How Working Less Allowed for More Patients to Come In

I can’t say it was an easy decision to work less, but it happened to be the best decision I ever made for my business, sanity, and patients. I remember feeling judged by other chiropractors; afterall we are here to save the world of subluxations.

A few years into practice, I visited Dr. Zaino’s office. This was an amazing experience. He saw the same number of patients in a morning shift (with such ease and grace) that I was seeing in a whole weak. Talk about a perspective shift. Although I love the idea of having a high-volume practice and feeling “on fire” all the time, it wasn’t for me. What the “Zaino Experience” gave me was a perspective shift. I reevaluated my schedule and limited my office hours to just 6 hours each week – 2 hours on Mondays and an hour per day Tuesday through Friday.

I had a lot of naysayers around me at the time telling me it would never work. “You are going to lose a lot of patients” they said. “What about people who want to come early? Or during lunch time?”

I’m glad I had a vision and I valued my time enough to be okay with ‘losing’ patients who wouldn’t fit into MY schedule. It turns out when you come from a place where you know what you offer is the best gift in the world, people are not only willing to change their schedule around to make it work, but they get resourceful and pay for it easily and effortlessly.

Switching to part-time opened space for LIVING. I was now spending more time with my family, going on vacation, and having more time to myself. The most fulfilling part about transitioning into a part-time practice happened because I chose more LIVING for myself; I started to attract the patients that also had the deepest desire to LIVE. Kids on the spectrum, paralyzed, cancer, and suicidal patients. The practice became a place for healing and giving LIFE – just as chiropractic was designed to do.

I knew my numbers. I knew my goals, and I had a vision: a part-time million-dollar cash practice. It was easy to figure out how to get there. The rest was in the systems in the office, shifts in my own consciousness, and marketing.

This shift to part-time was an important and seemingly challenging decision, but it opened up room for more. More patients, more miracle stories, and more LIVING – for me and for my patients.