Grow your practice by growing yourself

Like any chiropractor, you want to grow your practice.

You want to not just sustain the practice you currently have, but take to the next level. There are any numbers of ways to accomplish this, depending on your goals. However, the stages you go through for your professional growth should also be reflected in similar stages of personal growth.

By fully committing yourself to being a chiropractor who takes a holistic approach to wellness, your personal growth is closely intertwined with your professional growth. In essence, you won’t see stages of progress and growth in your professional life unless you see similar stages in your personal one. What are these personal stages of growth, and how do they interact with your professional growth?

Figuring out what you don’t know

When you first graduated from chiropractic school, the amount you didn’t know about establishing a practice probably felt overwhelming. However, with time, confidence—and no small amount of trial and error—you gradually learned how to establish a business. Of course, the first step in all of this was admitting to yourself how much you didn’t know about what it takes to be a successful DC.

The same philosophy applies to your personal growth. If you have a personal goal in life, such as learning how to do stained glass or climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, you could start out by just flinging yourself into those goals without doing any advance preparation.

Unfortunately, odds are good that you will expend a great deal of time and energy and not make much headway in accomplishing your goals (and in the case of climbing Half Dome, it could be dangerous). Instead, start out by thinking about the skills and knowledge needed to attain the goal. That will give you the fundamental first step of personal growth—a firm base of knowledge and skills on which you can build.

Moving up

So the base for your practice has been established. You have a stable, core group of patients who come to see you on a regular basis. Now is when you want to start thinking about how to bring in more patients. You can use referrals, community outreach, website content or any number of other means to help you move up to that next level. However you chose to do so, it’s about believing in your abilities.

Your next level in personal growth works the same way. So you’ve mastered making stained glass and you conquered Half Dome. Now what? Maybe now you are ready to enter some of your stained glass creations in some juried art shows or tackle an even more challenging peak, such as Mt. Whitney.

While these may seem to be daunting, meeting this level of personal growth is about knowing that you are ready to test yourself and move yourself up to that next level of accomplishment. Once you are ready, you can draw on all that knowledge and skill that you gathered from your previous level of growth to get to your new goal.

Reflecting and reassessing

Now that your practice has finally reached a new level, you should take time to reflect on the new changes and reassess how things look. Are you happier with a bigger practice? Can you keep up with the workload, or do you feel as though you are not getting enough time with each patient? Is it time to think about bringing in another DC? These are all excellent questions to consider as part of your practice growth process.

This plays out similarly in your personal growth once you have reached your particular goal. Are you satisfied with your stained glass art, or do you want to learn more complicated techniques? Might you consider trying to sell your work? Are you satisfied with having tackled Mt. Whitney, or do you see yourself trying to climb even taller peaks? Whatever you decide to do, this level of reflection and reassessment will then set the stage for you once again going back to figuring out what you need to know to progress further once again.

However you look at it, one thing is clear: Your professional life is enriched by your personal life, and vice versa. Therefore, it should be perfectly natural that for one area to grow, the other must do so as well.