Not What You’re Born With…

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Based on decades of research, Andre Erickson at the University of Florida has proven that exceptional performance really doesn’t happen overnight, nor is it determined by just innate talent. In his research, there are seven concepts that are important to consider when thinking about this idea.  

  1. The 10-year rule. It takes approximately 10 years of daily deliberate practice to become an expert. Roughly four hours a day. That’s how we develop mastery. You can’t do something one time and then expect to be a master of it. If you do the right things deliberately over and over again, with time, you develop mastery. 
  1. Training trumps talent. I know we’ve all heard this, but I don’t think we can repeat this fundamental truth enough. Becoming an expert takes effective and efficient training. Experts give themselves direct access to the best techniques, whether that be coaching, pit crews, peer-to-peer discussions, books, seminars, etc. Experts never stop taking the opportunity to train. 
  1. A relentless pursuit for excellence. Once top performers achieve something, they realize that exceptional performance can’t be maintained without continued effort. You can’t just perfect it one time to do it once. You have to continue to be relentless and pursue excellence. Train until you can’t do it wrong. 
  1. More effort, not more success. In my lifetime, the harder I work, the luckier I get. The reality is that exceptional performers do not have higher success rates, they just simply do more. Take massive action. 
  1. Effortful study. Challenging yourself beyond your present competencies makes room for growth. If you’re saying, “That’s not how we do it,” or “you’re doing the same things you’ve always been doing”, you’re full mentally in both your practice and personal life. You’ve got to push yourself. A muscle does not grow without stressing it, nor do our businesses or personal lives.
  1. Successful people don’t have hot streaks. The period when successful people produce the most successes are the times when they produce the most failures. Make the routine your award. 
  1. A higher source of motivation. What’s your why? Why do you exist? Why do you get up every day? Experts are intrinsically motivated to be the best they can be. That’s what mastery is all about. They’re not motivated by fear of failure or by greed. I can only imagine how incredible it would be for you if the person you are today meets the person you are destined to be. 

Remember: It’s not what you were born with, it’s what you become. 

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You’re Going to Jail

Time Management Quiz

How you manage your time, your team, and your operations is directly related to the success you have in your business. Use our 20-question quiz to see how your skills add up!

You’re a thief. I’m a thief too… sometimes. Anytime you give less than your best effort, you’re stealing. 

Think about that with the tasks you perform, the work that you do, or the service you provide. Think about that with your children, your spouse, and the people around you. If you’re not giving your best effort, you’re stealing from them. As cliché as it sounds, always strive to do our best. We need to constantly improve our skillset so that our minds can flourish, our relationships can blossom, and our lives can advance. 

Let me share an analogy with you. I live in South Dakota. It tends to get below 0 degrees in the winter and the wind blows the snow around. If my vehicle only starts 7/10 times in that kind of weather, I am not going to keep that vehicle. I’m buying a new vehicle. What I’m saying is: you need to give your best effort 10/10 times, not 7/10 times. Don’t be a thief today, you owe it to yourself.

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So, You’ve Hit a Wall…

We all have obstacles. Think of those obstacles as a brick wall; if we allow the wall to stay in front of us, and we can’t figure out how to get beyond the bricks, we’re going to be stuck forever. 

Here is a challenge for each and every one of you. Discover your uniqueness. Every single one of us is unique in our talents, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Set aside the time to discover your uniqueness.  

How do you discover your uniqueness? Assess your own behavior. How do we behave in normal circumstances? In stressful circumstances? Do we adapt our behavior? What are we motivated by? What makes us get up every single day? Discovering your uniqueness creates power and shows you how to attack each and every day, relationship, and business obstacle.

So, take a step back and understand you. Once you have self-awareness, you can create self-regulation. Your ability to self-regulate and adapt your behavior is a key element of emotional quotient. It’s not easy. Trust me, I’m on this journey with you. I’m constantly trying to learn more about myself. Why do I behave in certain ways? What are my life experiences that make me react and respond like I do? I don’t have all the answers, but here’s what I’m dedicated to, and I encourage you to be dedicated to: discovering your uniqueness each and every day.  

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“Hey Siri, Add That to my Rainy Day File”

Let’s talk about rainy days. Not the literal version, but those times when you need to find your way out of a tough time. We’ve all heard the term “rainy day fund,” or a savings account when something goes bad. Well, today we’re going to talk about the “rainy day file.” This is a tool where you save compliments people have paid you.  

