My name is Dr Tom Vaughan; I am a Chiropractor at Boost Chiropractic and a member of BNI Warkworth. This year I am fortunate enough to have my own business’s success celebrated as a finalist at The David Awards. We are a finalist in the most outstanding lifestyle business category. This category recognises a business which epitomises the ability to integrate business and lifestyle, with the owner taking advantage of its flexibility to fit income generation around spending time on family or leisure activities or other pursuits. While lifestyle is an important judging criterion, this business must still demonstrate its economic viability.
Dr Tom Vaughan, Chiropractor at Boost Chiropractic and a member of BNI Warkworth.
Our business has been designed around maximising time spent with our family of 2 young children. We are in the office Mon – Thurs with morning shifts running from 7am – 11am and afternoon shifts running from 3 – 7pm for myself and 9 – 11am/3 – 5pm for my wife. This means we each have time to spend with the children on a daily basis and a scheduled family day every Friday.
The Boost Chiropractic Team
Every decision we have made from location to fees to hours has been based on the lifestyle we wish to have with our family and the importance we place on being positive influences for our 1 and 2 year olds. With the opening hours we have we have great profitability and 90% of our practice growth is from referrals from our satisfied customers.
The awards
This is the first year that I entered the Awards. They were mentioned in our BNI weekly meeting in an education piece and feedback was the number one reason we decided to go into it. It can be very difficult to get honest feedback from business experts on your operation and this sort of information is very valuable. As a relatively new business, we want to constantly improve and the feedback from the Awards will help us improve and grow in the future.
BNI has been hugely beneficial to this process because learning how other people do business helps us a lot with our operation. I am a chiropractor before I am a businessperson so getting that feedback from my fellow BNI members on improving my business has been invaluable. In the 3 years Boost has operated we have grown from a turnover of $0 and a location of a converted garage to this year being on track to turnover $250 000 in a town centre location.
Our growth
Most small businesses fail within the first 5 years of opening. In the almost 3 years we have been open we have grown, increased our profit margins, and bought out 2 other chiropractic offices that were in the area. Our predictions for the next year based on the data we have so far show no sign of our growth stopping and our enthusiasm is certainly continuing to grow.
The Award winners will be announced on the 12th October so we have our fingers crossed for that. However just entering the Awards has been valuable for our business and I recommend other members try entering The David Awards next year.
Dr Tom Vaughan, Chiropractor at Boost Chiropractic and member of BNI Warkworth
