Setting Vision for Your Practice w/ Heidi Ryder

00:00:You're listening to the Cairo Basics Podcast, the show dedicated to chiropractic practice success. Here's your host, Nick Fisher. All right. Hey, chiropractors, welcome back to another episode. Today I've got Heidi Reiter from Healthy Books and she's here to talk about bookkeeping and setting vision and helping set a streamline. So before we get into the content, I'd love to let Heidi introduce herself.

00:39:Heidi, welcome to the show. Thank you. I really appreciate it. I'm honored to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So before we get into the meat of the content, I would really love to tell us your story. How did you get into the bookkeeping space? How did that get into the chiropractic space? Connect those dots for us. What happened there? So it was kind of a roundabout situation. I started in, well, when I was younger, I loved helping my dad manage his receipts.

01:10:He owned a construction company and I always wanted to help him with his receipts and organize everything. I loved it. So I thought about going to college for accounting, but I ended up going to college actually as a math educator. So I taught for a year, I ended up pregnant and I wanted to stay home with my baby and you can't do that when you're a teacher. So I was like, what am I passionate about that I can do from home and still make a difference

01:36:in the world? So I found a bookkeeping course, started my business and decided I wanted to niche in chiropractors because of the way they had changed my life. When I was a teenager, I had headaches like every day and I thought it was normal. I thought that was what everybody had until I ended up getting in a car accident and had severe whiplash. So I found a chiropractor there and went headache free after like the second visit and I was

02:03:amazed. I was like, is this real? And so I've just, I've loved the, what the chiropractic community does, the lives that change get changed because of it. And I wanted to give back to that. I wanted to support that and I definitely cannot be a chiropractor. So my version of supporting is using my talents to help them. Yeah, I love that. It's so common to hear those stories where people had an issue for themselves or a family

02:32:member and chiropractic was the solution and that's how they got involved in the space. So I'm glad you're okay from the headaches and the car accident. I'm glad it wasn't anything major. Well, that's really great. So when you're working, you obviously work with a lot of chiropractors working on their books and all the things to help their business flourish. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see chiropractors face with their business

02:57:and their money and the finances and stuff like that? Or maybe another way to say that is what are some of the most common mistakes you see doctors making with their business? Doctors go to school for being the doctor but sometimes the financial side and the business side is new to them. So can you tell us a little bit about some of the stuff that you see with the practices that you work with? I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head is the education piece isn't there for

03:27:running a business. It's obviously there for being a chiropractor, perfecting your craft and all of that. But the whole business side of it is not touched on or if so, it is barely scratched the surface. So I see a lot of actual and I don't know if this is just lately because of the whole everything is turned on its head. But I see a lot of decision fatigue. So there's a lot of burnout. There's a lot of just unsureity.

03:56:I don't know if I'm doing the best thing. I don't know if what I'm doing is right, if it's the most effective. I mean they're obviously confident in how they're serving their patients and their clients but when it comes to running their business, there's a lack of confidence and that wears on a person after a while. So I'd probably say decision fatigue is the biggest thing that I see, the biggest challenge

04:17:that I see right now. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. When you're running a business, you have tons of decisions to make every single day and that can be really challenging when you're trying to focus on patient care and being the doctor and providing that the excellent service. So especially when it comes to looking at the long term view, making decisions that are going to help you in the future.

04:41:So setting that vision and stuff. So can you talk to me a little bit more about how that impacts the business over time and how it helps doctors reach their goals and that type of stuff? Yeah, so just a side note about decisions. So like I looked it up and apparently the average person makes roughly like 35,000 decisions in a day and that's got to be more. That has to be more for a business owner because like not only do you have the average everyday

05:09:decisions, but you have to make decisions for other people. I mean when you're running a business, especially when you have staff and you have a team, like you're running decisions that affect other people's lives. And so not only do you have the weight of that decision, but you also have the weight of making that decision for other people. And that's probably one of the things I like to compare it to is taking a road trip or

05:32:a vacation. So you take a vacation, you figure out where you want to go, right? So most chiropractors that I talk to, they have a rough idea of where they want to be. Maybe it's a one year where I want to be in one year or three years. They have a rough idea, but it's like figuring out where you want to go on vacation and then trying to go without a map. So every intersection you come to, you have to decide, okay, am I going straight?

