We were lucky to catch up with Dr. Philip Cordova recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dr. Philip, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

My wife and I walked the stage at our Chiropractic school graduation in December 1996, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona at the end of that month. We couldn’t officially get licensed until February so we worked smaller retail jobs until then. After looking around for office space and realizing we had no idea what we were doing, we ended up renting rooms from another husband/wife chiropractic couple in the Phoenix area.

They were only in their office on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so we agreed to rent their office on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. (It’s not uncommon in the Phoenix area for chiropractors to just work 3 days per week.). After a few months of doing this, we were still working 2nd jobs and not being very successful at all. My wife ended up taking a job as an associate chiropractor at another office to help pay the bills while I stayed to try to figure out the business thing.

After our first full year in practice, we had generated just over $3,000. Definitely not enough to live on and we knew there had to be a better way of doing things. I ended up contacting a practice management consultant and signing up to get some coaching help. We had to put the whole thing on a credit card and hope it worked out. After a year, we were able to grow enough to open up our own office and several years later we moved to Houston to do it again.

If I had to do it over again… I would not have taken the retail job and instead found a position with a chiropractic office that was successful and running their office in a way I would want to practice. That would have provided income, but also the education of learning the business of Chiropractic would have been invaluable. I don’t know why, but I just assumed we would have our own office and never even considered working for someone else.

Other than having a system that is smooth and easy for your staff to implement, the biggest issue I see facing all health care providers is seeing new patients. With the internet being so important to business now, business owners underestimate how they can market their practices at events and through public speaking. Since they can’t do that right now with the pandemic, just making an occasional social media post isn’t going to do anything. If you want to stand out, you have to put yourself out there and share relevant and helpful information with the public.

It can take awhile for the seeds you’ve planted to grow, but if you are consistent about promoting your office, it will certainly pay off. Make plan and work that plan. You can’t make one YouTube video and then give up when it’s not generating any views. Stick with it, because seeing new patients is the only way to help more people and grow your practice.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I was involved in martial arts since I was 8 years old. During my freshman year of high school, I turned to punch someone in class and injured my back. Rest, muscle relaxers, and ice didn’t do anything for me. I had to give up all physical activity because of the pain. My father took me to see a chiropractor and I showed steady improvement and returned to all activities within a month or so.

My chiropractor was a great guy and seemed to really enjoy what he did. He also took the time to explain to us how important spinal health is to our overall health. That just clicked for me and I decided to be a chiropractor shortly after that.

Our offices provide personalized chiropractic care (we get specific misalignments from x-ray examinations), spinal decompression therapy, and PEMF therapy. Our main patients come to see us for chronic neck or back pain problems because we get such great results with these problems.

We recently wrote a book called Better Posture Fast that is available on Amazon. This book talks about how we help our neck and back pain patients with chiropractic care, but also with stretches and exercises related to improving their posture.

I’m proud of our outstanding reputation in the Houston area and the feedback we get from our patients on a daily basis.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

When our office was just Dr. Natalie Cordova and myself, we knew the level of care we were providing and we shared a sincere and enthusiastic interest in our patients getting better. We also wanted to make sure our patients actively participated in their own care. We have always given our patients ongoing recommendations for things they can do outside of our office and not just be dependent on the care we provide.

Now that we have other doctors in our practice, we provide ongoing meetings and training to make sure we stay on the same page. It’s not easy to for a chiropractor to get hired at CORE Chiropractic. We will do several interviews with them and they have to be a good adjuster. Every doctor has to adjust my wife and I as a part of the interview process. We know they’ll be extremely nervous, but we still expect a decent adjustment. We then give them feedback about their adjustment and areas they can improve. Based on how they respond, we know right away if they’re coachable and someone that we can continue to grow with.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

As much as I hate meetings, regular meetings and ongoing feedback is essential for our practice. We start off every morning with a brief meeting where we look at the day’s schedule and assess any areas where it may get busy and how we plan to handle it. We also remind everyone of any special needs from patients coming in that day. At the end of the meeting, one team member will hand out a “rose” – which is a recognition to another team member about something they noticed they did well or something they want to appreciate them for.

We also do a quarterly “what’s working/what’s not working” meeting with our team. Each team member provides a list of things working well in the office as well as a list of areas either not working well or something that can be improved. We then discuss which areas we can fix/improve for the upcoming quarter. We truly appreciate the feedback our team provides. I believe it also lets them know we appreciate them and that they have a voice in making things better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.corechiropractic.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corechiropractic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corechiropractic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/core-chiropractic-in-houston-tx/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/corechirotx
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/COREChiropracticHouston
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/core-chiropractic-houston
• Other: Get our book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Posture-Fast-Finally-Chronic/dp/1663230404/