Guest Lecture- Panel #4

Today’s guest panel discussed leadership and business aspects relating to the chiropractic profession. The panel consisted of Dr. Wickes, the President of CMCC who spoke about leadership and questions relating to leading the profession, Ms Mooney, a renowned educator and award winner in business, who discussed Brand Management and entrepreneurship and Dr. Brown who has 60 years in private practice that discussed his experiences in leading our profession and what it takes to be successful in practice in any era. Dr. Wickes discussed that an entrepreneur is one who organizes a business or develops an idea and takes responsibility for its operation, profits and losses. He discussed that as a leader you need a strategic plan, which requires flexibility, input and expertise. You also need to gain the trust of your employees and hire people to be apart of your team that are willing to take risks, and are experts in their field. Dr. Wickes discussion was useful because it highlighted and reminded me of aspects of leadership that you typically forget when you think about what it requires to be a leader. Ms. Mooney discussed entrepreneur “lucky” tips to guide us towards some of things we should consider and think about leading up to our near future as chiropractors. L stands for location and involves finding a place you want to work. To find an appropriate location you should consider the following: conduct a competitive analysis, review association statistics, assess the accessibility including parking, bus line, trains, and consider convenient hours of business. Accessibility is important because you want to be in a busy area with lots of traffic, and you want to be somewhere that is easy for people to get to you. U stands for understanding your clients. This aspect is based on the clientele you want to market your expertise and business to. To understand and market to your patients you should: look for referral opportunities, be visible, thinking about potential groups or communities of people with similar interests, educate, and have conversations one-on-one.

Dr. Brown who discussed his involvement in the development of CMCC as an institution. As a CMCC student I can appreciate the efforts that Dr. Brown has made in order to develop a successful academic institution that I have the honor of attending.