119 - How Smart Money Allocation Accelerates Practice Growth with Dr. Eric DiMartino

[00:00:00] It goes back to that whole like Instagram, TikTok culture sometimes too of just like, can we make it sexy again to realize you're going to bust your ass to build this thing? And in doing so and being super focused, it's going to provide you with a lot of options. But if we only focus on like, I don't want to work, but somehow I think I'm going to get there. That to me was just like such a major disconnect. And we see that in the money conversations. We see that in the wanting something, but not have had built anything close.

[00:00:29] And that's where a coach sometimes has to have like a very direct come to Jesus moment of what is this really going to take to build this practice? Hello and welcome to Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast. This podcast is dedicated to chiropractors who are in the seasons of launching and building their practice.

[00:00:57] Join myself, Dr. Lona and my co-host, Dr. Bobby, as we have conversations each week as it relates to building the practice of your dreams. And remember, you can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one. We are here to lead you on the way. All right. Welcome back to the Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast. I am back today with Dr. Eric, one of our returning guests and one of the coaches for TRP.

[00:01:27] And we are going to have a money talk today. So welcome back, Eric. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, always great. You have so much knowledge to share. And this is going to be a rich conversation because many times we may not even recognize some of the limiting beliefs we have around money or some of the things we need to break through in our mind, recognizing that money is a form of exchange. And if we're going to be in business, we certainly need to have that part of our vision straightened out.

[00:01:57] So let's dive in, Eric. Yeah, no. And this is a great topic because a lot of docs, you know, chiropractic school teaches us to be chiropractors, but doesn't teach us how to start or grow a business. It's just not a part of that. So that's something that TRP brings, obviously. But starting out, you know, I know, and you probably remember too, Lona, starting out, I didn't even know what I didn't know when it came to things like this, right? I was just like, well, if I just have more money coming in and going out, I'm succeeding. But I didn't know how to strategically do it.

[00:02:24] Because what I find is that most new chiropractors, they don't struggle in business because they can't adjust. They struggle because they allocate money emotionally instead of strategically, right? And the biggest mistake I see is that younger docs, they treat revenue like income instead of fuel, right? Money is long term, it'll be income, but short term, it is gasoline that runs the machine that is your business. And if we starve our business of fuel, it's not going to grow to the extent that it certainly could.

[00:02:53] And so what I find is that most chiropractors don't really have a money issue early in business, they have a money allocation issue, right? Because when money first starts coming in, most doctors will immediately start paying themselves emotionally instead of investing strategically, right? So new docs usually oscillate between fear and excitement, right? It's like we have this pulling of I'm excited, but I'm also scared to death because I don't know what's going to happen, what tomorrow is going to bring.

[00:03:16] And then we finally see money hitting the bank account and we're like, wow, this is what I spent years building to have this. And then what I find is they either will overspend personally, right? They just was like, wow, I've been a broke college kid for eight years and now I have money. I'm going to go buy some cool stuff. So they overspend personally. Maybe they underinvest in growth is a common one or they just panic hoard cash. It's like, oh, I have money, so I got to hoard it. I got to keep it. But all are very, very bad decisions early in business because revenue guys, it's not validation.

[00:03:46] Revenue is responsibility. And the responsibility is what do you actually do with that revenue? And so there's kind of three phases I think about when I think about allocating money properly in business. I call them the three S's. It's survival, stability, and scale. So that first stage is all about survival. It's like I have to just stay alive long enough to gain traction. It's like I have to be able to get enough income where I actually pay the bills, keep the doors open, and hopefully have some left over where I can actually have some living expenses.

[00:04:14] So in this early survival stage, we really want to allocate our money in marketing. Marketing and your basic operations. That's the most important thing. And in the beginning, guys, cash flow matters way more than profit margin. People like this sexy thing talking about profit. And yeah, profit's great long-term when you've matured business. But short-term, I don't want you to have any profit. And that may sound crazy. Like what? You don't want us to have profit? No, because if you're profiting, that means you're taking money out of the business.

[00:04:42] I want you to put every penny that you make back into that business because we need momentum initially, and momentum is filled by money. The next stage is stability. That's where, okay, now we have kind of hit that build season of our career, right? We were paying the bills. You know, we have some predictability going on. We probably have a team around us. And here we want to really shift that money allocation towards systems, right? Because initially in that launch phase, we are the system, right? And that's perfect. That's how it should be.

[00:05:10] But once you have team, you can't be the system anymore. So we have systems in place that will help our team understand what they need to do. And that's where we start to invest in team at that point. And so what I find is that most practices, they plateau because doctors never transition from just the hustle to actually building systems, right? The worst way to do build is say, oh, okay, I'm too busy now to do everything myself. So I'll hire a bunch of assistants to support me, but we actually don't invest in them having systems for them.

