Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to Business School for the Rehab Chiropractor where we coach you on how to run the practice and business of your dreams. Your host is Justin Rabinowitz - a multiple Rehab Chiropractic practice business owner and investor. In addition to running his own locations, Justin works with Rehab Chiropractors across the US talking about everything from sales to marketing, and creating the business systems necessary to succeed.
Allie Foddrill:
The people owning those practices are not making that great of money, or there's other barriers, right? There's other hiccups in their practice, but that's all you've ever seen. And so they think they have to practice like that.
Justin Rabinowitz:
That's Allie Foddrill, a practitioner less than two years out of chiro school who ignored all the common advice. Stay small, charge less, and just wait your turn. In today's episode, we talk to her about why that's bad advice for chiros and what you can accomplish if you ignore it. If you're new to the podcast, in every episode, we share the stories of chiros who are learning how to build their businesses and along the way, they're learning the lessons they won't teach you in chiro school.
If you want the kind of help I give out on the podcast today, click the link in the show notes to book a call with our team. It's a simple, no pressure, no obligation conversation to help you figure out the right next steps. And if anything you hear today is useful to your practice, please like and follow wherever you get your podcasts or even leave a review. We would love to hear from you.
Just a reminder, we have our live show coming up in May. So if you'd like tickets to that, head over to the link in our show notes. I'm Dr. Justin Rabinowitz and this is Business School for the Rehab Chiropractor.
Allie, you've had an unbelievable start to the opening of your practice, so I want you to talk through some of your numbers and whatever you're comfortable with sharing the first few months, because I think it'll really be interesting for our listeners to hear where you've come from.
Allie Foddrill:
Yeah. So I opened it the 1st of the year of 2025. And so little background, overhead was pretty low at that point. Overhead was maybe three grand a month. And so that very first month opening in revenue, we did about 13. And then from there, month two was 24. Month three was 33, month four was 37, and now we've stuck around anywhere from 30 to 40 in there now for about a year.
Justin Rabinowitz:
The numbers are obviously amazing and congratulations first of all on that.
Allie Foddrill:
Thank you.
Justin Rabinowitz:
I hope when you listen back to this, you just take a moment to be like, "Wow, I can't believe what I've done." But more than that, you said something. In retrospect, some people are going to say overhead was low, but for a lot of people when they're starting, myself included, overhead was actually quite high because you know a lot of people go to the gym, I rented room, I didn't even have a lease in the beginning. When you have no patience and no money, $3,000 seems like a lot. So I'm going to push you a little bit on that. What allowed you to take on that, I think, a big overhead in general?
Allie Foddrill:
Yeah. So I think part of it is I didn't have much of a choice. And I say that, there's always a choice, right? But in the fact that I am a female and me and my husband want to have a family someday. And a lot of times when you're going or renting a room out of a gym, you only have room for one practitioner. It's you. It's you running the whole show. And I knew for me, I couldn't do that. I want to take a maternity leave someday. And so I needed to have other doctors underneath me at some point.
And so when we were looking for spaces, we automatically were looking for higher, like bigger, more room for more practitioners. And so that kind of was originally part of the reason why we had to do that. But I will say what made that possible is we were very intentional with what we were spending money on. We knew at some point I would start my own practice. We had very intentionally saved. I'm also very fortunate that I have a husband who has a job, and so that extremely helped. But I will say right off the bat, I knew that first month that we were going to be able to handle overhead. I had put a plan into place to make overhead and knew I was going to stick to it. And so even though I had fallback plans, I never planned on using fallback plans, if that makes sense.
Justin Rabinowitz:
So you're 18 months out, some version of that, less than two years out. So you have a lot of people that are in a lot of different scenarios. They've graduated, started their own practice, they've graduated, worked for someone, they've graduated and might not even be in practice anymore. I mean, that's a reality of it.
Allie Foddrill:
Totally.
Justin Rabinowitz:
And I asked you, when your friends get stuck, why do you think that they do? And I thought your answer was quite insightful.
Allie Foddrill:
I think a lot of them think they have to practice like their mentors. And we see this... So my world in chiropractic school was NPI, R2P, very rehab based, sports medicine based chiropractic. And so a lot of that world, we see these cash practices, but we see these half an hour visits for $100 and that was like the standard of what you see. That's all I ever saw. And I did plenty of shadowing. I saw a lot of practices. And I think they get stuck thinking that they need to practice like that because that is the new way. That is how you do a cash practice, is you do it one session at a time, $100, half an hour. And then if you take a closer look, the people owning those practices are not making that great of money, or there's other barriers, right? There's other hiccups in their practice, but that's all you've ever seen. And so they think they have to practice like that. And so I think a lot of my friends got stuck on that, of you just don't know any better.
