How to Work Less and Earn More
Work less and earn more…is that even possible these days? No doubt you’ve seen myriad business books claiming to contain The Secret Sauce for Stunning Success, Limitless Time Off and Working on the Beach. Riiiiight. Meanwhile, there’s so much to do in your office (which may or may not be beach adjacent), it seems business—and life—have gotten too complicated to work less! So, is working less and earning more just a dream? A worn platitude from the best-selling books of New Age gurus? We don’t think so. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. (Excuse the platitude.) In the spirit of being helpful, we’ve put on our thinking caps and researched some tactics to help you work less, earn more and enjoy a better quality of life as a result.
Amend Your Mindset
In this country, most of us were raised under an old-fashioned work ethic that considers hard labor the only way to legitimately “earn” a living. It’s ingrained in our culture. A notion left over from the days of impressing your boss. And maybe at one time it was true; working harder may have been the only way to earn more. But times are different now and the way we make money in our service-based economy has changed.
Besides, odds are you own your practice and have no one to impress—except for maybe your financial planner at the end of the year. ☺ And you KNOW your brain will turn to mush, your family will forget your face, and you will only experience diminishing returns the longer you slog through back-to-back hours of work-with-no-play.
So, let go of that old mindset and adopt a new one. You don’t have to work harder, but you do have to work smarter. While it’s wise to be skeptical about claims that seem too good to be true, there ARE ways to work smarter within the time constraints of your day.
Working smarter means knowing how to allocate your time and focus your efforts so that you earn more without having to put in as many hours. Realistically, it will take a while to shake completely free from the old-fashioned work ethic, especially if you are a self-described workaholic! After experiencing some success, you should get more comfortable with the concept. So, according to any guru worth his salt, to manifest your new mindset, you’ll need to put action behind your intention. When your intention is to work less while making more money, you want to start with the message you’re putting out there. And that is your marketing.
Market Smarter
If you want to work smarter, you have to start with the patients you’re attracting to your practice. When you gear your marketing correctly, it can replace hard work in a few ways: 1) you can attract the most profitable patients to your office (more money per hour worked), 2) you can attract patients you like working with (which makes work more fun and less hard) and 3) executing your marketing becomes easier and requires less work.
One way to market smarter is to choose a niche. Focusing on the specific problems of your niche and the solutions you provide simplifies your marketing messages and consistently attracts more of the clients you love to serve. Promoting your most profitable services also increases the money you earn per hour for the time you spend working.
Another way to market smarter is to multitask your marketing. This strategy allows you to “clone” yourself, so that you don’t have to repeat your marketing messages over and over again. This could probably save you hours per week! Once you’ve decided on your niche market and the services you like to focus on, you can promote your message in many places: your website, office flyers, blog articles, guest blogs, brochures and your ChiroTV Network channel, of course. Your marketing will be more consistent and will reach more people with frequency (which usually makes it more effective). Since you are developing your messages once and repurposing them across multiple channels, the marketing task will take less of your time.
Increase Profits
Raising prices is one way to earn more for doing the same amount of work. Take an honest look at your pricing. Is an increase overdue? Most patients who value your services will not mind a 10 or 15% increase. Nobody expects to pay the same price they were paying 10 years ago. You can do a search online and get lots of strategies and good advice on this. We took a quick look and found these, which don’t necessarily reference chiropractic practices, but are nonetheless transferable:
Another way to increase profits is to provide premium packaged products and services. If you increase the sales of products and packaged services, you can increase your profit per patient as you increase the value you provide to them—everyone wins! Usually, positioning products and services in this way requires very little additional work. Remember to use your ChiroTV Network system to education your patients about your new products and services while they wait!
Learn the Art of Delegation
Remember to work on activities that you consider your strengths. Work only on tasks you enjoy. Spending time doing the things you love to do is energizing. And we’re cheating a bit here, but it will FEEL like less work! You may believe some tasks are just quicker to do yourself, but when you add them up it’s more time than you think. It’s a much better use of your time to train a team member to do certain tasks or to hire a professional. It is hard to let go, but what advice would you give your stressed and overworked patients to avoid burnout? Exactly.
Also, remember how much your time is worth. Working on tasks that you don’t enjoy or are not your strengths is an unprofitable use of your time. You may be saving some money by doing your own bookkeeping, working on your website or creating educational content for your blog, but people who do this for a living can get it done much faster. Plus, your marketing will be in better shape and you can start making money on your new ideas sooner. Just calculate how much you earn per hour (or what you think your time is worth) and then estimate how long it will take you to do these tasks—then double that number! (It always takes longer.) It should be fairly obvious whether you can hire somebody for less money. Meanwhile, you can spend that time earning more from what you do best—or taking a break!
Leaders are Readers
When most successful people are interviewed, they’re usually asked, “What are you reading?” And they usually answer by naming a dozen newspapers, magazines and books currently littering their homes and offices. Reading keeps your mind sharp and open to new ideas and opportunities.
While we were a bit snarky about books in the opening paragraph of this article, that does not mean we don’t think they are valuable. Especially if you realize that one tome of advice will not answer all your questions or solve all your problems. There are plenty of great business books bursting with ideas you can borrow and apply to your practice.
The quintessential book about working less and earning more is probably The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Will all his ideas work for your practice? No. But maybe one or two will. And you owe it to your sanity to check it out and try a few. Remember, working smarter is your new game. Over time, thinking and acting along those lines will help you concoct your own “secret sauce” for creating the freedom and fulfillment you want—on your terms.
Finally, here’s an article from Entrepreneur about working less and earning more we thought you’d enjoy: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248050
If you want to know more about how ChiroTV Network makes it easy for you sell more products and services to your current client base and make your marketing easier, so you earn more and work less, email Steve or reach out to him at 888-480-1350. If you’re already a member, remember to squeeze every advantage out of your ChiroTV Network system resource!
ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors. Our patient education system helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait. For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com