05:55:Am I turning left? Am I turning right? And every decision becomes bigger and bigger because you're guessing, right? And you're not sure, are you going to land where you wanted to go? Are you going to get there the quickest or most effective or are you going to have to turn around? All those different things that you're guessing. You're guessing at every decision point, every intersection. But when you have that map, it takes the guesswork out and you just know, okay, when I come to

06:18:this intersection, I'm going to do this. And that's really what having a clear vision can do for you. If you just have a general idea of where you want to land, it doesn't help you in your daily decisions. Whereas if you have a clear, descript vision, you then can put all those mile markers in. You can put all those decision points so that you can track and say, okay, am I on target for this? And it serves as a filter so that when you have all of these opportunities or all of

06:50:these different things that you could work on, and sometimes you can ask yourself, is this good or is this bad? And it might be a good thing, but is it the best thing for you to do right now? And that's, as a business owner, you make a lot of decisions that are like, is this good or is this bad? Is this going to help me or not? But is it the best thing you can do right now? And that's what a clear vision can help you determine if now is the time or if you need

07:16:to wait a little bit because you have a different goal that is actually more important at this exact moment. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes those decisions are tough to make because if you don't set your goals and work backwards from where you want to be in setting those milestones and setting dates and setting numbers financially for your practice, it can be tough to know, do I turn right? Do I turn left?

07:45:Or do I turn right? And sometimes it's a little bit of a stray, like setting, getting yourself set up for success by implementing a roadmap, by working backwards from where you want to go. Isn't that right? Yeah. So I usually say it's easiest to start with what you don't want because most people can figure that out a lot faster. And it's funny how you sit down and you think, okay, what do I want? And you can think, I don't know, there's all these different things you want, but if you

08:08:start with what you don't want, maybe you don't want to be working in the office five days a week. Some doctors are doing six days a week, right? Maybe you don't wanna do that. Maybe you, and then you work back into, okay, so then what do I want? If I don't wanna work six days a week, how many days do I wanna work? And then, you know, that's just the basics. That's just the start. And then I recommend you dream on from there.

08:31:So like, what would be, you don't wanna make your vision like too unattainable, but you also don't wanna limit yourself. You know, if you're just limiting yourself to, well, I think I might have to work five days a week. No, if you really wanna work less than that, imagine, you know, put your vision at four days a week. And if you don't hit it, at least you're closer to it now than you were when you started.

08:52:You know, so make your dreams big. Make your dreams like emotional. And that's one of the things that I think gets missed a lot in business, especially when you're thinking about finances and you're thinking about bookkeeping. A lot of people think, okay, numbers are just, they're just numbers. You can't argue them. You can't change them. You know, they're just numbers, right? But in a way, you have to find how to tie them into emotion

09:17:because if we're just using our logical side of the mind, it's not going to, we're not gonna stick to it as well as if it's also tied into our emotions. So when you dream on and you really imagine, how am I gonna feel? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do if I'm not working six days a week? What can I do? Can I spend more time with my family? Can I go hiking? Can I go camping? Whatever it is that you really enjoy doing

09:41:and keep that in your mind when you go to make those decisions. Like, is this taking me to that camping trip and tie it into the emotion? So you're more likely, you're more committed, I guess you could say. You're more committed to making that vision a reality in the tough, because obviously every season has its tough spots. And so when you get to those tough spots and you wanna scrap the whole thing

10:06:and do whatever's easiest at the moment, tying it into the emotion when you first set your vision is really gonna help it stick. Yeah, it's funny you brought up the emotional side of things. Obviously we all know that decisions are driven by your emotions and being able to tie your decision-making to emotions, there's actually a book, one of my favorite books is Star With Why by Simon Sinek and he talks just about that,

10:34:the golden circle, right? You have to start with why are you doing this in the first place? Like what is this decision gonna lead to and why are you making this decision? For every little decision that you make for your practice and for your growth and for your business as a whole, for your team, for your patients. So yeah, I mean, so from your perspective, obviously you focus more on the financial side of things.