Justin Rabinowitz:
Do I believe that this is something that is taught the wrong way in chiro school? Well, I'm actually a little bit different than most people because I don't believe this is the job of chiropractic school. I don't really think that they are in the business of teaching us how to run a business. I had a bone and joint professor in chiropractic school, and I asked him one time, what do they look at their job as? And he said, "Listen, we have two jobs here. Number one, we want to get you to basically pass boards. That's our primary goal. And number two, when you get into practice, we just don't want you to be dangerous. We don't want you to get sued. We don't want you to miss anything."
And then he said something that stuck with me and it was that, "Beyond anything more than that, it's on you. You've got to go out and make your business. You've got to go out and take the continuing ed and become the practitioner." And so it always stuck with me that people blame chiro school for not really teaching people how to run the business, but that's not its job. And so I think that there's a sense of blame passed along here. And many of the people that I work with, makes sense to them that they need to go and learn extra clinical skills or rehab skills or certain conditioning skills.
But then when you think like, yeah, you should learn how to run a business as well or learn the skills of marketing and communication or finance or payroll, they think that part is crazy, but it all just comes down to knowing the skill. Obviously you're out there and doing it better and they're probably aware of either someone of me or six degrees of separation that's been in our world that is doing it differently. So once there is a level of awareness, where do you think they get stuck next?
Allie Foddrill:
"Oh my God, I'm not worth that. I'm not worth that amount of money." Or they'll say like, and I even had, my mentor told me this. When I knew I was going to go off and do something like this, they're like, "Nobody would ever pay that for a new grad." And I'm like, "Well, people pay me that all the time. I'm not considered a super new grad, but in the grand scheme of things, I am." And so they don't think they're worth it. And I think worth is a very relative term. If I priced myself that in the last year, I've made sure I was worth that much and kind of backwards stepped it, if that makes sense. Like, okay, if I'm going to charge that much, my patients are going to get great value. They're going to get great results and they're going to love their experience.
Justin Rabinowitz:
So this is a key part of understanding Allie's journey. It isn't just a case of charging more because you want to lift the margins of the business. It's kind of about making sure you're worth the price you're charging because it means that you just want to make sure that the services you're providing and the value that you're offering your clients is high quality and it's consistent.
This episode is brought to you by Jane, a practice management software and EMR built to support you in the day-to-day work of running your business. If you're a health or wellness practitioner, you already know. The care you provide starts well before your patient arrives and extends far beyond the treatment room. Jane is here to support every part of that experience. With online booking, your clients can book at a time that works for them, and with features like wait list notifications, they'll even be able to grab last minute openings when they pop up. It's an easy way to keep your schedule full while getting your patients the care they need.
During your appointment, Jane's AI powered documentation feature can help you thoughtfully take notes so you can stay present with the person in front of you. And after appointments, you can end your time together on a healing note, not a transactional one, by charging the card on file. So guys, when Jane reached out to me to become an ambassador for them, it was a no-brainer. In my community Slack channel, we have 140 chiros, PTs, US, Canada, and all over the world. And this is like the one piece of equipment/software that consistently gets a 10 out of 10 rating. They talk about it all the time. They absolutely love it.
And so when Jane reached out to me to help them and be an ambassador for their brand, it was an absolute no-brainer and I am so excited to be able to work with them. To learn more about Jane, how they could support you and your patients, head to jane.app/demo. And one last thing. If you're ready to get started with Jane, you can use my code RehabChiro1MO for a one-month grace period on your new account.
You said, "I knew month one I'd be able to hit overhead." What would you say were some of those key choices and decisions that allowed you to know you would be able to hit overhead? And don't say joined our program. What were the things that you actually did?
Allie Foddrill:
So it starts off getting people in the door is your number one priority at that point. And so following a very clear marketing plan, didn't cost a lot of money at that point. I didn't put a ton of money in. You can utilize all these free social media platforms to get yourself out there. And so I was following a plan of I was posting every day, I was reaching out to local businesses. I think I've talked with you about this before, but I love a good coffee date with a local business owner. The month of January, I went on a coffee date every single day with a local business owner and just picked their brains and started building connections and that brought people in my doors.
And so that was action step number one before I could even like sell them on what I was doing and why they should be here long term and why they should invest with me, it was getting people in the door. And so making a plan, posting every single day, doing DM follow-ups with everybody, business of the day, following different businesses and following their followers and reaching out to them. I hit my numbers every single day. When you're at first, you have no money and plenty of time. And so time is also very valuable. And so I just took the time to do the hard grunt work, if that makes sense, that very first month.