[00:05:37] So assistants just show up and say, okay, I'm just going to do whatever Dr. Eric tells me to do today, right? But then it's all still on our shoulders. And then the last thing- I'll let you there for one second, if that's okay. So, I mean, just practically, when I think about some of the launch docs that are going to be quickly in build, Eric's not saying that you can't pay yourself something because you need to live, right? It just means that part of the asset you're building is you.

[00:06:03] And some of the investing that needs to happen is like, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars have you poured into being coached, to getting the resources, to getting the seminars so that you can grow into the leader that you need to be? That's part of what we're talking about is that the reinvestment throughout the whole thing. And just like you invested to get your space, to buy your tables, there's going to be a price to keep going to the next levels.

[00:06:30] And that's where I think a lot of people bump into themselves because they're like, well, I made that original investment. It's like, yeah, and it keeps going, right? Yeah, 100%. And obviously, we have to survive, but we want to make sure we don't overspend personally. We want to keep our overhead as lean as possible in that survival phase. I see some docs get out and they go and they buy all brand new tables and this beautiful furniture for their office. It's like, no, it's like at first start off, I don't know about you, I bought new tables, like everything was used.

[00:06:58] And then, but within a few years, I was able to buy all new stuff because my practice had grown and I had more profit. And so initially, you want to start as lean as possible so that you can throw more and more money into marketing. It's really important. And so in the last stage, I talked about with scale and that's kind of outside of this conversation. But scale is when you now invest in leverage, your leadership, like you talked about being a better leader, a player's infrastructure. That's for a future conversation. And that's the whole way through, let's be honest, right?

[00:07:24] Like, you know, early on, you're getting to any seminars that are going to develop you. And that's part of that investment, that tuition to keep building, right? Because you might hit 100 visits a week and you stay there until you get the right coaching or the right philosophy or the, you know, ability to move smoothly. That comes from getting outside of your comfort zone and going to get the tuition of the schooling that didn't happen during school, right?

[00:07:54] 100%. Yeah. And I'm going to definitely dig into that soon. I think that's a huge investment we have to make and, you know, we see it in remarkable practice. So let's kind of break this stuff down. So where should we intelligently be allocating our money? First is going to be marketing, right? I touched on this first. The fastest way to suffocate a practice is to stop feeding it. Marketing is so crucial, especially when you're new, guys, because nobody knows you exist. Nobody knows you exist. And I find that most chiropractors, they underinvest in marketing, right?

[00:08:23] Or they spend inconsistently. They spend emotionally. But marketing should really be treated like oxygen for your business. If you don't spend money on marketing, you are suffocating the ability for business to grow, especially early on because nobody knows you exist. And, you know, one thing I kind of cringe when I hear people say this is it's like, I'm a referral-based practice. And I'm like, great. So you're mediocre. Like, do you enjoy staying small? Like, that's great. You get referrals. But guess what? Everybody who's not in your office, they don't know you exist.

[00:08:52] You want to spend to reach your community. You want to spend on the external, the digital. And initially, guys, when you're opening your practice, you don't have internal. You don't have a patient base to draw from. So everything's external and digital. You have to get out in your community and get known. And so, you know, we talk about in TRP, we like to set the standard of spend 8% to 12% of your goal revenue on marketing. But when you're first starting out, it should be 20%, 30%, 40% on marketing. Because first of all, your revenue goals are probably low because you don't have a lot yet. But you don't, nobody knows you exist.

[00:09:22] Conversion and retention are great. But if you don't have any new patients, you have nobody to convert or retain. And so we want to spend on marketing. But we want to measure that ROI like a hawk. Right? We always say you don't get what you want when you get what you measure. So we want to invest in that marketing. Take every spare penny you have and invest it in marketing until you get bigger. And now it's like, okay, now I can worry about adding team or all those other things. Let me ask you this. I think I know the answer here. But I have some scar tissue from hiring marketers that did not produce what they said they were going to do.

[00:09:52] Does that mean that we stop looking for the ones that can do what they say they're going to do? The companies, the people, the others that can assist you with the marketing. Eric, I don't know. I hear that a lot. Like, oh, I've spent money before and it didn't do it. It's like then they're afraid to keep going. Lona, did you marry the first guy you met? No. Did you give up on men after that? No, I didn't. Yeah. It's the same thing with marketing, guys. So it's the same thing in anything in business. Just because something fails.

[00:10:21] Because I've heard docs say it's about associates. Like I hired an associate. It didn't work out. So I'm never hiring an associate again. I'm like, well, guess what? Sometimes that happens. So that just wasn't the right marketing company for you. Or there wasn't the proper goals or communication, whatever that is. And so marketing works really, really well when you do it properly. And if you have that skill set as a doc, some docs are awesome at figuring out how to do social ads and monitoring it and beta testing. If you're good at that, awesome. If not, find a company that can do it for you.

