The Practice Gap
The Practice Gap
#31 Experiences from Opening a Chiropractic Clinic With Kristoffer Nordrum Hansen
Do you have a dream of opening your own clinic? In this episode you will meed Kristoffer Nordrum Hansen, a chiropractor with a vision, followed his dream and opened his own clinic, "The Chiropractic Buddies" or Kiropraktorkameratene i Norwegian, together with his colleague Marius Riiber Eikeland in Asker, Norway.
In this episode you will hear about their journey transforming a shared ambition into reality—with strategic planning, financial wisdom, and a touch of legal savvy. Sit back and listen Christoffer shares the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, from choosing just the right location to implementing a marketing strategy that really clicks with their community.
This episode shares insights for anyone looking to open their own clinic. Kristoffer doesn't just talk shop; he invites us into the heart of his partnership with Marius, revealing how their camaraderie and complementary skills were pivotal in shaping their clinic.
Whether you're a chiropractic enthusiast, an aspiring business owner, or simply curious about the courage it takes to build something of your own, this conversation is your ticket to knowledge that could be the catalyst for your own business adventure. Join us as we explore the power of preparation, partnership, and the entrepreneurial spirit with Kristoffer Nordrum Hansen.
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Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen, DC, MSc
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Hi and welcome to the Practice Gap, the podcast for closing the gap between the practice you have and the one that you want. I'm Elizabeth, a chiropractor, a business owner, coach and entrepreneur, on a mission to help you move from frustration and overwhelm to clarity, focus and joy in practice. Hi and welcome to the studio, christoffer Nordrum Hansen. Could you please start by telling the audience a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, hi, my name is Christoffer. I'm from Askin.
Speaker 1:Which is a small place outside Norway.
Speaker 2:Small place outside of Oslo where I also live with my family. I graduated from ECC in 2014 and been working in Elvrum.
Speaker 1:Which is Osmole Town.
Speaker 2:Up north of Oslo. I've been practicing there for 8 or 9 years before I now started my own clinic with my good friend Marius in Askin.
Speaker 1:So actually, let's just start there. Yes, because we are going to talk a little bit about the experience of opening your own practice. Yes, yes, you had worked for about 8-9 years for someone else, and then you moved back to your home town more or less. What made you decide to open your own clinic?
Speaker 2:I think I always had a dream of opening my own clinic and to be my own self-made character I was. When starting working in Elvrum I had a plan of just working there for a year. Then I built up a practice and gradually we were increasing and growing and it made it a lot more difficult to move out of the practice. Of course, with also increasing family size, I saw some advantage of living closer to grandparents and babysitters and so an opportunity to open up a clinic closer to them and to be a part of the chiropractic community in Askin. In Askin.
Speaker 1:You started with a colleague. Is he a good friend or is it? That was not a good question. Is it somebody you went to school? Could you talk a little? Bit briefly about the relationship.
Speaker 2:It's a funny story because Marius is from Bärum, which is between Askin and Oslo. I didn't really know him before we met. At the first day we moved down to Bournemouth where we both started at the same time and we kind of just hit it off. From the first moment it was me and two other friends. So we became four good friends during the whole time at college and we still are good friends today and then we kind of or both of us moved to Hamar and where we lived and worked in both Brümundal and these are all small towns and small villages outside I would say like About an hour or two now, but I'm slow.
Speaker 1:Villages, villages.
Speaker 2:We kind of both decided we didn't want to live in the same village as we worked in. But Hamar is kind of a bigger city, so we both lived there and then I think we both at the same time we grew out of working for someone without having the opportunity to maybe be our own leader or boss.
Speaker 1:So you found like that it was the time. But had you decided beforehand that you would open a practice, or did that just appear only?
Speaker 2:When I decided that I wanted to move back in and go to Askin, I did look for other practices and even considered to buy an old practice. So I went to see and speak to other carpenters that were about to leave the profession or to get retired. I think it was Maris when I was speaking to him and he also told me that he was considering to leave Brümundal. I think he said well, why can't we just start something together? It will be a benefit to both of us and we can just find somewhere where we don't think that we are taking each other's patients from each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So when you went through the process, okay. So you decided, okay, I'm moving back. I checked out the options. I want to start my own clinic and I want to start with this colleague and friends. How did you go about then? Could you talk about the process? Where did you start? Did you start by making a business plan or did you start by finding out where to Like? Could you just tell us, or the audience, a little bit about the process?