Justin Rabinowitz:
Yeah. I want to drill down a little bit with the coffee dates. It's something that people ask about all the time. And I think it's going to be hard for you to answer this question because I think it comes naturally to you, but it doesn't for so many people. It's like, "Well, I could get coffee. What the hell do I do or say?"
Allie Foddrill:
Right.
Justin Rabinowitz:
Let's give some people some tactics here on what they actually do when they get coffee with someone.
Allie Foddrill:
Yeah. So it starts with your social media. So even the way to get the date is I was asking people over social media to grab coffee. So that starts with, you need to be posting every day. You need to not look like a ghost account and like a nobody and you need to make it look good and like you're doing something. So A, posting every day and getting that locked in. But then from there I was asking people over the DMs. I played stupid and it worked. I would DM them basically like, "I love what you're doing with your social media or the community that you've created." Compliment them. People like to be complimented. And then saying basically like, "I'd love to buy you coffee and I'd love to pick your brain." And not making it about you, if that makes sense. Like, "I want to learn from you."
And then once we're there, people love to talk about themselves, ask them questions about themselves, ask them about their story and how they got into what they're doing and like what are the things they're proud of in their business and what would they do differently? Just be curious, I think is the best way to go about that.
On the flip side, nobody likes it when you talk about yourself the whole time. And so I rarely actually talked about me or my business or what I was doing because that wasn't the point of that meeting. That meeting was to basically build rapport, build a relationship. And a lot of those, not every single meeting was like a grand slam. There were ones where it was like pulling teeth to talk, but several of those have turned into now huge business partners that we have and I have fabulous relationships with them.
And by the time we got coffee the second or third time, they were like, "Would you want to come in and do a workshop or can I come to you and see what you do?" And then from there we built a more professional relationship. But curiosity I think is like the biggest way to do that.
Justin Rabinowitz:
So Allie's strategy when she started meeting local businesses is a model that everyone should follow if they can. Now, the thing with Allie, if you meet her, you know that she is a person who actually is amazingly good at this and makes you feel amazing when you talk to her and she smiles and she's nice and kind and not everyone is as comfortable as she is.
What I would say to someone out there that said, "Yeah, but I'm not like her." And that might be true, but that doesn't give an excuse to not be successful. And so what I would say to you is if you don't want to or can't or don't think it's valuable to go and do Allie's strategy to get her business off the ground, we have to find something. So it might not be that strategy, but we have to find something that you're going to lean into 300% to help you build this business up. And so for many people, it's like if you don't want to do what she's doing or can't, we can't just say, "Well, that's not me. We have to think of something else."
So one of the key things about Allie is that she has one of the most important skills in business. It's the ability to not just reject bad advice, but it's about seeking out the good advice. Well, did you start with the confidence? Are you sort of born with it? Did you kind of fake it till you make it? How do you have it and 100 of your friends don't who seem to be in the same position?
Allie Foddrill:
A little bit of a combination. I will say I am probably a pretty confident person naturally. Or I guess maybe I have the mindset of why not me? Why couldn't it be me? If I can outwork everyone, why would I not get rewarded for that? But additionally, I would say if you would've caught me a couple months before I opened, I was probably at my lowest of my low. I didn't have a job at that point because I was building this, right? So I did have a job, but I was building it and I was pretty low. I'd had quite a few mentors tell me like, "What you're doing isn't feasible. You're stupid to do that right out of school. It's not going to work. The economy's really bad. It's really hard to make it."
And so that had really shaken me, especially when people that you genuinely care about their opinion telling you those things, that hurts. But I think then it was a little bit of a fake it till you make it. I had to just put myself out there and do it anyways, even though I was scared and I was afraid. You do it despite being scared. That's kind of what courage is, is doing something even though you're scared. And then from there, the results give you that boost and eventually you need to separate yourself from the results, right? You are not the results of your clinic. But at first that was a very good reminder like, "Oh, you're actually fine. You're good. You've worked hard. You'll work harder than everyone else and it'll work out."
Justin Rabinowitz:
What's the biggest mistake that you've made since opening?
Allie Foddrill:
Okay. So you gave me this as a pre-interview question, right?
Justin Rabinowitz:
Yes.
Allie Foddrill:
And I was thinking about this and I even asked my husband, I was like, "What do you think about this question?" Because to be honest, I didn't want to sound like so cocky as to say, "I don't think I've made a huge mistake yet," but that's the honest truth. I'd be lying to you if I said I've made a big mistake.
And I think I owe a lot of that to coaching and to other people have made the mistakes before me so that I don't have to make the mistakes because it kind of has been a straight line to success. And that's not to say that there hasn't been really, really hard days, really, really hard weeks, but I very purposely put myself in rooms of people smarter than me and ahead of me so that I could just see their mistakes and then just dodge them. So I'm going to be honest, I don't think I have made a bad mistake yet. I'm sure, catch up with me in a couple years.
