Introduction:
Preparing the Roadmap

You’ve decided to take the step of opening your own practice.  Congratulations!  You’re independent, motivated, and hard-working—all essential qualities for an entrepreneur.  You’ve either heard of, or lived through, the “horror story” of a bad associateship:  low pay, long hours, and grunt work.  You’re ready to go beyond that.

Yes, it’s true that having your own practice is really the only way to excel financially and maintain clinical autonomy.  Unfortunately, it does not mean giving up the long hours and grunt work—at least not at the beginning.  As with any new business, starting a chiropractic practice takes a big investment of time and effort as well as money.  Having your own business is a huge responsibility—you can no longer just work nine to five and leave your problems at the office when you clock out.  Like any good investment, though, your practice will flourish with time.

Also like other types of investment, a new business requires good planning as a foundation.  It requires continual deposits of resources, and a commitment to stick it out for the long term.

There are a lot of references out there filled with tricks, gimmicks, and schemes.  There are also plenty of valuable resources on building and maintaining a practice.  The beginning practitioner, however, is often at sea on the basics of office management—information that you’re just supposed to “know” or “pick up” somewhere.  That’s where this handbook comes in:  Think of it as a primer for a new language, setting out the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of business, from which you can construct your own success story.

Running a business is like going on a journey—it can be exciting, and sometimes harrowing.  Some days you’re on a boring Midwestern interstate surrounded by endless wheat fields, while other days you’re on a scenic mountain road with curves and switchbacks.  Some days you’re zipping along on the Autobahn; others, you’re sitting in congested rush hour city traffic.  It’s not always possible to predict what the road will be like, but you can prepare as best as you can.

Before you even pack your bags, though, it helps to sit down with a map and figure out where you’re going.  This seems rather obvious, but so many practices ignore this step of the journey:  preparing the map of a mission statement and goals.  You may have heard the statistic that eighty percent of new businesses fail within the first two years.  Guess what?  The main reason is lack of planning.  If you want to be in the successful twenty percent, don’t skip this Introduction.

Even if you are the best doctor in the world, it is very difficult to succeed in business today just by hanging out your proverbial shingle.  According to business consultant Michael Gerber, this is not entrepreneurship; this is a “technician having an entrepreneurial seizure.”  He describes three roles that the successful businessperson must fill:  the Technician (for us, that covers all clinical practice), the Entrepreneur (planning, vision, and innovation), and the Manager (day-to-day oversight of administrative duties).  You must devote equal time to each of these roles; especially at the beginning, it’s crucial to spend as much time on your business as in your business.

You learned the Technician role at chiropractic college and technique seminars.  The rest of this book is concerned with developing your skills as a Manager.  This section on planning, though brief, introduces you to what it really means to be an Entrepreneur.