Only 5 years ago, three friends, from completely different backgrounds, decided to join forces in a new business venture to help chiropractors achieve the same kind of success they had. Today, their supporters keep growing in number at a staggering rate. This “Identity-Based” program has helped thousands discover the value in understanding that
“Your Practice is You”
The Masters Circle was founded in 2001 by Drs. Larry Markson, Dennis Perman and Bob Hoffman. Dr. Markson was, formerly, the founder of Markson Management Services, the largest chiropractic consulting firm in history. Dr. Perman had been one of his consultants who branched off to create a new company, Consultant On Call, which emphasized the identity-based approach. Dr. Hoffman was a well-known figure in international chiropractic politics, and the owner of a chiropractic products company named Power Practice. The three agreed, there was a need for an identity-based practice management and personal growth company for chiropractors with outstanding products and services, so these three entities came together to form The Masters Circle.
In an interview with The American Chiropractor (TAC), Drs. Markson, Perman and Hoffman of The Masters Circle (TMC) discuss the success principles they teach, which are responsible for having transformed the lives and practices of their many members as well as shaping the future of the chiropractic profession.
TAC: Tell us about the services and products you offer chiropractors and how or why you offer them.
TMC: Our program is, in essence, a post-doctoral program for doctors who aspire to greatness in their practices and their lives. Through a custom-tailored process, which includes seminars, coaching, teleclasses and related study groups, printed and audiovisual materials, and more, each member is guided toward those aspects of personal development and professional excellence that need attention, all evaluated and planned on an individual case basis. Members follow a course of study consistent with their needs, as determined by the coaching team through analysis of the member’s practice and specific intervention designed to address the challenges of that particular chiropractor and practice.
In addition to our seminars, members participate in POD’s (practical open discussions), where a coach or facilitator presents valuable practice building, practice management or identity-based subject matter, and then members get to discuss and mastermind together, streamlining the learning process and accelerating the learning curve. Our methods of teaching, consulting and coaching are at the cutting edge of current technology, using advanced online services, identity-based coaching and top shelf teaching materials, digitally recorded and mastered and edited to museum quality. As such, no matter what the member’s experience in practice so far, new practitioner, underachieving veteran, or happy thriving doctor who wonders if there’s more, we can create a program that suits the chiropractor’s needs and provides inspiration, motivation and education.
TAC: Dr. Hoffman gave a great speech at your Las Vegas seminar last fall in which he shared your vision for chiropractic in the future. Can you please share this vision with our readers?
TMC: The vision of The Masters Circle is a worldwide, quality-of-life-driven health care delivery system with chiropractic in the leading role. The Age of Wellness is upon us, and people will no longer settle for just feeling okay. Today’s health care consumer is better informed than many doctors, and they have made their desires clear—they want wellness and quality of life issues addressed, not just treatment for their conditions. They want a more natural, less invasive approach to living longer and better, and we believe that it is the responsibility of the chiropractor to spearhead this movement in the marketplace and offer this kind of service to our communities. Each member plays a role in the development of this vision, through clinical applications, philosophical orientation, and practice management methodology, building the image of the chiropractor as health care leader and wellness pioneer, and delivering the finest and most complete health and wellness service possible to their constituencies.
Since the bulk of the important decision-making in our society is handled by the Baby Boomer Generation, whose key values are quality of life and longevity, this theme of wellness is consistent with the needs and wants of the dominant segment of our population, and paves the way for wellness companies to lead the field and influence the public to assume responsibility and develop a more healthful lifestyle. Members are encouraged to enroll their patients in this way of thinking, so the chiropractic wellness lifestyle becomes the norm, and the need for invasive treatment, dangerous drugs and surgeries, and other emergency procedures, becomes less prevalent as the reason for them naturally declines.
The Masters Circle aims to be a clearinghouse for wellness information for doctors of all kinds, and to serve as guides for chiropractors, wellness practitioners and health care consumers, to help them get the latest and most pertinent information on success and fulfillment, and the most contemporary viewpoints on health.
