatically coming in. That is a huge game changer in your ability. So if you're struggling to make ends meet, if you're struggling to really get over the hump, it's not your fault. It's really the business model that many of us have chosen to get into. And that's a 99.9% fee for service model. And in my belief and understanding, no matter what type of chiropractor you are, no matter how you practice, there's a monthly recurring revenue, there's a payday practice for you. And we'll detail out the three clear and the most specific models that we talk about within the book, the payday practice, just to give some context for how you can Think about delivering services that generate monthly recurring revenue. So let's talk about that and go into some detail. So there are three big verticals that we've identified fit 99.9% of chiropractors. And you don't have to choose all three. You can choose one. But there is a way to generate monthly recurring revenue in your practice. Regardless of who your ideal patients are and regardless of how you approach practice, whether you are a pain rehab, sports, wellness, family, pediatric, I really don't care how you practice these three models. I know you will be able to find something in one of the three, if not more than one of the three, that make sense. And I want to start number one with what we call proactive care. Proactive care is the easiest to implement in your practice because it's an extension of what you already do. However, there still is a somewhat of a trading time for money component of it that I don't love. But it can get you started. Proactive care is the easiest place to get started. What is proactive care? In the past you might have heard this called maintenance or wellness care. I like to view it as proactive care. Why? Because it's about helping people be proactive with their health. This is after they complete their active care plan. They're asymptomatic, they're feeling pretty good, but chances are they're going back to the same habits, the same movement patterns, the same nutrition, the same job that got them into your practice in the first place. So proactive care, the beauty of it is that you can really craft this you in any way that makes sense for you. Meaning perhaps it is an adjustment a month, perhaps it's a movement assessment per month, perhaps it's an ergonomic assessment per month. Any of these things apply. The easiest is a little bit of a combination of all three, right? Come in, somebody comes in that you check out their movement patterns, you identify any abnormalities or imbalances, you adjust where necessary and you move along. And so many chiropractors, I feel like, have swung the pendulum, especially I'm going to say in the quote unquote, evidence based world, they've swung the pendulum so far one direction that they totally don't want to talk about maintenance or wellness care. What I would call proactive care, and I believe you should because it's something that almost every chiropractor should offer. And having that as a membership or subscription or a continuity program just makes a lot of sense. Now here's where we would recommend we go into great detail. In this, in the payday practice, I would recommend also tying in at least one or two other benefits into your proactive care plan. So what do I mean by that? One great way to go about it is decreased cost of other services. So if you have a recovery center, if you have any ancillary modalities, you have laser, you have whatever it might be part of the proactive membership could give somebody a discount on, on any other services offered in your practice. It's a great way to go about it. We see this happen all the time outside of healthcare and sometimes in healthcare as well. But that is a great way to start building a proactive membership and offer an additional benefit. The other thing that I love tying into a proactive membership are what I call everybody everyday supplements. This is non therapeutic. But 70% of the people coming into your practice. We'll talk about this in another vertical in great detail. But 70% of the people coming into your practice are taking a multivitamin, magnesium, they're taking fish oil, they're taking a greens drink, whatever it might be. There's kind of those four to five core supplements that people take every day and everybody can take and it would benefit their health. Why not tie one of those in to your payday practice, your proactive membership as well? Now they're getting care once a month, they're receiving a discount on ancillary services once a month. This makes so much sense. If you have a sports, a recovery, a performance center and they're receiving one 30 day supply of a supplement, that is a great way to start building a payday practice. And this is not about forcing anybody to do anything, it's just about having the option. And let's dive into that with vertical number two. So vertical number one, proactive care in your practice. Want to learn more about it? Smartchiropractor.com thepaydaypractice number two. Vertical number two is having a E commerce store. And I like to think of this in terms of the specifically those everybody everyday supplements. Here is why we've all dealt with this. And it's insanity out there, but it's just the truth of what happens you probably can resonate with. This patient comes into your practice, they ask you hey, what should I take each day? What do you take each day in terms of supplements, vitamins. You then go on a 10 minute description, probably poorly describing something because the names are so hard to really get right in so many of these companies. They're complex to say the least. You poorly describe something the patient goes on Amazon. They buy the wrong thing, they come back a week later, they show you what they bought. Now they have to return it because it's not what you want. And this cycle continues on and on. You waste time, money, effort, energy, poorly describing something and taking time out of your practice. They're going and purchasing the wrong thing, not from you. And now the whole process starts over again. That's crazy. But when you have an e commerce solution, when you have the opportunity and availability to say that's a great question. We have my favorite items available in my online store right now. Here's the QR code. That's dramatically different, right? So we have gone about building our entire system on what we call the smart care store system. We have over 5,000 products with pretty much every popular manufacturer in and around the chiropractic space you can imagine. We have smart care stores that we have built now that entire system, 5,000 SKUs, no inventory. You can have your own e commerce store just like shopify for chiropractors but with all the product housed inventoried. You don't need to mess with it. You don't need to mess with customer service available right now. We believe that having monthly subscriptions to supplements on that now yes, you can still sell one off items through that store with the 5000 SKUs. However, if you're trying to create a payday practice, you're trying to build memberships and subscriptions. 