[00:10:49] Because right now, and I tell all my clients this, social media is where all the eyeballs are. That's where everybody is. Maybe 10 years from that is something different. But right now, everybody is on Instagram, Facebook. That's just where they are. And so if you aren't present there, nobody's going to know you exist. So we want to invest in what works. I mean, it's like putting your head in the sand to say, oh, I don't want to use that as a lever for my practice because I don't want to have a low ticket offer. I don't want to whatever. It's like, okay, but that is where people's attention is. So, yeah.

[00:11:20] 100%. And it's funny because we started to do some new advertising in the last few months. And the majority of people are coming in are like 60 and 70-year-olds, which is just wild. I don't know why they're responding. And so it's showing these senior citizens are all over Facebook. Like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that wasn't the case. But they are. And so every age group now is all through social media. And so if you want to be known, you've got to be where people are. Their eyeballs are. But when we do that, we want to track things like our CAC, cost to acquire customer, right? Our conversion, our retention. We don't just want to buy leads.

[00:11:49] We want to really measure how well you actually convert and retain them, right? Because bad conversion and retention can make marketing look broken. This is an important point for newer docs. That's why we invest in coaching. You can get a ton of new ones, but if you don't convert and retain them, it's just a revolving door. So coaching gives you a massive return on investment when you have the right coach. And like you said, Luna, we teach from scar tissue. I don't know about you, but I know I've paid well over a million dollars in what I call the dumb taxes.

[00:12:16] You know, just the stakes I've made, the tuition of the school of hard knocks. What I love about what we get to do is we help our clients avoid that. And not just the benefit of coaching is learning the things you should do, but sometimes more importantly, learning the things you should not do. And that's what the value of having a mentor. You know, I always say that the speed of your growth is determined by the quality of the rooms that you're in. Yeah. Surround yourself with people that are successful. We have several conversations where Dr. Pete, who is my coach, has been like, no, Luna. That's like a no.

[00:12:43] And then I'm like, okay, that's what I needed to hear today. Yeah. That's what coaching does. You avoid really expensive mistakes. You also have the accountability that a coach gives you and you borrow their certainty. Right? I remember coaches early on in my career, I didn't have any confidence or certainty. So I kind of borrowed it from them because I'm like, well, they do it and they're successful. So why can't I be right? And once you borrow that now, it's like, okay, now you gain that certainty. Yeah. Yes. So that's one thing is invest in marketing, obviously. The second is really don't inflate your lifestyle too early.

[00:13:11] And I know I was a bit guilty of this when I first started getting into practice because I don't know about you, Luna, but I grew up like middle class. I was, I never worried about where my next meal was coming from or roof over my head, but we never had nice stuff. You know, I had like, you know, it's funny. Now I see my kids closets and like each of my kids has like 40 pairs of shoes. I grown up. I had two pairs of shoes. I like the dressy shoes and then the school shoes. Like that's all I ever had. Right. And so once I started getting money, it was like, wow, I can go buy stuff. Right.

[00:13:38] And I definitely spent way too much on lifestyle that wasn't necessary and not investing enough in my business. There's this cool thing called lifestyle creep. If you've ever heard of this, Luna, but it's like when your personal spending will increase in alignment with your income increase. It's like, as I make more money, I spend more money. Right. I see some people, just friends and even clients. It's like they make a hundred or half a million dollars a year, but they spend a half a million dollars a year. It's almost like they live paycheck to paycheck, even though they make massive amounts of income. Right.

[00:14:06] So we want to make sure that we are, are, are living a lifestyle below what our income is so that we have that extra money to put back in the practice savings, obviously everything else. Right. And, and so the third thing is, is most. I'm going to just add that you could be the opposite of that. Like where you are so frugal that you almost also undercut yourself because you're afraid to spend some of the money. Right. And that can, so you have to ask yourself like, which side of the coin am I at? You know? Sure.

[00:14:34] And, and if you are going to spend it, make sure you invest in your business. Yes. As well as like, there is some elements I do believe, like, let's say you've lived super frugally for a long time and the practice is exploding, doing really well. You are reinvesting in it. Like that way you feel about yourself. Like maybe it's time for you to live in a better apartment, or maybe it's time for you to finally upgrade your car and you do it logically. Right. Like that can actually, I believe the way we feel about, like, I just have worked so hard.

[00:15:05] That is good, but you have to know where you're at. That's like, see yourself in this. Am I someone who just blows cash and I'm always rewarding myself or am I someone who is, yeah, like I never do it because I'm always afraid of what's going to happen next, you know? Yeah, no, totally. There's certainly a balance. We want to certainly reward ourselves for the hard work that we do, but also I'd say do it very intelligently. Yes. Yes. The next point is, is really investing in team earlier than most docs think and investing

[00:15:31] in good people is that the cheapest employee is usually the most expensive employee long-term. Amen. So it's like, oh, I can just, if I can't get somewhere for $16 an hour, I'm not hiring. It's like, okay, then you're not going to get anybody good, right? And you're costing yourself time and energy. And, you know, every hour that a doctor spends doing $15 an hour tasks is an hour that they're not doing $300 an hour tasks. Right. Right. So at some point you need to get to the point where it's like, yeah, we want you guys to put your head down and work really hard at first. I know when I first got into practice, I didn't have kids. I had no distractions. Like I work 80 hours a week.