TAC: What are your goals for TMC in the chiropractic profession?
TMC: Our mission is to help as many chiropractors as possible to build the practice of their dreams and the best lifestyle they can imagine. Some may mistake this for being driven by money, but it really isn’t that for us or for most of our members. We do teach about success and profitability, as any company of our type would, but always presented in an atmosphere of fairness, ethics, and integrity. Our members write a description of their dream practice, and then work conscientiously to develop themselves into the kind of chiropractor who could actually create that dream in reality. They are trained to work on their weaker areas, to refine their personalities and grow themselves in key aspects, like confidence, communication skills, confrontational tolerance, focus and motivation, which helps them to perform better and take more action.
By our helping members grow from the inside out, they truly become better versions of themselves, and their results reflect that growth.
TAC: What is the most common problem you see among chiropractors today?
TMC: Many chiropractors would admit that, while they work hard, they don’t feel that they get the return from their hard work they expect. Most blame this on the marketplace, on the legislature, on insurance companies, and other misguided thoughts. While these elements may have some impact, they can’t be the determining factors, because some people are very successful even with those factors active. So, then, it must be something unique to each chiropractor, and that’s why we concentrate on our members’ identities, instead of just their practices, which are reflections of their identities.
So, the number one problem we see in chiropractors today is poor self esteem, an unwillingness to invest in themselves and in their practices because, deep down, they just don’t feel worthy. It’s a terrible situation; but the good news is that there is a way to build self esteem, personal power, and loving relationships and, typically, when a chiropractor cracks the code of his or her own self-image, new opportunities for growth and success appear as if by magic. Just like health and wellness, success is an inside-out process, and we focus on the tools and techniques for creating it.
TAC: What is the biggest problem or challenge you see in the chiropractic profession today?
TMC: The biggest challenge our profession faces today is the balance of power. Only a small percentage of chiropractors are represented by the national and local organizations and, until someone develops a consistent message of leadership and commonality, this balance of power will continue to be distorted. This interferes with public awareness and acceptance of chiropractic care, since we lack a consistent and congruent message to the marketplace. The Masters Circle is committed to unifying this message so the public can truly capitalize on the miraculous healing benefits for which chiropractic is famous.
TAC: Can you think of one change that a chiropractor can do to significantly impact his/her practice’s growth immediately?
TMC: The simplest thing any chiropractor can do to significantly impact his or her practice immediately is to identify a key weak area that is holding him or her back and strengthen it. If a doctor is sloppy with paperwork, clean it up. If a doctor is chronically late, raise the standard and show up on time. If the doctor doesn’t confront patients well in asking for money or referrals, build confrontational tolerance to handle the issue.
That’s the point of an identity-based process—there isn’t one magic formula for success, each of us has our own, and cracking the code of that formula is the basis of The Masters Circle’s approach—to custom-tailor a program to the needs of each member, to address the unique configuration of strengths and weaker areas, and to invest energy where it belongs to make things better. Much like finding and reducing a subluxation, it eliminates interference to what should be a normal flow toward success and fulfillment.
TAC: Do you have any recommended marketing strategies that chiropractors can do to attract new patients and/or to keep current patients?
TMC: Marketing strategies fall into two basic categories—inside the office and outside the office. Inside the office, you can ask for referrals, teach health care classes, tell stories-of-the-day, hand out patient literature, or discuss family health history. You can also sponsor promotions like Patient Appreciation Days, Patient Dinners, and holiday events, or support a worthy cause.
Outside the office, you can speak to groups, develop strategic alliances with local professionals or vendors, perform screenings, write columns for the newspaper, or provide hazard-risk analyses for local companies and become their company chiropractor.
There is a simple five-step format for aiming at ideal patients: identify the patients you like, locate them where they’re likely to be found, increase your visibility in those locations, learn to close this kind of patient effectively by learning their values and how your services meet their needs and, then, shape your office procedures around serving this type of patient.