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. So we actually made a small business plan with Marius and we. First we sat down at the Pepe's Pizza restaurant in Hamar and I brought my black book. I had written some thoughts and Marius had also written some thoughts, but we thought it was important to both of us. I had a small discussion about where we wanted to start, so we had a quite big area in the beginning. We started to look for a place in Oslo the entire barium and the aschir. We said we wanted to be on this side of Oslo, find a place where it wasn't completely stacked with the chiropractors and osteopaths and other healthcare professions, so we could have our own kind of brand and be a good option for other health providers to use us when they were in need or had questions.
Speaker 1:How did you find like, did you just go Google searching or what did you do?
Speaker 2:So then we both because we were from those areas that we were looking for we kind of knew which parts we really wanted to work and where we did not want to work. So we had a couple of ideas and then we started to call around to different landlords or shopping malls to ask if they had room for us and what our kind of scope of practice were, how we saw ourselves working with different again different health professionals and how we could be a good contribution to the center or shopping malls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you are located then in a shopping mall.
Speaker 2:So, at the moment, yes or yes, we are.
Speaker 1:Yes, and also that's where people are when deciding on the size of the clinic. How did you go about doing that? Or I have no idea how big your clinic is, so can you just talk a little bit about sizing and deciding where to start.
Speaker 2:We know that the competition can be hard. We had the thought that we didn't want to spend too much money on having a big clinic, that we didn't use the whole area. We started off with 72 square meters, which was a quite big reception area, a small changing room and then two decent sized treatment rooms and that's it.
Speaker 2:Then we, approximately a year and a half maybe because we got in touch with someone that was asking if they could start working with us as well Talk to the center about expanding the clinic. Or, long story short, the guy who we spoke to didn't start working with us, but we expanded anyway. So now the clinic is 125 square meters and three treatment rooms one smaller treatment room, so three big ones and one small, and then 22 square meters training facility.
Speaker 1:So you kind of crammed it down so you actually are able to have four treatment rooms in different sizes and a small training area and a way of reception area.
Speaker 2:Good job.
Speaker 1:How long have you had that clinic now?
Speaker 2:Two years, maybe two and a half years almost.
Speaker 1:From the process then from deciding and to find a place. How long did it take to make a business plan, To find a name I assume you have on some online present and to be like a brand and do some marketing? When did you start? If I was a new car practice and I wanted to open my own clinic, where would I what's a good way in your experience? Where should I start?
Speaker 2:For me, it was definitely to kind of Just to get to start with the idea I was thinking about different names for how I would like to or what I would like to call my clinic. Now it ended up with being a Kiropractor Kamratna, which is like our practice friends, and that's because that's what we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, well, that's a nice name. It's very descriptive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we. Just I looked at what size and how, what's manageable in expenses and I think I had, like I always had in my mind economy behind running your own business. It's not to think that I'm going to achieve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you have. It's really about money thing in the beginning. You need to pay your rent and you have to have a buffer that you know that you can survive and it takes. It can take a long time for things to get going and sometimes it can go fast. How many months before you were able to pay for the expenses?
Speaker 2:We managed to pay the expenses by the first month. I think it was after three months. We gave ourselves a little bit of salary as well we have. In the first year I think we didn't pay our salary each month but we had at least every second. I think we managed to kind of have our expenses quite low, Just not only in business but in private as well. And then it's. Since we started, it has been increasing slowly each month.
Speaker 1:How big about buffer do you Like? Did you? Did you get any consulting or help when you made your plan, or did you just jump in and do it by yourself?
Speaker 2:Basically I would say just jump in and do it by yourself. We do get some support and help from our family. I tend to use my father quite a lot because he's more like a business and economic kind of guy. I could say chiropractors are not in quality of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're educated to become a healthcare professional, not a business person.
Speaker 2:So I've been taking advices from him.
Speaker 1:So it's good to find somebody you can have advice from.
Speaker 2:Definitely, or else we would probably have jumped into building a clinic, a big clinic, from day one. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I've always been a good partner for both me and Marius, to just discuss, not all the time, but every now and then and then also open up a clinic with a good friend that you can discuss everything with. I've been also very helpful, I think, for both of us.
Speaker 1:Did you go before you decided like to do this together? Did you have a time where you went through all the pitfalls, everything that can go wrong?
