How to Know It’s Time to Scale Your Practice: 3 Major Signs

Key Points:

• The number one sign it’s time to scale your practice is a full patient schedule + bookings 3-4 weeks out.
• There are many factors to consider when choosing a new clinic location, including distance to your current clinic, patient convenience, and square footage. 
• Scaling should be a slow and steady process — don’t try to expand too big too quickly to avoid financial headaches in the future. 

What does it mean to scale your practice, especially as a solo business owner and chiropractor? There are a few different options:

• Bring on an associate chiropractor to expand the number of patients you can see
• Graduate to a bigger space where you can see more patients more efficiently
• Add more equipment and specialized services to offer your patient base

All of these scaling options can help grow your practice and increase both revenue and impact. However, you want to make sure you have the capacity (and the money) to scale your practice well before you put the wheels in motion. Here’s how to know you’re ready to scale your practice as a chiropractor and grow your clinic, impact, and revenue.

#1: You’re Maxed Out on Patients

If you take only one thing away from this blog, it should be this: your patient schedule must be completely maxed out at your current capacity before you scale to the next level. As the chiropractic owner, you must be seeing as many patients as you possibly can before you go on to hire an associate doctor or expand your clinic space. Typically this means you’re seeing patients full-time for at least five days a week, if not more. 

Ideally, you’re also scheduling patients out 3-4 weeks or more, so you know that not only are you booked now, but you’re also booking out many weeks in advance. Almost too far out in advance, since a chiropractor should be able to get patients in within a few days at the most for acute pain. 

When you reach both of these requirements, it’s time to bring on an associate chiropractor to your practice. 

#2: You Don’t Have Enough Physical Space

When you bring on an associate doctor to scale your practice, you may realize that you don’t have enough space in your current clinic to handle a higher patient volume. You may be able to tier your schedules for a while, but that’s not typically going to offer a long-term solution. 

For example, with Simply Southern Chiropractic Center we realized very quickly that our original clinic location was way too small. We’ve since realized that we can have two doctors in that space with tiered schedules, but that was the max capacity for the space — and patients were continuing to book out even with two doctors practicing full-time. 

We needed space to grow, so we invested in a brand new clinic location nearly four times the size. It was a big investment, but ultimately it was exactly what we needed to scale and treat more patients. 

Logistics of Opening a New Clinic Location

When you’re considering opening a new clinic location, there are many factors to consider:

• Where your patient base lives
• Proximity to your first location
• Renovations you may need for the new space
• Layout and design
• The type of loan you may qualify for
• Your capacity to continue treating patients and oversee a new clinic build

Ideally, you want your new clinic to be in the community where a majority of your patient base lives (outside of your first clinic location). You can find this information by searching your patient database and categorizing your patient addresses by zip code. From there you want to choose a location that is ideally 10 miles or less from your original clinic location, just in case you need to quickly get from one to the other in the event of an emergency. You may be able to stretch this out slightly if you’re in a rural location where there’s less traffic. 

There are a lot of other considerations, not the least of which are financial, but these are good initial ideas to consider when you’re planning a new clinic. When you actually decide to pull the trigger, get ready for extra hours and extra effort overseeing the build while continuing to see patients. You never want to stop seeing current patients and working on getting new patients so that you can transfer them to the new clinic once it’s ready. 

#3: You Have Your Systems and Hiring Process Locked In

Another sign you’re ready to scale your practice is having solid systems and processes in place for your current practice. This includes everything from employee conduct, hiring, your treatment, checkout, and scheduling process, and many other day-to-day aspects of running a business. 

If you don’t have these locked in before you scale your practice, you’re setting yourself up for serious headaches down the road. Not to mention you’re creating a subpar experience for your patients and your staff without good systems. You want all operations to be clear and consistent between your two locations for your patients, your staff, and for you. 

Systems allow you to deliver a high-quality experience for your patients and run your business smoothly whether you have just a few employees or a large team behind you. They’re absolutely essential.

When It’s NOT Time to Scale

Some chiropractor owners believe bringing on a new associate chiropractor can “save” their business if they’re struggling — but this is absolutely not the case. Never bring on a new associate until you have the patient base and financial capacity to do so. 

Another pitfall to avoid is scaling too big too quickly. When you’re already expanding to one new location, it’s tempting to want to do two new locations or even three, but it’s a slippery slope to finance, staff, and market all of those locations at once. More often than not, it ends in bankruptcy. Stick to one new location at a time, and build slowly for long-term sustainability. 

Finally, you shouldn’t scale unless you’re ready to take on a new level of responsibility as the leader and owner of your practice. You’ll have more employees and now fellow doctors working for you, and you have to set the standard and the example for everyone to follow that ensures an amazing patient experience every time. If you have two locations, you’ll have to spend time at both locations treating patients and interacting with your team to make sure everyone stays on the same page.

You Don’t Have to Grow Your Practice Alone

Scaling your practice can seem daunting and overwhelming for even the most capable chiropractic owners. But you don’t have to go through this process alone. I would love to work with you to get your practice to the next level, no matter what stage of business you’re in right now. Let’s connect!

Want to get started? Here are ways you can work with me:

• Six or twelve-month one-on-one coaching packages: If you’re a chiropractor looking to grow your business and aiming to reach seven-figure revenues or more, then consider applying for private one-on-one coaching with me.
• 'Owning A Chiropractic Practice: Things Chiropractic School & Management Groups Do Not Teach You' online course: Not quite ready for one-on-one support? Learn all about the business side of running and owning a chiropractic practice in my online course.