 The neuroscience says that, for every negative encounter in which you receive criticism or a critique, you must experience at least five positive encounters to offset it. That is called our emotional quotient, or emotional intelligence. Every day in business, we get hired and fired by customers. We have problems and things that go wrong. Sometimes our customers leave and they’re very critical of us, or we have a team member or a boss who gets very critical of us. There are people who will ridicule you just because you didn’t see eye-to-eye on certain things. All of this can beat us down. The reality, however, is that we’re all people and we’re not always going to be perfect. Wanting a little grace doesn’t mean that we don’t want to strive to be better or that we never want to get criticism. Many of us also receive nice notes, affirmations, or kind words from people in our life. Maybe it’s from a customer, a vendor, or teacher. Don’t we love that? Today, I encourage you to put those notes, compliments, and other positives into your rainy day file and review them from time to time. 

We don’t always celebrate the wins and the victories like we should. We tend to think of them as routine, but when you experience them, I want you to put them in your rainy day file. Share them with others around you, but more importantly, take them out during those times that you’re getting beat up, feeling a bit anxious, or experiencing negativity. Reflect on five of them to offset the one negative. This will motivate you to get up the next day and keep pushing forward into the storm. This rainy day file is a celebration of what you do for people, your vision, and your mission. Understand how good it feels to get a compliment, now go out of your way today to give one to someone. You might create a bigger impact on that person than your realize. 

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Time Is More Than Money

We’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects: time. Time is a very interesting concept. You can’t manufacture more of it. We all have the same 168 hours per week. We all have the same amount of seconds every week and the same amount of minutes. Time is the number one product for many of us, because that’s all we have. It is the currency of experience and is the first key component of delivering a transformational experience, no matter what you do for a living.  

 

When you ask the question, “What are you doing?” and someone says, “I’m killing time,” I want to say “Are you are really killing time, because I would contend you’re killing something else.” You’re not killing time. You’re killing opportunity, because time represents opportunities. Look at how you’re maximizing your time. When we look at managing our time and getting intentional about our time, many more things can happen in our lives.  

 

I encourage you to do a time optimization exercise where you write down what you’re doing every minute of the day and then you categorize it. Should you do it? Should you delegate it or dump it? Does it bring you energy or does it take away energy? Do the exercise for one to three days. I try to do it once a month because I know that my time is my most valuable asset. I know my time is how I deliver amazing experiences. I know what my time is worth down to the minute and even the second. I want you to be intentional about your time. I want you to optimize your time, because if you keep killing time, you’re killing opportunities.  

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Slay the Dragons of Billing

Dragons roast revenue. They destroy documentation. They fry your finances, and generally, mess up a perfectly good day. These aren’t the dragons of mythology on HBO. These beasts are alive and romping around your office today

— dragging down your billing system. Left unchecked, they pick your pocket with inefficiency, confusion and error.

Slay these Seven Dragons of Billing and rescue the bottom line of your chiropractic kingdom:

Communication dragon

Today’s chiropractic marketplace is a hodge-podge of insurance coverage and pricing. Insufficient communication with patients about their fiscal responsibility creates friction, and leads to unpaid bills and unhappy customers who go elsewhere.

Slaying this dragon requires a well-trained team that efficiently communicates those important details. It means the doctor must understand it as well and communicate with the team.

Feedback dragon

This is close cousin of the communication dragon. When there are errors — and there will be — technicians need proper feedback so they can tighten systems and procedures. Otherwise it just keeps happening and the dragons keep raiding your treasure.

Sloppy dragon

Poorly-trained techs combined with loose or vague systems lead to sloppy work. This is a particularly insidious dragon as it shows up randomly. You lose money every time patient demographics are entered incorrectly, or insurance information is not entered at all. These are not complicated

tasks, but they are details. The sloppy dragon feeds on details, or lack thereof, and he likes money.

Technology dragon

Your billing is dependent on software. How well do you understand how it works? Probably not as well as you should, because who has time for that? The technology dragon keeps claims from going out because the settings aren’t right. It thwarts your tech’s proper input of information. It puts ghosts in the machine of your system.

Insurance dragon

The hated insurance dragon gets blamed for many things, and a lot of them are true. Changes and software updates including address or payer ID, billing guidelines such as codes and charges, third-party processors which can change the EOB/remittance information, requiring documentation

utilization reviews, and changing authorization requirements. While your head is spinning with rules and regulation, the insurance dragon slips away with more of your revenue.