Speaker 2:Kind of, and that was also something that scared me when I started to look for practices to buy myself from retired chiropractors. I definitely had like, would I like to put money into this, and then maybe all the patients would disappear within the next upcoming months. That was also maybe one of the biggest reasons why we decided to start to build something up from scratch.
Speaker 1:How about the marketing? Where did you start there?
Speaker 2:Well, saying that we didn't have a consultant, we actually did have kind of a consultant, virtual, which is also a childhood friend of mine. He helped us quite a lot with the Google ads. So we did start with Google ads quite early and he had everything set up for us and then we Did you have a budget for what you, how much you would use in the marketing?
Speaker 2:Yes, but we just I try that maybe for one or two weeks maybe, and we had used everything up. So. But now we have a budget that we kind of follow often or rigidly On the marketing side. So now we are on both Facebook, instagram, we're on Google and we are also on ads with Shipstead, so we're popping up on the big websites of some national newspapers.
Speaker 1:So you have a clear, with the help of your friends, you have a clear marketing strategy and you're actually paying money for it. Yes, yes, for that, do you like? How long in the future is your marketing strategy for? Has it changed?
Speaker 2:Well, we did try to change it a little bit to find our kind of sweet spot on how much we would like to spend on it, and then we've changed kind of the focus on, like the Google ad search words that we are using, which is a kind of also a big process in doing.
Speaker 1:Does it work?
Speaker 2:I would say yes, being on Google does work, because people do search.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why I mean, everything we do is like googling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, when people start to Google pain, I'll be there.
Speaker 1:As you from like where you are now into this new practice, as I assume you check where your patients are from, if they're referrals or if Google. Could you now, after you've been in practice for two years, right how much percentage is like referrals from all the patients and how much percentage is from advertising?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say that can differ quite a bit. At the moment, I think it's fair to say 70% is referral, 20% is for marketing, and then present this by coincidence people walking past us, yeah, it's like, oh, there they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's good and it's good to have that you know your numbers. That's I think that's a good thing. That's my one of my advice. If you want to open a new clinic, you have to have know everything about your practice when you first started out. How long does it take to get the internal? I mean you need some patients to help that can talk about you to get going. So it's like in the beginning you need people in. So the first three months, where did the patients come from?
Speaker 2:So I think the first three months was both people working in the shopping mall and also we had great help from our general practitioners also working across the whole, so you had a good relationship with the doctors working in the area. Yes, very good relationship operation or with patients, common patients, by coincidence, my training center. I started to talk with the manager and the owner. They started to refer clients from the training center or to us.
Speaker 1:So training centers and medical doctors who actually see the patients are good places.
Speaker 2:to say hi, Amir, yes just be humble and talk with doctors about different things. We can help with everything from the school of little issues and business headaches things they see quite often but not the time can help their patients with.
Speaker 1:So have the courage to go out and talk to people and to be clear what you can. It may be able to help your patients with.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And also you mentioned humble, and that's also some of the other car factors are talked about that early. It's like you need to be humble when you go out and talk with people.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:When people tend to like you more. Definitely.
Speaker 2:I think I burned myself the first or second year I was working in Elvry. I was walking in with a colleague and felt like we were walking in like rock stars and those people we spoke to had been in practice for 30 or 40 years and had been in their profession for a long time, I think they, just when we left, I think they shook their heads those guys, Learning experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like when you kind of I don't like to use the word fail, but it's when you get some resistance. That's when you learn. Yes, and I don't think I had one patient coming from that, if you would have done one thing differently in this process that you in the process of opening a clinic, what would you have done differently?
Speaker 2:I think I would have opened up maybe earlier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how early.
Speaker 2:Two years.
Speaker 1:Two years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because I have to say working in that clinic I worked for I got enormous experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And a very good opportunity to build a practice from almost nothing, so I'm very grateful for that. I had the opportunity to do that. I learned very, very much. But I think, stay there for just a bit too long.
Speaker 2:Because I had my other ideas and I had some views on things I would like to change in the clinic and met some resistance in saying and telling or coming up with my ideas and that kind of killed some of the joy of working as a chiropractor. On how I wanted to learn and work as a chiropractor, I should have started to think about maybe to stop and get out at that point.
Speaker 1:But it took me. So yeah, and also, we like what's comfortable and the known. The unknown is always scary.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely, and with experience now I can say it's not as scary as I've been told.
Speaker 1:Well, that is good, so that's very good. Yes, when you went to school for those, how many of the people I don't know if you know this, but how many of the people you went to school with has opened their own practices?