10:57:How are you helping chiropractors find that vision and set those goals where they can be realistic, but also get them to where they wanna be and how, do you have any tips and tricks for them to set those milestones and set those goals appropriately so that way they can make those decisions to get to where they wanna go? Yes, it comes down to like how you segment it. So kind of as you mentioned in the beginning,

11:24:you have to back into it. So you start with the big picture stuff. Like I said, like if you wanna cut back on how much time you're in the office, okay? Generically thinking about that, how does that affect your numbers? Okay, it affects profit when you are in the office. You need to increase your profit so that you're not losing out on revenue just because you're not in the office. Cause obviously when you're not in the office,

11:46:you're not making money, right? So you need to figure out how to optimize your profit when you are in the office so that when you have time off, it's not affecting your bottom line. Then other things can be additional revenue streams or you wanna cut back on your hours worked a week. So you can count that as one of your numbers. So you basically want to be able to assign a number value, whether it's hours or number of patients

12:17:or revenue benchmarks. Like you have to assign a number to those different segments that are basically stepping stones to get you to that bigger vision. And I usually recommend cutting it down into quarters because for some reason our mind doesn't really imagine past 90 day marks. We can sit down in one session when we're really thinking about it. We can imagine a year and we can imagine three years,

12:45:but it isn't as real and as driven as when we break it into quarters. Cause in the next 90 days, I can fully picture myself doing stuff in the next 90 days, right? That's kind of easy. But when you get past that 90 day mark, it gets a little bit too vague. So I always recommend like breaking it up into segments. You set your vision for a year and then you break it up into quarters and figure out, okay, I need to be at this revenue amount

13:12:by the end of this quarter so that in my next quarter, I can meet this revenue amount and so on. If you're using revenue as your metrics or whatever your metric is for your goal, you have to break it into quarters. And then you can track in your books, in your system that you're using for your, whether it's Kyro Touch or whatever it is, like that you're using to track your patients and amount per patient and all that kind of stuff.

13:42:You can use any of those numbers to help you track and see if you're on targets. Yeah, so figuring out the right KPIs, setting the goals for those KPIs and then working backwards to make sure that you can set a plan in motion to hit those milestones in time segments. And you said quarters is probably best. I think of myself, 90 days is accurate for my own life because that's about as far out as I can book my calendar

14:10:before things get too far away where things could change and I could have a different mindset by then and whatnot. So yeah, 90 days does feel right, breaking it down into those chunks and then making the decisions to move the needles for the KPI in the right direction, making sure that you can set those goals and milestones and hit them as you progress with your business. That's really great insight.

14:37:And a great resource for this, I love to read. So I'm like always reading business books, but a really good book for that is Measure What Matters by John Doar. He worked with Google, YouTube, Zoom, Pizza, a few of the bigger companies and implemented OKRs is what he calls them, their objectives and key results. But he really talks about setting that vision and then setting your key results, which in this case would be your metrics or your KPIs.

15:04:And really, especially when you have a team, figuring out how to trickle it down to your team. So everybody's accountable and on board and willing to work towards that vision. Yeah, that's a great one. Do you have any other resources that doctors might be able to tap into when it comes to the bookkeeping or the finances or setting those goals and visions and making sure it's realistic for their practice?

15:28:Do you have anything that you help resources available for doctors? The Vivid Vision by Cameron Harold is a little lesser known, but he goes really into detail about how to really drill down on tying that emotion to the logic and separating your visions or not really separating, but working backwards. So even start with a longer, maybe a three year vision and work backwards. And a couple of things that I forgot to add earlier

15:57:that I like to note is celebration and the importance of celebration in your vision. So a lot of people, you get, I find most business owners are very driven. And so you accomplish one thing and then you just immediately move on to the next thing. It's so important to keep a vivid vision in front of you so that you can know when to celebrate for one, because sometimes we just get so involved in doing the stuff that we forget,

16:27:hey, this was one of my goals and it seemed unattainable at the time, but here I am slaying it, moving on to my next thing. So you have to take time to celebrate how far you've come and to even like be intentional about looking at how far you've come. And that's another thing I think that vision and keeping it visible in front of you helps with, because you do see, you see that, oh, this seemed like a really stretch goal for me

16:51:back in the day and now here I am, 10 times what I thought I would be doing at that point. So it's just a lot of people overlook celebration because we just have the next thing to work on, but we have to take the time to celebrate and then move on. Yeah, that's a really key point too, especially when you have team members, because obviously you wanna celebrate the milestones that you hit, but you also wanna celebrate your team members

17:15:and the actions that they took to help the practice get there. Having good team members is a big portion of the success of the practice and being able to celebrate with them and encourage them and give them that positive reinforcement is a good reminder to help them continue to work hard towards those goals and the vision that you've set for the practice and making sure you communicate with the team

17:39:and making sure everybody's rowing the boat in the same direction, so to speak. Well, and communication, just like you said, communication is a huge factor in that because a lot of times teams can feel like they are just working, like they're just working on what's in front of them and they're not even sure like where, what the direction is, and especially for practices that are growing fast, obviously that's a good thing,

