Jerry (0:03)

All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Rocket Chiro podcast. This is the business and marketing podcast for chiropractors. We're going to talk today about making money as a chiropractor and the different ways you can do that. This is not going to be a deep dive, kind of nuts and bolts into these individual things, but more of a overview and hopefully an eye opening experience to you as a chiropractor to kind of see what some of your options are. I don't even think that this is all inclusive because I do think that there's a lot of different ways that you can make money as a chiropractor that are probably not things I even thought about. So don't take this as all inclusive. Just take it as a baseline way that chiropractors make money. I had a client the other day that was sort of just frustrated with, you know, trying to, trying to help people, trying to make a living, trying to be a chiropractor, trying to do well and just frustrated with not making as much money as what they would like to. And the chiropractor said to me, like, how are chiropractors making money? And they were just so frustrated. And I thought, oh, that's actually an interesting question. So I wrote some things down, I broke them down to three categories. The three categories are going to be as a traditional chiropractor, as a chiropractor plus, and I don't mean like you're a better chiropractor, I just mean that you're doing things that are not traditional chiropractic and then as a non chiropractor, because there are things that chiropractors do to make money that really have nothing to do with chiropractic or even necessarily healthcare. So that's what we're going to talk about. Before I get into that, I do want to remind you, if you want a better chiropractic website, go to rocketchiro.com check out the rocket chiropractic websites. They're lightweight, they're affordable, they are really great at helping you get more new patients. And that's really the main, or should be the main thing of your website. So if you have a website that's not helping you out and you want one that is helping you out, go to Rocket Chiro and check out our websites. Also, if you want help with your search engine optimization or your Google Ads, reach out to me. I'd be happy to help you however I can. If you are getting started and you're Feeling stuck and overwhelmed. And you want some help that goes beyond this podcast, then check out my Next Step program. That membership is really great for people who are getting started or feeling a little bit stuck and not sort of like this client that I told you about. She's like, you know, how do I make more money? It's like. And so we kind of talked about that a little bit and I gave her some tips and hopefully we can kind of help her go in the right direction as a Next Step member. All right, so couple things I want to say before I get into this. I would do want to say that the thing you need to make sure you understand as a chiropractor and really as a business owner is that. Actually, let, let me say this before I even say that I'm not really talking about being an associate here. That you could theoretically make good money as an associate, but those, those opportunities are few and far between. Most associates don't make the kind of money that you would like to make as a chiropractor. And I would say considering how much time and money and effort you put into becoming a chiropractor, they're probably, they probably fall short in most cases. There are exceptions to that where you might run a clinic for somebody or it just happens to be a unique situation. Most of the time, associate jobs are sort of those getting started jobs, baseline pay, not really anything close to what you would like to be doing, and you sort of have to go out and become your own person. Be a little entrepreneurial, be a small business owner, be a chiropractor that owns your own practice. That's sort of the path that most chiropractors have to take. So that's mostly what we're talking about here. Like, I'm not really going to discuss how to get a high paying associate job because I think that those. It's sort of like hunting unicorns, right? It's just, it's just not. It's not real practical for most chiropractors. So with that in mind, I want to say that. Make sure that you understand that net is more important than gross. This is something that it's. It's really easy to get caught up on numbers. I created a meme this week where I kind of joked about, you know, real chiropractors see at least 300 people a week. You know, it's like there's a lot that goes into that. You know that because if you're seeing 300 people a week, you probably have more staff and more overhead and there's more things that are there involved in that. I'm not saying that just because you have a big clinic that you're not making more money. A lot of times they do, but there are this. There is this diminished return that happens with any business where you. You could be growing to a point where it's like, okay, I have this much bigger business. I have a lot more people employed, I'm seeing a lot more people, I'm helping a lot more people, but I'm not actually making any more money or I'm making very little money compared to the hassle I had. A friend of mine that I talked to years ago, I was a little bit envious of his practice because of the size of it and the scale of it. And I just thought he was doing awesome and I was doing less than