59 - Building Mental Fortitude with Dr. Alan Chang

Thanks for joining us on the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with Jillian Flodstrom! This week, we’re joined by Dr. Alan Chong. He’s been a doctor of chiropractic for over 27 years and has built two thriving clinics. Now, he shares his knowledge by mentoring and coaching other healthcare professionals and offers guidance on his podcast, Practice Mastery.

Dr. Chong’s favorite part of building, growing, and running his spine clinic is working hands-on with patients. Beyond that, now with two clinics, he was able to create a business within a business, each complimenting each other and further finding a niche from which comes more cash flow.

Now in his 35th year of practice, Dr. Chong was presented with an opportunity to purchase and take over two clinics and do it all on his own. As a result, he was working 55 clinic hours a week–a massive amount of time. The key to lowering that to 32 hours is hiring.
His tips for hiring start with making sure they are like-minded individuals. Ensure that you’re both aligned in your top 3 core values. If they’re totally off the wall from yours, probably not a good hire, regardless of how good they look on paper. Additionally, he asks his interviewees what their references would say about them.

COVID has been one of the most difficult challenges Dr. Chong, and many other small business owners have faced. There will moments where many will feel like quitting. Fortunately for Dr. Chong, he found that personal development and ﬁnding that drive within saved his business.

The biggest piece of advice Dr. Chong would give himself is to have asked for help sooner, and more often. Especially from his team. In addition, being more transparent, authentic, and real with clients and team members is crucial. When he did, he realized that bricks and mortar–the place in which you work, needs to be inspiring.

There’s a good chance you may just tolerate it–don’t. If you can’t stand your office, bring something into it that will make it personal.

Dr. Chong’s approach to coaching is based on mindset. He asks simple questions to his clients. What makes you tick? What motivates you? What’s going on in your head? What’s holding you back? What are you angry about? Sometimes it’s purely a mind shift to move on. If you have a mind, you better get your mindset in order. It’s not a Monday to Friday, it’s every single day of the week. Affirmations don’t build your processes, They build your mindset. They build your mental fortitude. Your brand is all about your mindset. How stable and consistent are you with your processes? What’s your personality like? Are you a driver?

Dr. Chong’s advice to those struggling to break through to that next level is this: each deep inside and think about why you went that direction anyways. Revive the passion–remember what your first passion project was.

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