Justin Rabinowitz:
Sure. Let's go back though, because on the macro, that's 100% true. But going back to either on a day or a week when you're having what was a bad period again, because right now, obviously on a macro you have done everything well, but what was one mistake or period where you're like, "This isn't good."
Allie Foddrill:
I think I just went through it. So we just hired somebody, my first associate. We actually are also hiring somebody in May and I already knew about the person in May. She was coming on already, but she's graduating then. And so I couldn't speed up that timeline, but I was getting so busy that I was treating 50, 60 hours a week and I couldn't run a business. It wasn't happening. We were hanging on, but we weren't exploding like I wanted to be in business wise. And so we made the decision to bring somebody else on then, like a month ago, and then also bring on in May. And so I think I had gotten to the point in business where I was so busy that I didn't even have time to lay out what the steps would be to hire another person. So I had like gotten so busy that it was too hard then to bring somebody else to offload me.
And that was really hard because you're pulling like 14-hour days every day, seven days a week to try to game plan hiring somebody. And I hadn't done that before. I obviously had had good guidance on how to do that, but like finding the time to actually execute the plan was like, it was almost impossible. And that really tested me. That really tested my support system too. Like to be leaving the house at 4:30 in the morning and not getting home until eight o'clock at night, like that's not easy on a relationship, that's not easy on myself or your health, but doing it and knowing on the other side was I do get to offload myself. I do get more time. And we're three weeks in to the new hire being here and taking patients and the light is here. It's working and it's working well, which I'm very thankful for.
Justin Rabinowitz:
It's important to remember that success has its own cost as well. Is there anything about opening your own practice that really surprised you, something that you might not have been able to prepare for?
Allie Foddrill:
I didn't realize how much your friend group would change. People that were in my life prior to this, even people I went through school with and was like the closest with. They don't get it. They don't get it, they don't see it. They don't understand why their text goes unread for three, four weeks at a time. They don't get when I'm like, "No, I cannot make plans. I will probably be working that night."
And so I think that the shift, like I lost... Lost is a strong word, maybe not as close with, but I lost a lot of friends and it could be really lonely. I could see how it could be really lonely. I had mentors tell me like, "Oh, you're going to be so lonely. You're going to hate it." But in light of that, I also made the best relationships I've had in my life.
I got really lucky with my first hire, Chloe. You've heard me brag about her before. Chloe is my catchall for a lot of things right now. She's an assistant, but she will eventually be director of operations or something like that for this place. She coming on and seeing how hard I was working, see the mission and then working towards it as well, she gets me like nobody else gets me right now.
But there's also like other business owners, other female business owners, maybe not even chiropractors in the area that I've made good connections with, they get it. And so I feel like the trimming of friends and then the adding of those friends back on, I wasn't ready for that and I wasn't anticipating that. And there was a lot of mourning in that, but then there's a lot of celebration and like, okay, certain people do get it. Very few now, very few friends, but they get it.
Justin Rabinowitz:
Why do so many practitioners or business owners experience this loneliness? It's a beautiful question. And I remember years ago, I actually was seeing a therapist and I started talking to her and she said to me, she said, "Justin, do you ever feel lonely?" And my immediate response was, "No, my wife is here and family is close." And she goes, "No, that's not what I'm talking about. Do you ever think that the things that you think about and the experience that you have, that the rest of the world just doesn't get it?" And I was like, "Actually, yes, every single day, that is my life."
And she told me, I specifically hired her because she worked with entrepreneurs and high level business owners, and she told me this is the most common thing that I bring out in people that they don't even recognize. They just feel like no one gets them, no one understands them. They start to get distance from their friends and their family because they've sort of ascended into a world of having to make decisions and dealing with people and doing things that just no one else gets.
And that was a moment for me when I finally realized that I was going to have to be okay with this, that if I was going to continue to grow myself, this was going to get worse and it was a feature of growth and a feature of growing my business and growing my life. And so it was a level where I just had to say a reframe where I said, "This means I'm doing what I'm supposed to," not, "This is a negative."
If you're listening to this and you're looking for ways to improve your practice, go to the link in the show notes and just talk to our team. We've got a massive community of people who have taken their practice to the next level, so send us a message if you're interested in doing that. We have a live show coming up in early May called Rehab Chiro Mastermind Live, and we still have some tickets available for that. Again, the link and the details for all of that are in the show notes. I'm Dr. Justin Rabinowitz, and this has been Business School for the Rehab Chiropractor. Like, subscribe and click follow wherever you get your podcasts.