Over the past ten years, I’ve worked with seven, eight- and even nine-figure virtual healthcare practices on their journeys to establish authority in the industry, nurture their tribe, and achieve unprecedented success. 

For all of the topics and lessons I cover, if I had to select the most popular and pressing question I’m asked, it’s this: How do I calculate my health practice’s hourly rate? 

Answering this question requires more than just a simple math formula. Learning how to value a chiropractic practice, or other natural health practice, and embracing your hourly rate demands a certain mindset as well. 

So many doctors fail to recognize or appreciate their own hourly rate, which means they fail to value their time. 

Don’t sell yourself short (or cheap!). Learn how to calculate your practice’s hourly rate and fully embody what your time is really worth.

Biggest Traps When Valuing Your Time

When customers pay, they pay attention. They want to make sure the value of the product or service they receive justifies the cost. If they witness the incredible advantages of that product or service, they will happily pay top dollar to continue reaping the benefits. 

So when you don’t understand your hourly rate, you can’t properly align your value. You risk undercharging customers, delivering benefits that far exceed their cost, and spinning your wheels, wondering why your practice isn’t flourishing. 

Eventually, you’ll burn out. You can’t deliver top-tier results at bargain pricing forever! This triggers a domino effect in which your services deteriorate and you risk losing your trusted clients to the competition. 

And it all comes back to pricing. Learning how to value a chiropractic practice or naturopathic practice properly may be the final barrier standing between you and unlimited success. 

Consequences of Using the Wrong Hourly Rate

Imagine what would happen if your plumber or landscaper charged $5 per hour instead of $75 or $100. They wouldn’t be able to sustain their business overhead, let alone take home any salary for themselves. It wouldn’t take long for their business doors to close permanently. 

The consequences of using the wrong hourly rate in your healthcare practice are just as dangerous.

When you don’t know or you underestimate your hourly rate, you continue to perform tasks better suited for an assistant. You focus on minutiae, the smaller daily tasks meant for somebody making $15 or $20 an hour. This stunts growth and keeps you anchored in shallow water. 

Charging the wrong hourly rate also makes you vulnerable to underpricing while over-delivering. Even though you’re not charging enough to reflect your expertise and value, you hesitate to stop customers when they demand that you deliver results outside of your scope. This dilutes your profit margin- and momentum!- even more.

The Domino Effect of Charging the Wrong Hourly Rate

At its core, charging the wrong hourly rate does a disservice to yourself, your clients, and your company. That single wrong number leads to a cascading domino effect that compromises your practice’s ability to thrive.

First, you do a disservice to your clients. Though you establish yourself as a leader and authority in your industry, your clients may lose respect for your brand if you under-value yourself. This also penalizes future clients because you remain so overwhelmed in the day-to-day hustle that you struggle to strengthen the pillars of your practice that provide the best patient experience. 

Charging the wrong hourly rate even punishes you personally. It cuts into your personal time and deprives you of the focused time needed to strategically work on your business. This is a serious issue that can affect your relationships, mental health, and financial health. 

Doctors who don’t know their value tend to attract the types of patients they don’t want, while simultaneously putting their most valued customers on the back burner. This inevitably drives lackluster results and hinders your growth. 

Yet it can all be remedied by calculating and implementing your gross hourly rate! 

How to Calculate Your Gross Hourly Rate

Calculating your gross hourly rate is much easier than you might think:

1. Take last month’s revenue (i.e. $500,000)
2. Then take the number of hours you worked last month (i.e. 200)
3. Divide those for your gross hourly rate ($500,000/150= $2,500)

Armed with your gross hourly rate, reevaluate the tasks you perform every single day and ask yourself… am I making the best use out of my hourly rate? Am I taking actions that reflect my gross hourly rate?

If the answer is no, act quickly to make the underlying changes necessary to value yourself at your real hourly rate. 

How To Increase the Value of Your Practice (And Your Time)

If you’re disheartened to see that you’ve been missing the opportunity to leverage your gross hourly rate, you’re not alone! I’ve seen doctors of all calibers struggle to properly value their practice and their time. The good news is that you can take clearly defined steps to sync up your daily routine, brand identity, and hourly rate. 

Get the Right Kind of Help

The phrase work smarter, not harder sounds cliche, but it holds a powerful truth. You need to identify your weaknesses and entrust those tasks to somebody else. 

Your solution could be as simple as hiring an assistant to work 10 or 15 hours a week. Don’t be afraid to use the capabilities of other people to magnify your abilities. Doing so creates ongoing progress and momentum. 

Master Delegation

As the leader of your practice, you need to remain focused on activities that drive the most revenue. Delegate everything else.

Think of it this way: your business can never grow if you remain stubbornly attached to every branch, leaf, and flower that grows. Eventually, a paradigm shift of delegation becomes necessary to help you break free from your limitations. 

Build Replicable Systems

Someone once said, “If you don’t have systems, you don’t have a business. You simply have a job for yourself.” This is painfully true for so many virtual and brick-and-mortar doctors. 

If you want to maximize your hourly rate and embrace your true value, you need systems. Fortunately, a replicable system can start simple: create a process manual to quickly train new team members. Document anything you do more than once so that you define a system of automation.

This is exactly what I do for doctors each and every day through Health Experts Alliance; it’s my passion to help your practice thrive using the powers of automation.