18:05:but it can also be a lot harder to be intentional about setting your vision and then communicating it with your team because you're just doing the next thing that has to be done, right? And your team is the same way, they're just accomplishing what has to be done because there's deadlines on it. People are waiting for this, people are in the waiting room or people are doing it, you know, so they just do what's in front of them

18:24:without seeing the bigger picture and so it's so important, just like you said, to communicate that with your team so that they can be fully invested. And it's, I mean, it's an, again, back to the emotion, it's an emotional investment, which sometimes is a bigger incentive to retain employees than money can be because if they feel like they're part of a bigger picture making a difference in their community,

18:46:they're personally going to stick it out no matter how tough it is or if there's a better job opportunity. If they are on board with your mission and your vision and they wanna be a part of that, they're gonna stick with you and that's important right now because I mean, employee retention can be difficult right now. Yeah, definitely and finding good people, like if you have good people, you definitely wanna make sure

19:08:that they feel important and valued and you give them that positive reinforcement and all the things that are gonna help build and grow that team into practice. So also really good insights. Thanks for sharing. Let's see, so if someone, if a doctor needed support with their books or they had questions, do you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Do you have resources available for them?

19:35:What do you recommend for doctors that are looking for help on getting their books clean, setting those numerical goal values and setting those visions and those types of things? What do you have for doctors looking for that? So I love to chat with people and I always say, I love my consultations, they're free consultations because I don't go into them expecting new clients and I don't want chiropractors to come into it

20:00:thinking I'm gonna try to sell them. I am in this industry and serving chiropractors because I love what they do. They make a difference in the community and I wanna be a part of that, whether I'm your bookkeeper or whether we just have a conversation and help get you on track and understanding where you wanna go because sometimes you just have to talk with somebody to really figure out your vision.

20:21:Like you can feel stuck and you can talk with somebody that can ask the right questions or dig a little deeper and you start to have these revelations to yourself, oh wait, that is what I want. So I just really love to have the conversation so reach out to me at Heidi at healthybookslc.com or come to my website, I have healthybookslc.com, you can schedule a free consultation on there. Basically just, I mean, my phone number's on there,

20:48:my email's on there, just reach out just to chat. If you just need, business ownership is lonely, let's be real, it is so lonely. You sometimes just need someone to talk to and that's what I love about my job is just talking to people and being a part of their vision, being a part of where they wanna go. I also have a 20 minute free masterclass it's called the Super Simple Bookkeeping System, just a fancy name for really just me talking

21:15:a little bit more about this, where I go into a little bit more of the details of like how you can use your financial statements, how you can make sure they're right, how you can, because it's all great and good if you wanna go use your numbers, but if your numbers aren't right first or if you don't understand them all the way, you won't be able to use them effectively. So that class kind of explains

21:37:how to make sure your numbers are right, how to use them and a few other things that you can use to, yeah, just kind of nail down your system in your business. That's great, awesome. So doctors, the masterclass, Super Simple Bookkeeping System for chiropractors, sounds like it's only a 20 minute investment and it's free. So go check that out, we'll make sure that you got the link in the description

22:02:and then we'll also make sure you got Heidi's email. So if you wanted that one-on-one consultation to help get a clear vision set for the numbers and the finances and where you wanna go with your business, she's there for you, this is great. Heidi, anything else that you wanted to add before we kind of wrap things up for today? Just remember, one, celebrating is super important. You've been invested in this business

22:27:and no one else but you is gonna remind yourself to stop and celebrate it. So you've got to celebrate the differences that you are making, you have to be intentional about seeing that and don't be afraid to let your vision change because it might change. You might have a one-year vision for now and then you get 30 days down the road and you're like, well, I think I wanna change that. And that's fine, you don't have to be afraid of that,

22:51:just change it and change your course and change your KPIs and you're on the road again. So celebrating and not being afraid of change, I guess, are some big keys to remember. That's really great advice, I love that. So Heidi, thank you so much for joining us and talking about this stuff, super, super valuable information. I really, really appreciate your time. Well, I'm so honored that you asked me

23:15:and that we got to hang out and I just really appreciate it, thank you. Yeah, absolutely, Chiropractors, if you need anything, obviously we are here for you. So thanks so much and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in to the Chiro Basics Podcast. If you liked the episode, don't forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube. You can learn more about chiropractic success online at chirobasics.com.

23:39:That's C-H-I-R-O-B-A-S-I-X.com. See you next time.