Speaker 2:Now I think it's quite surprisingly many.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that has opened up their own small clinics around Naslo, askererea, berrum, also Elvrum, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think they're doing actually quite good. Yeah, I mean they're doing a good job, so people will use them and people will talk about the new good chiropractic office around the corner, so I think that's not as uncommon as it maybe was a couple of years back.
Speaker 1:So the attitude has changed a little bit. So it's your. Yeah, I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:But I'm not going to say number because I don't like it.
Speaker 1:No, you don't know. Do you know anyone who opened a clinic and that has false that hated it or didn't like it?
Speaker 2:There was actually a chiropractor that worked in the same shopping mall as us and he was running the clinic, I think for two or three years. When he closed his clinic I think he shocked everyone in the shopping mall because they said he was very good and a nice chiropractor and a nice guy good chiropractor and a nice guy so they were surprised him closing. I think I have spoken to him. I can't really remember the reason, but I can imagine opening up a clinic in the fourth floor of a shopping mall A low can be a little bit rough because there will be times where it's quiet and not as many patients that come in and maybe you start to worry and you lose yourself a little bit. You start maybe to try to do something different with your chiropractic focus or scope of practice and maybe you don't feel successful anymore and it's just a downward spiral.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm done now yeah.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. It's tough because you have to keep yourself, you have to be self-motivated the whole time Because everything is your responsibility. So that's a little rough part. How much work would you say it is to have your own clinic? Ok, ok, actually you know this because you've been working with someone who, kind of you, just went in and saw patients and did your thing. How much more work is it now?
Speaker 2:A lot. I will say it because I don't did attend a few meetings with my former clinic, so I did put in a lot of extra work there as well. Opening up a clinic completely by yourself, you suddenly understand how much more that you didn't do, that you now have to do with everything from being on the national health system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think it costs money and everything is expensive, which is very expensive to get on.
Speaker 2:It's expensive to maintain, Just not only to do the rent, but you also have to follow up on the costs of maintenance of the building, electricity, all the small bits.
Speaker 1:They had no idea. That was there. Yeah, no idea.
Speaker 2:Well, phones, phone subscription, yeah, yeah, everything costs quite a bit.
Speaker 1:When I opened my first practice it was 27 years ago and then there wasn't that many expenses, it was like phone and you had to be in a phone book and cleaning stuff on that room. But just running a clinic now is much more expensive because you have to all these things, you have to the computer-esque program. So it's changed a lot, yes, changed a lot, and I think when you work for someone else you have no clue.
Speaker 2:No, no, you. You really don't know how much effort that has been put in to make it running, so you're lucky that someone is doing it for you.
Speaker 1:So if you're working someone else. You are pretty lucky.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:There are definitely some benefits.
Speaker 2:There are definitely some benefits. Yes, I would say.
Speaker 1:So I will have you back for another episode. So, but before that I would like just to wrap up a little bit and see if we got it all. So if you are a younger car practice who is big dream is to open your own clinic, just do it. Yes, everyone tells you it's hard and it is hard, but it's not that hard.
Speaker 2:No, no. And if you have started with the idea of opening your own clinic, it's about time. It's about time.
Speaker 1:So if you want to open your own practice, just do it yes, and then use the people in your network. If it's a father or a mother with an economy background, if you have a friend with marketing, if you have any kind of people around you, use their knowledge and get help, ask for help. And also I would also strongly suggest, if you really want to open your own practice, talk to people who have done it before.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And learn from their experiences, and then you need to have a buffer.
Speaker 2:So you survive.
Speaker 1:Yes, and don't open too big. No, start small and if you are opening with a friend of colleagues, you have shared responsibilities and good, and then be sure that you know the person. I would say also, be sure to put in a nice agreement and have some lawyers help you with that and go through all the terrible stuff that could happen in advance. That's what I've learned. I know that you didn't do that big, maybe that big thing of that, but that's something I would strongly suggest to go on every crazy mindset that can be done, because once you've talked about it a little bit, it's much easier to prevent it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And not be scared about talking about that. Even though we're good friends now, something crazy can happen and it's good to walk through those from before, so you end up having a nice work life.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Also collaborate with the people around you and be humble when you talk to people and offer your services yes, yes and have a mindset that your mindset is probably much more important than you think.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 1:So did that about sum it up.
Speaker 2:That's a good summary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much, christa, for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you again for having me. We'll be back shortly, nice.