[00:16:01] And that was what my practice needed and what I wanted to do. But eventually I couldn't do it all anymore. Right. And so I started investing other people where I could delegate those $15, $20 an hour tasks that were taking up my time. So we, we definitely want to do it intelligently, but we want to invest in good people. You don't want to just get somebody that can get for cheap. Who's not going to add a lot of value to your business. Right. Because freedom is really purchased through systems and people. It's not purchased through income, right? You can have really high income, but have zero freedom that the business, you are tied to the business. Right.

[00:16:31] And so that's where we always talk about. You can have a remarkable practice part of remarkable life, not instead of one. That's what we advocate in TRP. Yeah. It's good. Yep. So a couple of the biggest mistakes I see just to kind of wrap here is, is we wait too long to market. Many docs wait too long to market. They treat marketing like an expense instead of an investment. So realize guys, when you're tracking your return on investment, this is exactly what TRP can help you guys do is what are you getting for every dollar you put into marketing? Marketing, seeing marketing is expensive. It is, is, doesn't make sense.

[00:17:00] Like last month we spent $12,000 in my office on digital ads. And so people are like, oh my gosh, you spent $12,000. But for that, we got 30 new patients and we converted to 20 of them. And our LTV is around $3,500. So we got $70,000 for that $12,000. That's like a six to six to one return, seven to one. It's like, how many times would you put a dollar in if you get $7 back every single time? And so I, as long as you're getting the good ROI, that's the most important thing. Put every dollar you can back into marketing because it's going to give you the best return

[00:17:29] on investment outside of equipping your team. And the second mistake hiring too late, like we said, right? A lot of times docs will wait until they're drowning before they get help. That's not good for you. That's not good for the practice. That's not good for the patients. Again, the emotional spending. We want to avoid that. Sometimes we reward ourselves too early. We need to reward ourselves, but we don't want to do it too early. One of the biggest mistakes is not knowing their numbers. This is something that TRP is very passionate about, helping people make database decisions. Because the guys, if you don't know your numbers, you do not know your business. End of story.

[00:17:59] Back to the original point of hiring marketing. If you don't know what your vision is and what those numbers represent, there is a case where let's say your vision is whatever volume. You don't want multi-docs in your office. It's just you. Yeah. Maybe you can rely on internal referrals if that was your vision, right? And you're hitting those numbers, but you'd have to know. Yeah. Yeah. You'd have to know. But I still argue even then. It's like, if you're only relying on internal referrals, you're not reaching more people in the community. I know.

[00:18:29] It just depends on, again, the vision that you have for the growth of your business. Yeah. If you want to have a lifestyle practice where it stays something that you can handle yourself and you don't want to expand, that's awesome. That's not really a business. That's a job. And I think most of the people in TRP land don't want to just settle for that. Right. Yeah. And so the last mistake I see docs make is just they try to maximize profit too early. Right. It's funny because, you know, in this TikTok culture, there's so much cool stuff on Instagram and TikTok talking about profitability and all this kind of stuff. And docs are talking about their profit.

[00:18:58] But it's like, don't worry about profit too early because if you're taking profit, you're restricting the growth of your business. You know, people are like, oh, I invest in the stock market. That's great. You're going to get 9% to 10% annual return. You know how much you get when you reinvest in your business? 10 times that return is what you'll get by investing in your business, if not more. And so, yes, there's time for investing in our retirement long term and, you know, invest in real estate if that's what you like or the stock market, certainly. But the first few years of your business is not the time to do that, right?

[00:19:27] Because you're robbing your opportunity to growth. And so optimization is about driving more profit. Early on, we don't care about that. We care about growth, right? Once you have a team that is built and is executing effective systems, now you can start to focus on profit. Say, I want new docs to hear this. Every dollar spent in a new chiropractic practice should answer one question. Does this increase future capacity? Does it increase future capacity? If the answer is yes, invest. If no, reconsider spending that money. That's what we're focusing on those first couple of years of practice.

[00:19:56] That's great. And we could do the same thinking about where is your energy focused? Does it lead to the practice growing? I think I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago. We were talking to a new doc that had just opened her office and she said, I want to be retired in like, it would have been, it was like under 10 years, right? And it was one of those things where I was like, well, I don't want to hate on her dream. And yet at the same time, I'm like, is this really where you should be focused on in this

[00:20:25] immediate moment where your practice is barely launched? Probably not. And it goes back to that whole like Instagram, TikTok culture sometimes too, of just like, can we make it sexy again to realize you're going to bust your ass to build this thing? And in doing so and being super focused, it's going to provide you with a lot of options. But if we only focus on like, I don't want to work, but somehow I think I'm going to get there. That to me was just like such a major disconnect.