awesome. And when we sat down and talked, the difference between what I was making and what he was making was negligible. And. And I was really shocked by that. So just make sure that you're keeping in mind when you're. If we're just talking about money now, there's other aspects of practice, but if we're just talking about money, just make sure you understand that Net is what is important, not gross. Like, the shiny numbers that we like to brag about isn't necessarily what you're bringing home. The other thing I want to say is sort of a Jerryism, where I always say, making money is easy, but building a community is hard. And I think that that's something that you need to keep in mind. Also, there are a lot of people that are telling you, like, you can make this way, make money online doing this, and you can make money doing this, and you can make money as a chiropractor doing this. And all you have to do is have a million followers on Instagram and you could be a chiropractor that charges $150 a visit or, you know, whatever. It's. It's like, oh, just have a podcast. The podcast is going to help you grow your practice and give you authority and whatever. And it's like, yeah, but nobody. If nobody listens to it, it's. If nobody gives a crap what you have to say. If. No, if you don't have any sort of authority, if you don't have a following, if you don't have a community, then making money is really hard. It's hard to make money without people. If you have a lot of people that. That follow you. And this is why authority can be really important in terms of how it impacts your business. But if you have a lot of people follow you, a lot of people trust you, and you're a big deal in, in some way, shape or form, that then that makes your business easier because once you have a following, the ability to make money and the opportunities to make money really are just endless at this, at this day and age. So I always will tell people that making money is easy. Building a community is hard. And so just keep that in mind as we're talking about this. All right? So as a traditional chiropractor, there's three things you want to consider. Volume, overhead, and authority. And so these things. And what I mean by traditional chiropractor is you're putting your hands on people. You're. You're focusing mostly on the adjustment or heavily on the adjustment. And the way that you make money as a traditional chiropractor is going to be. Have to do some combination of volume, overhead, and authority. And the reason these things are important is because a lot of chiropractors that are doing just traditional, like you're doing adjustments because that doesn't get reimbursed well or oftentimes not at all. And also because it's not usually a high price point for people to pay for the way you make money as a traditional chiropractor. If you're not adding a bunch of other stuff and you're not wanting to do anything else, you just. Just want to be a chiropractor, which was sort of the way I was in practice. Like, I just wanted to be a chiropractor. If you're doing that, you have to make up for it with volume. A combination of volume and low overhead, like, that's sort of the, the way that you do it. Now, if you have a higher overhead where you have like, you know, multiple staff and a bigger practice and bunch of, you know, big building and whatever, then you have to make up for it with that volume. So that's sort of the, the thing that you're playing with is overhead and volume. Now, why authority matters is because if you are someone who is of higher authority, meaning that for. And I'll use the ring dinger as an example, like, you know, I talk, you know, the ring dinger. I talked to Chris Dorsa last, last week or I don't know, was it a couple weeks ago or whatever. He's got a big following on Instagram. I know that Strap Polson has a big following on Instagram. There's like these chiropractors who have These big. They're sort of like celebrity chiropractors because they have that authority. People are driving further distance to come see them. They are willing to spend more money to come see them, those chiropractors, because they have authority. And I'm not saying the authority has to come from Instagram. It could come from local advertising. It could be from being on the TV and radio. It could be from writing a book. You could be. You could have been a guest on some show at some point. And you know, if Joe Rogan. If Joe Rogan had me on his podcast, which he never would because I'm not that interesting, but if Joe Rogan had me on my. On his podcast, that one thing would give me a massive amount of authority and immediately give me the opportunity to raise my prices, like how much I charge for a website post. Joe Rogan's podcast would be very different than what I charge for a website now. And the reason is because. Is it anything? Is anything different? Are the websites better? No, it's just that I can charge more because that thing gave me authority, gave me clout, and people are willing to pay more. So you can charge more. If people are willing to pay more, that. Willing to pay more oftentimes comes through authority. So it's something to consider when you're saying, how do I make money as a traditional chiropractor? It has something to do with volume, overhead, and authority. If you can increase your volume, lower your overhead, or increase your authority, you're going to make more money as a traditional chiropractor. All