As far as keeping current patients happy and satisfied, nothing works like great, loving service; but there are a few pointers that help this process along. Once you’ve established rapport, use patient compliance skills, like a great entry procedure and report of findings, consistent patient education, effective re-examination and progress reports, and a solid recall system. By managing the case from beginning to end, you encourage patients to follow through and get full value from your services.
These are tried and true techniques, yet they only work up to the level of the actions taken by the individual chiropractor. Your identity determines your capacity, and your capacity determines your results. If you’ve done lots of marketing events like the ones mentioned here, and they haven’t worked out well, maybe it isn’t the technique—it’s you. Once again, that’s why we concentrate on building inner qualities as well as outer behaviors—it increases your sense of self, which leads to better results in everything you do.
TAC: What single piece of advice would you give a new chiropractor just starting out?
TMC: Get help. Don’t try to do this alone. No matter your experiences in business, in school or in life, opening, running and building a chiropractic practice is like nothing you’ve ever done before. Not everyone is willing to commit to a full scale seminar, coaching and support process like The Masters Circle, but you will need some guidance and input to avoid common pitfalls and move yourself in the right direction with as few unnecessary mistakes as possible. Also, watch for the launch of our online New Practitioners program, sometime this spring—it will provide many of the services start-up chiropractors need, online 24/7 and for a reasonable price. It’s our way of reaching out to the new practitioner who may not yet be ready to be a full member, for whatever reasons.
TAC: What general advice would you give an established chiropractor whose practice might be struggling?
TMC: Your practice is you. If you are struggling in practice, it is because some aspect of your self image and the behaviors that stem from it are not serving you. Begin a program of self-empowerment, with affirmations and visualization of what you really want, and get yourself into the physical and mental condition where you have the energy to push harder and take massive action. Getting yourself into action is one of the most powerful things you can do to change your current situation—even if you don’t know the exact right things to do, do something, and keep doing something until it starts to work. Also, obviously, getting help from The Masters Circle will make it happen faster and better; but looking inside and seeing where you are stuck, based on fear, anger, self-absorption and self-indulgence, unwillingness to confront, lack of confidence or self-esteem, or something like that—that’s the real key to growth, no matter what your past has been like, and no matter what else you do. Everyone has better raw materials than they think, and everyone is fully equipped to make a good life and practice—you just have to know where to invest your time, energy and capital, and then, miracles can happen.
TAC: Where do you see the future of chiropractic headed?
TMC: Chiropractic is headed in the right direction overall—toward wellness, quality of life and longevity—rather than fighting a futile battle against disease. As more professionals understand and embrace the concepts of the chiropractic wellness lifestyle, chiropractors will emerge as leaders of the wellness movement, and providers of natural healing services, coordinating not only spinal adjustment but other wellness modalities, like nutrition, exercise, psychology, massage, bodywork and other energy techniques.
The quicker we see each other as allies and colleagues, instead of adversaries, the sooner the public will appreciate all we have to offer, and seek us out as advisors and guides to a better quality of life.
TAC: Any final words for our readers?
TMC: One of the most important core ideologies of The Masters Circle is that “success comes from you, not to you.” That means that it’s who you are that determines how well what you do works.
That’s why I can’t just tell you how to build a great practice—at least not without knowing who you are, what you’re willing and not willing to do, where you are stuck and what it will take to unstick you from that place. Just like adjusting the spine, where each patient is unique, but there are patterns we can pick up on and address, it’s the same thing with chiropractors and their practices. There are patterns that indicate what is holding you back and what you need to do to get the help you need. Come to one of our outstanding events, and experience it for yourself. Talk to our faculty, our members and to us, personally, and discover what thousands of chiropractors already know about The Masters Circle.
If you are the kind of chiropractor who wants to serve more people, make more money, reduce stress and create more balance, then The Masters Circle Chiropractic Success Formula can help you do it. For more information, call Dr. Robert Kleinwaks at 1-800-451-4514, Ext. 114, or visit www.themasterscircle.com.