[00:20:54] And I, we see that in the money conversations. We see that in the wanting something, but not have had built anything close to that yet. And that's where a coach sometimes has to have like a very direct come to Jesus moment of. Yeah. What is this really going to take to build this practice? Yeah. And that's part of our job too, is expanding the mindset of our clients. Like if you'd have told me 20 years ago that I could, I could be a chiropractor yet

[00:21:20] be out of patient care and just run a great business and then hire amazing docs and have them serve and just be the CEO. I didn't, I would never even thought that was possible. Never in a million years would I thought that wasn't even the thing, but I have coaches that expand my understanding and what possibilities like. And it completely changed my vision of what success looked like. Right. Right. So certainly we want to honor our client's vision, but we also want to stretch it. So they don't understand. Right now, here's what needs to be done to start that process. Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And same thing with the money, right?

[00:21:51] Like recognizing that some of the things that, you know, when Eric sings investing in the practice, instead of necessarily rewarding lifestyle changes right now, knowing that by doing that, you actually are giving yourself a lot more future abundance. And that's, it's that whole, like, can I just put off the reward for a little bit longer? Can I invest more of my energy? Can I invest more of my money? Can I invest more of my time? And knowing that it's going to pay dividends for decades if I get this thing to the next

[00:22:21] level or the next several levels and do it methodically? 100%. Yep. Delay gratification. Yes. It's not as sexy as we like to think it is, but yeah. But when you do this right, you're not delaying very long. Like just one to two years, if you do everything right, if you have TRPs or guides, like we will get you to help you guys get very busy very quickly. So it's like, okay, now I can actually enjoy the fruits of my labor. Right. But enjoying the fruits too early suffocates a business and it causes stress to the business and to you. Yeah.

[00:22:51] Last thought, as I have some younger docs in launch right now, one of the other things I saw a couple of times is, and again, I'm not trying to replace their vision, but hesitant to get a space that they actually could be in long-term, like wanting to go and they have the resources to do it. So it's not like somebody who has to be totally on a shoestring to launch. And so that's something too, that a coach can really help with. Cause in the case I'm thinking of, I'm like, they had every opportunity to go into a bigger

[00:23:20] space and we ended up going with a slightly bigger space because I'm like, you're not going to want to move in, in a year or two years when you're busting out of one or two rooms, you know? So again, you could be on either side of that coin, right? Where you're, you're really limiting yourself. Yeah. And it depends on what kind of practice you have. If it is an adjustment only, you can do that. A lot of that in the small space, if you really want to get into decompression and shockwave and laser, those things are great too, but you know, you're going to need more space for that.

[00:23:48] So it's really understanding the kind of practice you want, but also making sure you don't get locked into two long-term leases initially. Right. And so it's tough because yeah, a bigger space sounds good, but it's also a bigger money commitment. Right. Well, I'm talking about the difference between a one room and like 1500 square feet. Oh, okay. I think you, yeah, I would never start with less than 1500 square feet because if you do what you should do and if you're guided by TRP, you're going to, you're going to hit that capacity definitely within a few years. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Eric.

[00:24:17] That was a great conversation. Yeah. We'll see you on the next one. Sounds good. Hey everyone. Please listen in for this next bonus interview of one of our remarkable success partners. They all help us help more people find the benefits of chiropractic. So listen on. We're here with Dan from 2Connect, one of our fantastic success partners in Australia. Dan, tell us a little bit about the specific problems that 2Connect solves for chiropractic

[00:24:46] clinics that are engaging with 2Connect and using them for their services. What problems do you guys solve as a business? Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. And great to be here. Basically, the problems that we're solving is helping with certain administrative aspects of practices. So that very often can break down into the problems of specifically to lead conversion and patient life cycle and reactivation.

[00:25:10] So what we hear a lot as we're talking to chiros is a kind of low-level anxiety about, are we following up on leads, A, quickly enough, and B, enough times? They might take multiple calls. Do our front-of-house staff really have the bandwidth to be doing that? So there's a feeling that, no, we're probably not. We're leaving revenue on the table there. The other piece as well is about reactivation.

[00:25:37] So we've got this big database of people that have come in. Maybe there's people 6, 12, 18 months we haven't heard from. Do we have any real meaningful engagement with them? Probably not so much. So again, there's a problem there with not maximizing that database and not going back and getting conversions, running campaigns. And then probably a third would just be other administrative aspects. So there might be things that can sit behind the scenes that can be done from an offshore

[00:26:06] perspective, because to be clear, what we're talking about is a dedicated team member working in the Philippines for the practice. And this might be things like x-ray roll-ups, or it might be doing certain aspects of reporting, punching numbers into spreadsheets, right through to, as I say, the more patient-facing roles. So I guess kind of in a nutshell, what you're talking about is finding a labor force outside of the local area. And I've got a busy practice.