right, as a chiropractor plus. Now, a chiropractor plus means to me that these are often chiropractors that are still doing a lot of insurance are what I would consider chiropractor plus. They're pretty much doing therapies, or really, I would say anything that can be billed. And I don't blame them for that. It's just that if you're just doing adjustments, there's just not a lot of meat on the bone when it comes to insurance. It's. It's almost not worth the hassle. I would say in many cases, it's not worth the hassle, which is why a lot of chiropractors who just doing adjustments are doing cash practices. If you're doing additional therapies or anything, anything and everything that can be billed, then that would be considered chiropractor plus. It's probably the only way or one of the very few ways that you can make money with insurance anymore is Doing those ex. Anything extra that you can do that can be billed. Also adding cash services. This could be nutrition, weight loss, functional medicine, neuropathy stuff, acupuncture, red light laser stuff. I mean there's a lot of different ways of doing it. If you see a chiropractor who is not just doing adjustments, but they're also adding these other things, those other things are adding to their income potential. Should you do those things? I don't know. I, I don't. I think that. And this is something I was going to say at the end, but I'll say it now. I think when you take, and if you take your opportunity, if you, there's like a Venn diagram somewhere where it's like you take your opportunity, you take your interest and you take your talent like that God given skill, whatever you can be good at or are good at or could be better at, you take those things and where they overlap, that's really where your sweet spot is at. So when you're deciding any of this stuff like should I just do traditional chiropractic? It's like, well, are you interested in it? Is there the opportunity? And I think there's generally an opportunity for it. People need it, they want it. But then are you, are you gifted? If you're going to do traditional chiropractic and do chiropractic only, you better be good with your hands. You're not good with your hands. I would start looking into some of this other stuff, some of these other things that you can do because that's going to be a problem. Same thing with this. If you're looking for these like chiropractic plus things like are you interested in weight loss stuff? You know, if you're a fatty and you're going to have weight loss in your practice, like is that sort of undermining your opportunity? And I don't, that sounds bad when I say that. But if, really, I mean if, if it doesn't, if there's an alignment issue, if there's like a, you're not representing what you're selling very well, then I think that you're probably, that's probably just not your bag. Like that's not your thing. Do something else. Do laser therapy. You don't have to be skinny to do laser therapy. You know, do you know, whatever. Acupuncture, like I'm not interested in acupuncture. I have no interest in acupuncture. So if somebody said to me like, hey, you can make money doing acupuncture, I Would like, well, if I could get somebody else to do it and I could sort of be like the boss and overseer of that, I would be open to that because I'm not against acupuncture, but I personally am not interested in it. So those are the things you have to take into consideration. And if you bring someone in for staff that's doing this thing. Now we have, now we're back to that equation of overhead, volume authority, how much are you charging, that sort of thing. So the numbers do have to make sense regardless of how you're going about this. So therapies and anything that can be build, you know, build the heck out of insurance as much as you possibly can. I'm all for it as long as it's legal. Cash services, like I said, nutrition, weight loss, supplements, whatever products, supplements, pillows, those are really common things. Chiropractors have sold. I've chiropractors have sold. Chris Dorsa talked about having his different things that he's selling, different things that he's making so that patients can kind of do self care at home. Things like, I'm not even sure I, I not even sure what the, what the right word is, but things for like soft tissue and stuff like that. So you can make money from that and also other providers. And I sort of alluded to this already, but this would be. If you have you bring in a massage therapist, a physical therapist, a nutritionist. So I, I've seen yoga, even other chiropractors, like other chiropractors are a way to make money as a chiropractor if you have space or if you have time. Like if you're only in your office three days a week and you have, you know, four days a week that is just sitting there empty, you could allow another chiropractor. There's pros and cons with all of that. Just like with all of this that we're talking about. But the space that you have or the time that you have available in your space that you're already paying for, that could be money that could be made through somebody else coming in and utilizing that space and being independent contractor somebody, you're subletting some space, whatever you're doing. So those are ways as a chiropractor. Plus you're not just doing adjustments, you are other services, products, cash, stuff, whatever. Now as in on chiropractor. Now here's the last one that you'll hear a lot of people and