It’s not hard to see why Dean Sutton and Mark Hooper have built a successful and rapidly growing business together.
Located in a busy shopping centre in Port Kennedy, the office front is immaculately presented.
As you enter the clinic, it welcomes you in with its classy yet warm and child friendly decor.
Ask Dean Sutton and Mark Hooper of Harbour Family Chiropractic, what the key to their business success is, and they will both tell you that it’s going into business with someone completely different to you.
“I know if I went into business with someone like me, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Mark does things that are complimentary to me,” said Dean.
Whilst studying their degrees together at University, Mark and Dean came up with an idea to go into business together.
“We did a business unit together, and starting planning this business about a year before we graduated,” Dean said.
They searched the internet for business advisory services, and found the link to Business Foundations.
Originally the idea started with four people, but after a couple dropped out, Dean and Mark decided that they could make it work because they were two completely different people, with completely different skill sets.
“We were planning for some time, and for me I never thought I could take this jump. I had always worked for someone, but I liked the idea of running my own business, and knowing I would have the support from the Business Foundations encouraged me to give it a go,” Mark said.
“We did a business course as part of our final year, which was good as it gave us a lot of information, but what the NEIS programme did, was to reinforce all that information and refine it. The programme gave us the tools to put the (business) plan together nice and neatly, make realistic projections, think about things that didn’t come to mind straight away like insurance, compliance issues, and things like that,” Mark said.
“We really appreciated the help that we had through the programme and the mentor that we had was really good. She probably felt like she was ticking boxes, but the advice and support that she gave was really helpful. We never knew how well we were doing, but she let us know that we were heading in the right direction, and that the numbers were fine,” Dean said.
One of the factors Dean and Mark didn’t consider was the amount of time spent on patient administration and record keeping and how time consuming it would be.
“We work full time but treatment time is around about 22 hours each a week. We can potentially have this clinic running from 8am in the morning to 8pm at night if we want, and have associates come in. We also need to hire full time staff, and a full time receptionist,” said Dean.
Dean admits that they can still be a lot busier, and are getting further coaching from a chiropractic group who help other chiropractors. They are refining systems so that they can fit more patients into their schedule.
The business is now experiencing a 20 to 25% growth per month, which is impressive considering the competition.
“We were breaking even in week three, so that’s pretty good. We had very low expenses to start with, and although they have increased a little over time, we’ve managed to increase our income as well,” Dean said.
“We spent a lot of time on marketing, our image and getting it right. If you don’t get your image right, and you don’t look right, people will think your business isn’t right,” Dean said.
“We could cruise right now where we are at, but we didn’t get in to this to cruise. We want to make a fairly big impact. We’ve got big plans. We want to do about 100 treatments a week, and we are looking at helping more of the community, aiming for 150 treatments per week.
“My advice is, if you want to start your own business, go into it with someone who is completely different to you, otherwise you will never get anything done. Also, do your market research. We were the only chiropractic between Rockingham and Mandurah, so we haven’t had to do too much marketing and people just keep walking in,” Dean said.
“We want to enjoy what we do and do it ethically,” said Dean.