[00:26:35] I've got numerous CAs, and finding an A player is difficult. We've had hiring processes where we get 150 to 200 applications, and maybe three of them are worth actually pulling into the clinic and having a face-to-face interview. So that can be super frustrating. So you're talking about finding a specialized labor force outside of your local area, specifically the Philippines. Yeah.

[00:27:01] And so from the sounds of it, you've helped people with their marketing and lead follow-up and lead generation, or taking them from a prospect into a patient, converting them to a patient. Yeah. You've also, you know, interesting, you mentioned like ruling up x-rays, those kind of little tasks. Yeah. You find specialized people that can do that sort of stuff, train them up for what we want to achieve. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:29] The way that the model works is that we have a chat with the chiro and go like, what's the role profile? What are you after? What's the need? Where's the pain? And then we go, okay, well, here's a position description. Does that meet that? Any tweaks to this? Any arrangements? And then it's like, yes, let's go forward. And if it's go forward, give us a couple of weeks. We'll come back with three to four candidates who meet that brief, who have some kind of background. So it might be, say, a medical background, or even if sometimes it can be a more salesy

[00:27:58] background, for example. And we go, right, here's these three to four candidates. Which one do you like best? And then maybe we can do some role plays or some scenario-based testing to really de-risk it and make sure we've got the right person. And then, yeah, we deploy them. So, yeah, it's a pretty simple model. Basically, a lot of it rests on us. It's de-risk because you're not paying anything until that person's actually starting work. And it's also you're not having to bring on another employer and all of the employment

[00:28:27] liability with that because they're employed to our legal entity in the Philippines. We manage all of the HR, the payroll, the holiday management, all of that. And they align to Australian time zones. They align to your national holidays. So all of that heavy lifting is done in the background. You just get that full-time team member. You get to select the one that you want. Yeah, we're off and running. Yeah, that actually sounds like a major problem solver for a lot of particularly busy practices.

[00:28:55] But even, I guess, you've probably had scenarios where people who are, you know, solo practitioner or not too many staff have engaged with your services to really help them expand and grow. So, you know, for example, for our build docs who are just starting out and just starting to get the clinic rolling and they need somebody specialized, but they've got a jack of all trades at the front, which is often what happens when you hire your first CA.

[00:29:21] I guess you guys can add an extra dimension into specializing particular roles reasonably quickly from what you think. That is the case. Or I will say, I want to be transparent about this. I do understand that often there's a certain point or a certain scale where this starts making more sense.

[00:29:40] And often that is maybe there is two to three plus fully loaded chiropractors where you start to go, right, we've got CAs and those CAs are busy and we've got admin building up. Again, these things, are we calling people enough? That's when this model can probably really start to come into play and the ROI starts to come into effect.

[00:30:03] Yeah, I just wanted to be clear about that because solo practitioners often just that single CA might be covering things and we do provide full-time roles. So there is a, that's, again, that's where that sort of ROI stack up starts to come into play. Yeah. Okay. So in terms of that ROI, what kind of ROI can a CEO expect from investing in engaging with 2Connect, bringing in somebody offshore, a virtual chiropractic assistant?

[00:30:33] Yeah. Have you got a case study or an example? Yeah, sure. Yeah. We've got, we've got multiple case studies. And I guess the underlying maths is that getting one of our virtual CAs or patient support representatives or lead conversion specialists, it's going to cost between 55 and 65% less than hiring someone onshore, but for that requisite level of skillset.

[00:31:03] So if you start to think about that and where the ROI, say for like the back doctor or, or Cairo H3, or some of these businesses that we've worked with, well-being chiropractic as well, is it's when you're going, right, we've got this full-time resource. Who's costing half what a normal person would cost. There's no, you know, superannuation or anything like that to worry about. And the call volumes that are being made because they're dedicated to this is usually six, seven fold.

[00:31:33] So therefore we've seen conversion rates, you know, double and triple based on just being able to deploy that cost-effective resource appropriately to that, you know, that, that conversion funnel basically. And again, similarly, sometimes there's a split or a hybrid role where they're doing some of that lead conversion stuff, but also they're taking admin away from the CA. So that's where the ROI kicks in.

[00:31:58] And there's also, I think critically a real patient and actual customer satisfaction piece as well. So what I mean is the, the front of house CEOs, the people physically there are able to, you know, the phone is not ringing as much basically, and they're not having to make as many phone calls. And, and maybe there's inboxes being taken care of at a certain level as well. Therefore that's going to translate into a more present patient experience.

[00:32:23] And also what that also means is that that, that output is, is happening from, from the offshore perspective. So in terms of, I guess, if, when we're talking about the direct ROI and we talk about the, you know, cost to acquire a customer. Yeah. It's, I guess, a bit of a balancing act, right?

[00:32:40] Because if we're going to invest in offshore help and we're going to invest in, you know, digital marketing, which is, you know, reasonably expensive for a chiropractic profession, unless you're doing it really right. And you've, you've got your ads optimized, all that kind of stuff, but it's still, it's still an expense. One thing that I don't like with my digital leads that I've paid to acquire is I don't like them sitting in our CRM waiting for someone to touch them.

