You decided to open up your own practice. Where do you begin? With a chiropractic business plan.
Business owners tend to dismiss the business plan as something you need when you’re trying to get funding. Yes, it is necessary when you’re seeking investment.
It’s also necessary to build a successful business. Writing a business plan has been proven to increase your chances for a successful business. Why wouldn’t you write one?
There are a lot of excuses, such as a lack of time and focus, and a lot of people just don’t know how to write one.
If you want to have a successful chiropractic practice, then keep reading to discover how to write a business plan.
Executive Summary
The executive summary is a simple introduction to your chiropractic business plan. It summarizes everything in your business plan in a few short paragraphs.
This should be the last part you write for your business plan. You’ll want to cover the basics like your core services, who you target, and your competition.
Practice Overview
This is an overview of your business. The things you want to mention are:
- The business formation (S-Corp, LLC, etc.)
- The owners/partners
- Types of services offered
- Anything unique about your business or service
- Additional information about your business model
This part shouldn’t take more than a page or two to write up.
Target Market
Your practice overview is followed by the real meat of the business plan. Your main job here is to do market research. Learn about the demographic information of your target, such as gender, location, marital status, and household income.
People make buying decisions largely on emotions. While your demographic information is important, your psychographic information will tell you more about your patients’ motivations to seek out a chiropractor.
Competitive Research
You need to learn everything about your competition so you can start to find ways to set yourself apart in the marketplace. Google is a good place to start to do competitive research. It’s a good way to see how businesses market themselves online, too.
For example, you can look up chiropractors in San Diego and find the Inner Balance Institute. You can use this as inspiration to find what you like about their website and incorporate with yours.
Look for other chiropractors in a 5-mile radius of your office. You want to look at your main five competitors in the space. See how they position their business on social media, local advertising, and in search results.
In this section, you’ll want to address how your business differs from the competition and why people will want to visit your practice.
SWOT Analysis
Every business has certain risks. Your chiropractic practice is no exception, and this is the time to discover those risks to your business. A SWOT has you look at your business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Strengths and weaknesses address the internal aspects of your business. One of your strengths may be that you have a positive reputation from working elsewhere.
Opportunities and threats examine the external factors that impact your business. A weak economy or changes to the healthcare system may be threats.
The Financials
This section will consist of a handful of spreadsheets.
The spreadsheets to you need to address your business profitability are:
- Startup Expenses
- Standard Operating Expenses
- Sales Projections
- Projected Profit and Loss for 3-5 years
The main thing your financials should tell you is how profitable your practice is and will be in the first few years.
Marketing Strategy
How will you get a steady stream of patients in the door? That’s the question your marketing plan should answer.
You can focus on a few marketing tactics, such as networking, , and social media to promote your practice.
The Team
This part of the chiropractic business plan is straightforward. You’ll want to do short bios of everyone on your team—office managers, staff, and other practitioners.
Your team extends beyond your practice. It’s the real estate agents you work with for your office space, the you use for your business, and your accountants.
These are vital components of your team that need to be mentioned in your plan.
Operations & Procedures
This outlines the day to day operations of your business. This is often a forgotten piece of the business plan. The operations and procedures are left to be done after the business opens.
That leaves important tasks like insurance billing left to after the fact status, which can immediately impact your cash flow.
If you’re depending on office staff to manage the practice, then you want to have a set of standard operating procedures in place that allow for flexibility but provide structure.
There won’t be time to “work out the kinks.” This ensures the most important tasks are done and your patients have a positive experience from the outset.
Commitment to the Plan
You have your plan down on paper. Now is the time to execute the plan. Don’t let the plan sit in a drawer collecting dust.
Read your plan over and take a look at the key action steps that you need to take. You’ll find those steps in the marketing and the operations sections.
You’ll find your list to be overwhelming because there is so much to do. Take one step at a time.
Review and Revise
Your business plan is your roadmap. Like any roadmap, you want to look at it occasionally to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.
Look at your business plan every six months or so. You can mark your business against the financial projects to track your progress.
Check your marketing and operations plans, too. You want to make sure that everything in both areas working smoothly. This is your opportunity to change anything that’s not working the way you thought it would in the plan.
Chiropractic Business Plan for Success
Opening a chiropractic practice on your own is a great risk. There’s a lot at stake when you open a business. You can put yourself in a situation where you can fail if you fail to plan.
A chiropractic business plan provides you with a roadmap for success. You’ll know every aspect of your practice, inside and out. You need to be committed to following that plan and reviewing it on a regular basis.
Want more great tips? Take a look at this article to help you .