there was a guy going around years ago that was kind of like telling I'm not going to say what his stick was because then it'll sort of make it obvious who I'm talking about. But this guy was basically saying, like, I'm going to teach you to make money as a chiropractor. And what he was teaching chiropractors how to do is make money online. That's not making money as a chiropractor. Like, I make money online, I don't make money as a chiropractor. So it's. It's sort of dumb to present that to a chiropractor, especially someone who just wants to be a chiropractor. And if you do, you want to be an entrepreneur or you want to be an influencer or you want to be an authority person or a podcaster or whatever, there are ways that you can make money doing that even while you're a chiropractor. But let's not pretend that being a podcaster or being an influencer or being a whatever thing, you know, being an affiliate marketer or whatever, let's not pretend that that's being a making money as a chiropractor. It's not. It's not the same thing. It's not the same skill. And you may fall into the same category of, I want to make more money, but I don't really want to do podcasting. I want to make more money, but I don't really want to do affiliate marketing. I want to make more money. But I. Years ago, someone had told me that they were making a bunch of money selling books on Amazon, and I was very interested in that. I enjoy writing. I have this sort of thought of maybe writing a book someday. I've written some ebooks that I've actually sold on Amazon because of learning this thing. It's all stupid and pointless. That's not the point. But I have this idea of like, oh, that would be great. I would love to learn how to write and actually make some money from what I'm writing. Like, that would be cool. When I took this guy's, I took this course where the guy explained what he was doing, and it turns out that he wasn't writing at all. Like, he wasn't a writer. He was publishing. And he had a bunch of people ghost writing, and he was basically teaching. Like, how do you figure out what people want to buy? How do you get in front of trends? How do you have these. This content just pumped out just as fast as you go? I mean, this Guy was publishing 10, 15, 20, 50 books a month, and it Was sort of a nickel and dime game where he's just like, it doesn't cost anything or cost very little to make these digital products. He has them done. He wasn't really overly concerned about the quality. He wasn't really over concerned about whether it was good content or not. He just wanted a topic and something interesting enough that someone was willing to pay five bucks for it, or someone was willing to pay four bucks for it or three bucks. It's just this nickel and dime game. Now I learned all that and I said to myself, can I make money this way? Yeah. Do I want to do that job? God, no. It was the. I. I'm not interested in that at all. What I was interested in is like, I like writing, I like creating content. How to make money from that. Now I learned some of that from that, but that wasn't the point of it, that it was different. And I only say all that not because I'm just wandering around with my thoughts, but I'm saying that because there are going to be people that approach you as a chiropractor and they're like, I'm going to teach you how to make money as a chiropractor. And what they're teaching you is how to be an influencer, or they're teaching you how to be a podcaster or how to be a affiliate marketer or how to be a publisher on Amazon, like selling books. You absolutely can do those things. It's just not chiropractic, that's all. So how can you make money as a non chiropractor? YouTube. Simple example. If you have a big following on YouTube, there does come a point where you start making ad revenue money from it. You could make money from sponsorships if you have a big following. This is sort of what I said in the beginning where I said, it's easy to make money. It's hard to get a following. If you have a big enough following. You could have a podcast and you could sell sponsorships. You could have videos on YouTube and you could sell sponsorships in those videos. You could have a big following on Instagram or whatever and you could sell posts like sponsored posts. You can make money through sponsorship. You can make Money directly through YouTube. I think that some of the other platforms are also offering ad revenue space and, and content creator money. YouTube started it, but I think other ones are starting to do it. So if you have a big following, you have that influencer thing that you have going on, you absolutely can make money from that. It could get to the Point where you're making more money from that than you are even as a chiropractor. That's possible, but you better. You got to be good at it. It's. If anybody's telling you it's easy, that's silly. If anyone's telling you, like, all you have to do. That's one of my pet peeves is when someone starts a sentence with all you have to do is. Because if it's something that everybody's not doing, like if I say, like, if you want to go, if you want to get a pack of hot dogs, all you have to do is go down the store and buy it. That's a true statement. Because the thing you're trying to do is simple and anybody can do it. When you say, like, you know how to make your first million, all you have to do is how to have, how to make, how to have a practice that nets $500,000 a