Training dragon

The training dragon lives on the leftovers of his fire-breathing brethren. He shows up when teams aren’t trained on the standard operating procedures and when they don’t know what other members are doing or why. This leads to person-dependent procedures which are risky at best. The training dragon likes

Mary, who’s been doing your billing for 20 years. He lurks around complacency and loves outright theft. Training your team in multiple functions is the best defense against this horrible dragon.

Procedure dragon

Most dragons feed off mistakes and misunderstanding of the team members. The procedure dragon flaps around the head of the organization – the doctor. It’s a lack of standard operating procedures for financial techs, including collecting at every

appointment, verifying and inputting insurance benefits, sending out statements, and scanning and inputting all authorizations.

Without strictly enforced guidelines for techs, things are going to stray. And what dragon doesn’t love strays. Billing can be a vexing problem for chiropractors. It keeps you from doing the work you want, which is taking care of patients. It sucks time away from your family and community. And it gets more complicated every year.

About SIDECAR Chiropractic Billing Services

Our company was established by chiropractors, for chiropractors, and is still run by chiropractors. In short, we understand your challenges in the shifting sands of reimbursement. We are dragon slayers – a sharpened sword in a time of need. With a collective 75 years in experience, SIDECAR can offer proven methods for achieving a successful chiropractic practice.

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Keep on Defending Your Castle

When we say control the controllables – it is important to stay Expanded!   Think of trying to unfurl a sail when are knots in the rope. It cannot be done! 

Use every area of your life to make sure you are defending your Castle in every way you can think of. Stay strong using the three H’s – Heart, Humility and Hustle. 

Financial:  Look for ways to protect yourself, your family and your business. Trim the fat. Use the Crisis Survival Kit. 

Family: Protect them and keep them safe. Help them manage THEIR fears. Communicate to them.  Ask them questions and most of all love them. 

Spiritual:  Create or enhance your rituals, praying, meditating, and pay attention to you — breathe. Look for positives in your life daily (there is always a silver lining). Have unrelenting faith! 

Social:  Stay connected through social media, share jokes, use facetime, what’s app, send videos, listen to music, sing your heart out and dance like no one is watching. (Because they aren’t). 

Physical: Get outside, work out, practice self-love, eat right, limit your sugar, smile and if all else fails — as Dr. Frank used to say – do naked jumping jacks. 

Intellectual:  Program your brain. Write three things you are grateful for every morning. Stop whining and blaming. Read something to reinforce a growth mindset.  Speak with like-minded people. OWN why what I do matters. Be mindful of your words! Adjust them accordingly (I want to vs. I have to). 

Career: Stay connected, study, increase your commitment level, train every day.  Stay creative together. Share ideas! CALL THE HOTLINE! 

Pray like it all depends on GOD! 

Work like it all depends on YOU! 

Your Sidecar Team. 

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Fill your sails with good wind

Set sail. 

There is nothing more beautiful than a sailboat on the open water.  As the wind catches the sail, the boat moves effortlessly across the water. As long as wind fills the sail, forward momentum continues.    

No wind, no sail, no progress. 

The boat also needs a sailor to maneuver the sail, catch the wind and head in the right direction. 

We can use the boat as a metaphor for our lives.  We need to fill our sails with wind and not get entangled with things that don’t create momentum.    

We need wind that includes people who make us better. It includes the books we read, the training we do, and a mindset that expands for more opportunities.    

Our sails get entangled by a contracted mindset, toxic relationships, bad attitudes, lack of action, and not accepting accountability for our decisions.    

We are the sailors of our own lives!   

Guide your boat toward the life we desire, one of  affluence filled with rich relationships, a reputation to be proud of, a vocation we love, a vision that ignites our days, and the resources to experience life on our terms.   

Set sail. 

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The hard question we all face

Open or closed.  

That’s the decision for chiropractors and most small business owners across the country as we prepare for – and worry about – the coronavirus. 

The virus, the disruption, the political wrangling and social media blathering – seem complicated, and they be. 

But this decision is black and white – open or closed. 

That’s the issue I hear the most right now from chiropractors. We are all struggling with the same question. The truth is, there is no wrong answer. Each of us deals with unique circumstances.  

We live in different states, even different countries where governments take varying levels of actions depending on the conditions on the ground. Some places have mandatory closing of all businesses, including affiliated health care clinics such as ours.  