[00:33:10] And we know that there's so much data on this, that the faster you call that prospect, once they're in your CRM, the higher the likelihood of them actually coming into your practice. And I think it was something like the research was 87% more likely if you call them within the first five minutes. Now I run a busy practice. I know my CAs work hard. Often they just don't have the time resource to do that.

[00:33:34] So I guess what you're talking about is a protection of the ROI that you're already putting into marketing to, you know, funnel in those leads. And also you mentioned the reactivation campaigns. You're right. We've got a whole bunch of, a large database of people that have only stopped coming in because they just kind of lost their way. It's not because they didn't love chiropractic. Yeah. Because, you know, they weren't having a great experience. They just kind of got a little bit lost and they slipped through the cracks. Yeah.

[00:34:03] Or often there's something really small and we see our clients being smart and doing reactivation campaigns that aren't, hey, you haven't been in for a while. Do you want to come back in? It's more you can almost position it as like a feedback gathering kind of survey kind of piece. So you're calling saying, I'm not sure if you recall, but eight, 10 months ago you came in and we're just doing some, doing a piece of work to understand what that experience was like. Was there anything, what was that experience for you?

[00:34:29] And sometimes doing that, somebody can bring it up, bring up that thing, whatever that was, that was that barrier that made them come back. And then, of course, what you can do is do work to go, oh, okay, well, if that's the case and you can overcome that objection and get them back in as well. So it can be a multifaceted. So you're getting feedback from the market about what your patients are feeling, especially the ones who aren't coming back.

[00:34:54] You can start building that up and go, listen, what I'm hearing is, you know, you could build lists of these are the reasons that people aren't coming back in. Some of them might be known. You might go, sure, you know, maybe it's money related or maybe it's, but maybe there's an experience that they're having that you're not aware about. So, again, it's that patient care. So, yes, quicker to call. Also, the reactivations, getting information from that database and getting conversions from that.

[00:35:20] But also, you can just perhaps layer in a patient lifecycle touch that you never had before because you've now we've got resource to do it. Wouldn't it be good if, you know, after X point or Y point, they got a call and were asked this specific question or, you know, we're given this specific piece of information, for example. So, you can really start to get smart and much more interactive with your client base.

[00:35:45] And I think probably the beautiful thing about that, especially in an age of, you know, bots and automated calls and all that kind of stuff is we're actually talking about speaking to an actual person. Yeah. Human touch, which is, you know. And listen, on that point, I just want to bring something up, which I think is fair. Yeah. Sometimes people say, OK, you know, offshore resource, I get it. It's cheaper. Sure. But, you know, what is that accent like? What's the English like? And I'd say two things to that.

[00:36:14] One, this wouldn't be up and running successfully in this space if we weren't talking about people who were great, bubbly, empathetic communicators. So, you know, absolutely the expectation is that they have a very high level. The second piece is that you don't have to take our word for it. The way that the model works is you see the candidates, you make the choice.

[00:36:38] And if you simply said, well, these candidates aren't, you know, up to scratch from any perspective, but if it was communication perspective, then it's on us to find you some better candidates. I just wanted to take that off the table because I know that sometimes people go offshore. You're, I've got concerns about, you know, how that's going to come across with our brand. But it's, yeah, that is something that we take care of. And you are always in control of that. And you know what? I think it's a bigger problem in people's mind than it actually is in reality.

[00:37:05] I actually have somebody from the Philippines who's local, who works on my front desk. And nobody bats an eyelid when she rings them and makes a genuine call from the front desk. They go, oh, yeah, that's, she works there. You know. Yeah. The more you're multicultural, your workforce is, the less people are stressed about it. Do you know what I mean? That's what I believe for sure.

[00:37:28] I think we've actually kind of touched on this question, but the next thing I wanted to ask you was when we consider what's important next in kind of looking at the future trajectory of the chiropractic profession, the way the world is heading, how are you helping chiropractors to prepare to succeed in the future? Yeah.

[00:38:49] And so we can come and say, right, let's look at all that overall business. Let's look at that pain. And let's look at that cost. And let's look at that. Let's look at that. Let's look at that. So, let's look at that.

[00:39:17] So, let's look at that. operating costs from a people perspective. But that kind of bandwidth and those types of roles we're also seeing is helping feed into improved metrics as well. Yeah, those are probably the key points that I'd make. Perhaps a final thing as well is if there is a point where practices maybe are thinking

[00:39:45] of growing and there's maybe multiple practices or multiple locations as well, this solution can work really well for that. So we've got one person who can now be working across two locations, three locations or however many locations that you need. So it's basically a way of helping accelerate growth by driving efficiency, reducing costs and improving the way that you're working with metrics. You mentioned that CAC to LTV ratio, right?