year. All you have to do is how to have a successful podcast, how to start making money online, how to make a bunch of money selling books on Amazon. All you have to do is. I hate that statement because you're. People are taking complicated things and trying to make them simple. And I don't think that's super helpful. So just understand that when you're being approached with these things, money is not. This stuff is not easy unless you have a big following. And, and so YouTube online sales and affiliate sales, sponsorships, I've even seen. And these are more traditional things, things like gym ownership and. Or even being a landlord. Years ago, when back in the dinosaur age, when I graduated from chiropractic college, it was not uncommon for chiropractors to have the goal and ambition to buy a strip mall and to have their practice in that strip mall and then to lease and rent out the rest of the strip mall. Like, that was not terribly uncommon. That was something that was talked about a lot, that can still be done. Granted, it requires a lot of capital to get into the position to do that. You have to have the money to make the money. Like that sort of thing. And that's another way to make money as a chiropractor. But you have to have money to make it. You know, there's investments and other things that we could talk about, but I was trying to talk about things that are more low, low hanging fruit. Now. How the landlord thing starts is if it starts with subleasing, it starts with like, I have space or I have time that's available. I'm going to allow Someone to come in, and I'm going to allow someone to do that. Now, if you have someone, let's say, you know, you have good credit and you know that someone doesn't have good credit and they need to get a space and you could rent that space and sublet it to them. It sort of depends on your lease agreement and things like that. But that. That's also a possibility. But there are some landlord possibilities. And also, this is not just business. You could do this with apartments and you could do this with. With duplexes and homes and things of that nature. And there are chiropractors that do that. There are plenty of chiropractors that do that, that they have a side gig of flipping a house or renting or being a landlord in some capacity. Those are things you could theoretically do even though you're still a chiropractor. It's not being a chiropractor. But could you do it? If you're just looking for a way to make money? Yeah, you could. There's a lot of chiropractors now that are doing like a gym clinic hybrid. I have had clients before that have had. They've owned gyms. I think it's a pretty. Pretty cool thing. There's a part of me that would. I think, would like to own a gym that. But once again, you have to have the capital, you have to have the opportunity, you have to have the space. You have to have all of that stuff. Could you make money from it? Yeah. Can you be a crappy gym owner and it just. Money just falls out of the sky because it's easy because you own a gym? Like, that's silly. Like, let's not pretend that that's the case. If you have a big following, you have a bunch of people interested in going in your gym. Turns out making money from a gym is probably pretty easy, but that's no different than anything else. If you have an unlimited supply of people that are interested in you as their chiropractor, making money as a chiropractor is easy. This is. So we're sort of back to the original thing, which is making money is easy. Building a community is hard, but these are some things to think about, either as a traditional chiropractor, as a chiropractor, plus where you're adding some other stuff or things you could do potentially as a chiropractor that are not chiropractic, that could help you make some money. Those are options for you, how to go about those, how to be great at those things, that's a whole different conversation. But at least you can be aware of some of your options. Look at yourself internally, look at your opportunity around you and say, where are my talents? Where is my opportunity? Where's my interest? And try to find a place where making money, where all that stuff overlaps, and then go in that direction. What I don't advise you to do, and this is the last thing I'll say, what I don't advise you to do is I don't advise you to find something that you really, really, really want to do that you really, really, really suck at and try to force it. Because generally speaking, people don't go from sucking at something to being competent or being good. Generally, you go from good to great. And any of these things, you're better off being great at any of these things. And you are picking something that you're super interested in but that you're terrible at. Because if you're super interested and you're terrible at it, you're probably going to be doomed to just struggle and not ever get to where you really. Which is the point of this whole conversation, is making a little bit more money. All right, guys, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for your reviews. If you want a better website, go to Rocket Cairo. If you want help with your website and se or your SEO or your Google Ads, then check out Rocket Cairo. If you want to help getting started, getting unstuck, getting help with your business, check out my next step program. I'm here to help however I can. Thank you guys for listening. Talk to you on the next episode. See you.