In those cases, the choice is made for you. 

The rest of us struggle with the decision, balancing service to patients with obligations to public health and our staff and our families.   

Do we turn away an elderly patient who wants and needs an adjustment? 

Do we limit contact between patients, spacing tables and waiting areas? 

Do we require phone screening before a visit to identify potentially risky patients? 

None of these are unrealistic ideas.  

My message is to take prudent steps. Get the best information you can from reputable and trusted sources. Pay attention to updates from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control. 

Listen to your local and state officials for guidance. 

Don’t go it alone.  

Talk to your staff, your family, your colleagues. What is best for them? 

Don’t be afraid to address the fear and anxiety we are all feeling, because it’s there. It manifests in all kinds of ways, through anger and outbursts, an underlying sense of discomfort or dread, or even gallows humor.  

Dr. Shahana Alibhai was a guest on a webinar we broadcast recently. (You can watch it here.) Dr. Shahana is an M.D. in British Columbia and expert on dealing with anxiety. She’s also married to a chiropractor.  

She told a wonderful story of a discussion they had about what to do.  

Dr. Shahana told her husband to ask himself “why” seven times.  

What are you feeling? 

Stress about whether to close. 

Why? 

Because I don’t want to let down my patients. 

Why? 

Because it’s bad for them, and bad for me and bad for business. 

Why is that important right now? 

Because then I can’t provide for my family. 

And there’s the heart of the decision for Dr. Shahana’s husband. He feels the weight of responsibility to take care of his wife and young children. That’s a perfectly normal experience and one many of us share. 

As Dr. Shahana points out, the decision of whether to close is not a measure of our worth as parents, spouses and community leaders. Quite the contrary.  

That may be the best decision for our children, spouse and community.   

There’s no blanket stance that will fit all of us. I’ve heard calls on either end of the spectrum, from nobody can tell me to close my clinic, to everybody should shut down for the good of society. That’s unfortunate because it ignores that what’s right for you may not be right for me.  

And more broadly, is undercuts the reality that we are all in this together as a profession. Our individual threads form a common cloth of chiropractic — not based on technique or history — but as small business owners.  

That’s what we do as SIDECAR. We’re here to collaborate with you, to bring chiropractors together to share ideas and find solutions for our businesses.  

One of the principles we follow is relevant to the times. It’s called $even and it’s a personal and business financial management system created by one of our founders, Dr. Douglas Sea. This is the perfect time to bring discipline to your budgets and $even gives you practical tools to start today.  

We do this because we believe in our profession. We believe there is a place for chiropractors to contribute to the overall good of our communities, even in this time of crisis.  

SIDECAR truly is a resource to put you on a path to affluence. We want to help.  

Open or closed is a simple question but a difficult decision.  

My advice is, make it for the right reasons. Get to the heart of what’s best for you, your family and your business.  

Understand the why behind your decision – even if you have to ask it seven times.  

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The Business Survival Kit 

Daily life has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic.  

At SIDECAR we’ve been gathering all the information we can to help chiropractors through this crisis.  

What I keep coming back to is this singular message: Control the controllables.  

I’m sure you’ve probably seen or heard that phrase in other communication from us. But that’s not enough. This is the time to not only make sure you get through the pandemic – and it will end – but also prepare to grow your business when the stress eases.  

We changed the focus of this month’s Fuel Tank to “Business Survival Kit: How to stay proactive during a crisis.” That session is Thursday at noon central. You can still sign up here.  

It’s also available in replay afterward. Watch for that link soon.  

Our guests on the webinar are Dr. Ray Foxworth, Bill Esteb and Dr. Shahana Alibhai.

Dr. Foxworth’s participation, and other efforts by CHUSA, was highlighted this week by Chiropractic Economics on their website, chiroeco.com. Read that here.

We’ve also created the Coronavirus Business Survival Kit for download. You can get that here.   

The kit includes: 

  • Ten activities you and your staff can do now to not only survive but prepare to grow. 
  • A two-week email campaign to stay connected to send to your patients.  
  • Images that match the emails to use on social media. 
  • A Power Point presentation you can use to educate patients or other groups.  

These are two resources we hope you’ll take advantage of in the near term. The SIDECAR crew is committed to serving you during difficult times as well as good.  

We will ride alongside you through coronavirus… and beyond. 

 

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