70% of the people coming into your practice right now are taking an everybody everyday supplement. Why aren't you offering what you actually take yourself to your patients in a way that doesn't require inventory, doesn't require what I call the graveyard of seminars past which is you bur you purchase all this stuff bulk, it's hard to sell in your practice. Make it easy, have an online store shopify for chiropractors. That is a great way to start building memberships and subscriptions. What if only 5, 10, 15, 20% you don't need a ton of your patience are on a membership and subscription to a supplement. You're able to generate profit, maybe 20, 30, $40 per month per person. You can see how that starts to stack up. Even just 10 people, 50 people amounted 100 people on that. Now you're creating monthly recurring revenue that certainly can start approaching your monthly expenses. I love that model. I'm all in on that model. We've seen it be successful with companies like athletic Greens, Ritual, hims Hers. These companies came out of nowhere and they're spending a lot of Money to get your patients in your practice right now using their product and service. Why aren't you offering something you would love yourself? And then the third component to this. So number one was proactive care, number two was E commerce subscriptions around supplements. Number three is health coaching. And this almost ties in, there's a little bit of in person component here as well. But this almost ties into what my friend Dr. Josh Satterley talks about with the clinic gym hybrid. So you're not having to be there trading time for money in this case, but it's ongoing health coaching that could be in person, such as a clinic gym hybrid, or it could be through an app, it could be through a, a portal online, it could be an online coaching health, you know, health coaching, health training or exercise training in your practice. So that is another fantastic way to be able to create monthly recurring revenue. And I think you can see at this point in time, regardless of how you practice, whether you want to deliver in person services with some benefits on top of that proactive care plan, whether you want to have E commerce rocking and rolling, some memberships and subscriptions to everybody, everyday supplements that people are already taking in your practice, or whether you want to have health coaching and training, whether app based or, or a little bit of in person there, especially if you can separate yourself from, from it. By having a clinic gym hybrid and having people be able to administer that exercise long term there is a plethora of opportunities to generate recurring revenue. Again, we go into great detail in all of these within the payday practice book. And this ties back to how would Seth Godin, how would Gary V. How would Tim Ferriss create a practice? Yes, there probably would be some fee for service model, but there's no question that they would teach and invite. And that's the core tenet of the smart chiropractor. It extends into the payday practice. You build an audience of people who know, trust and like you. In a chiropractic practice, those are your patients, that's your online audience. And then you serve them things that can help make their life better, specifically items that can create monthly recurring revenue. The other huge component of this that I love is it gives you the opportunity to extend revenue generation beyond your four walls, specifically in the health coaching space online or specifically with having a SmartCare store, an e commerce store. Now when you're building that following online, many times we get concerned or it's like, well, you know, I have thousands of people following me, but I only have a couple, you know, hundred within My circle of practice. Ah, there's a dichotomy there. What am I building this for? I really want to focus on the people that are going to come in and get the services I delivered. Makes a lot of sense. Now if you have memberships and subscriptions specifically in the online space now you're able to really offer things to people that live beyond your circle of practice. You'll be able to offer things that benefit their life that they're probably purchasing somewhere else in a way that continues to build trust, continues to generate stackable revenue for you, compounding growth with monthly recurring, and gives the opportunity to continue to deepen the relationships with that health tribe of individuals who are following you online. So having that offer is key. The other thing you might be thinking if you're, if you've already thought about this a little bit, well, I have a Amazon thing where, you know, people go there you're probably making 1% and you're sending people to Amazon. So having your own store is a wildly different thing. Number one, because you get to stock your favorite products by one of our 5,000 SKUs if you're going with the SmartCare store. The other is that your margin jumps to 25, 35, 45% instead of 1 or 2%. And why send people to Amazon? Why send people out of your ecosystem when we've made it easy to have them within your ecosystem? So I hope that's a lot of information to throw out there, but I am super passionate about this idea. I'm super happy to finally release the Payday Practice book. Please download a copy if you haven't already. Thesmartchiropractor.com thepaydaypractice that's a smartchiropractor.com therapy the payday practice if you have any questions whatsoever, hit me up Jeff at the evidence based chiropractor.com or jeff@the smart chiropractor.com thank you so much for tuning in and listening. If you haven't left a rating or review for this podcast, please do so. If you're listening on a smartphone, you can scroll on down, tap how many stars, leave a few words of encouragement and feedback helps us reach more and more people. We greatly, greatly appreciate it. I'm going to break down some of these Payday Practice topics are big topics, so I'm going to break down some of these on subsequent episodes because mix it in with some of the research. But again, download the book for free. We've been working on this for a long time and I believe it's time to transform the first day of every month from crap back to zero in collections to it's payday. You can do that. We'll show you how with the payday practice. And before we wrap, I want to say a few words about Power Step orthotics. These are the orthotics I personally use myself, my father uses. They are, in my opinion, the best orthotic on the marketplace, designed by a podiatrist over 30 years ago. And they're willing to hook you up as a listener of the Evidence Based Chiropractor podcast with a free sample pair pro.powerstep.com sample pro powerstep.com sample pick yourself up a free pair of orthotics from Power Step. I love them. I use them. I'd encourage you to do the same and then you can offer them to your patients as well. So thank you so much for tuning in. Have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.
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