[00:40:14] And we're also talking about protecting that investment that you put into marketing. And if you can optimize your marketing funnel for the same amount of ad spend, then your CAC goes down. Yeah. And if we're doing it efficiently, even if we add that expense of offshore, the CAC still goes down because it's significantly more optimized and perhaps converting prospects from,

[00:40:41] you know, I don't know, throw some numbers out, 20, if we can get it to 30 or 40% of the immediate ROI. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. And I'm sure you've heard this, but we do, again, hear that anxiety of like, well, I would like to put some more money in the top of the funnel and spend more money on marketing, but I'm not really sure we're going to catch it. Like we're just going to get money in, but that's more calls and we're already struggling to make those returns.

[00:41:07] So it does free up and make that growth feel a little bit more possible, a little bit more sustainable. But it's not just the CAC, it's the LTV as well, because if you're able to communicate more regularly at more critical touch points with a patient, and again, get back into those traditional someone who, right, the LTV has come to an end. Not if we're doing reactivations in smart ways as well. So it's both ends of that. Both ends of the scale. That's the thing.

[00:41:36] So I guess what we're really talking about is two connects can come along and they can plug that leaky bucket, whether plug the hole in that leaky bucket, whether that leaky bucket represents, you know, the marketing funnel and just leads prospects just dropping out of that funnel because they're not getting called fast enough or the genuine patient base who people are leaking out of that bucket just because they get lost and there's no reactivation campaign. Yeah. So that sounds like a wonderful solution.

[00:42:04] Now, I've actually got one other question that I'm just going to throw in there. There's a lot of different offshoring kind of agencies. Sometimes people go searching for themselves. You touched on this briefly, but what sets Two Connect apart from those other agencies and the option of looking for offshore labor? Yeah, there's a couple of things. I think the DNA of Two Connect is interesting because it's a family run business.

[00:42:29] And the story actually is, is that the Kukla family who set up the business lived in the Philippines for a long period of time. And the founder and MD actually basically grew up there. So there's a real understanding and connection with the country, with the people, with the culture, and also a deep understanding of the workforce and what it takes to do business over there. So there's kind of a dual mission for Two Connect, which is yes, to serve our clients

[00:42:57] with excellence, but it's also to provide great working opportunities for hardworking Filipinos and their families as well. So for example, we have private health insurances built into the offering. So we've got a really good reputation over there of looking after our people incredibly well. The other piece is that part of our basis, our partnerships over in the Philippines was that it started from a medical background.

[00:43:21] So we've always understood how to operate in that space, the importance of looking after patients and having, yeah, how to source those people and look after them really well. So those are probably the key points. And quite frankly, now, I think that Two Connect has more chiropractic clients than frankly anyone else. So we've carved out a niche and we've got to work with the remarkable practice and really spend some time understanding how chiropractice work and what the drivers and needs are. Yeah.

[00:43:49] And look, we're a unique profession and our needs and focuses are completely different. And having somebody who understands, you know, you're already talking about cost to acquire a customer versus lifetime value ratios, all that kind of stuff. So it's good to see that we have these success partners that can genuinely fix a problem for our remarkable client practice or our remarkable practice clients, but also that they add value to their community.

[00:44:16] I remember you talking about like you guys even go above and beyond to make sure they get a birthday cake or something for their birthday. And that helps improve. Company policy. Yeah. Employee retention is what we want, right? If we get an A player, we want to hold on to that A player. Sounds like you guys are nailing it. Yeah. I'm sure that after our little conversation, a lot of people listening are like, you know what? This is the solution that I need to help scale my practice further.

[00:44:41] What's the best way for a listener to learn more or take the next step to get in touch with you? Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. So firstly, I'd say there might be some listening who say, well, this is definitely something I need. And there might be another demographic who are just saying there might be something there. And even if it's not now, I'd kind of like to figure out a little bit how it might work, even if it's in six to 12 months that this might come into focus more meaningfully. So more than happy to, I just want to make that clear.

[00:45:09] I'd be more than happy to speak to absolutely anyone, wherever you're at on that stage, even if it's a 10, 15 minute little fact finding mission, and we can talk, throw some pricing around, you know, answer a couple of questions and check in in six, 12 months. So I'm completely fine with that. So basically my name's Dan Anderson. You can find me on LinkedIn. If you go onto the 2connect.com.au website, you can submit via a form there and I'll get in touch with you from there.

[00:45:37] Or well, yeah, that's pretty much it. You know, the 2connect website, go there, get in touch. And I'd love to chat and we can arrange a time to go through things. And I'm sure if anyone listening just went, oh, okay, I don't know which one I'm going to do. Fail safe is just send a message to somebody at the Remarkable Practice and we'll put you in touch with Dan. Absolutely right. Appreciate that. Thanks for your time today, Dan. And as always, it's a pleasure.

[00:46:06] Thanks for listening to this episode of Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast. Remember, what the world needs now is chiropractic and what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, share with your friends and leave us a review. And if you'd like to connect with us personally, please click the links in the show notes to schedule a call.