Consistency Builds Trust

Consistency in building your authority—and running your business—builds trust.

Your audience and clients will forgive you those unintentional goofs or visits down the rabbit hole as long as they believe you have their best interests at heart.

Emphasis on that last part.

A local chiropractor is an expert building national authority. She studies extensively, teaches in a specialized niche and runs what historically has been a thriving business.

A family situation has required her—for the last year or so—to be out of town for extended periods. While she’d like to sell the practice, the right buyer hasn’t materialized. So she decided to contract with another chiropractor to take her caseload when she’s gone.

As you might imagine, it’s a tricky transition—it’s her name on the door and the relationship between doctor and patient is an intimate one that doesn’t always transfer when the people change.

Chiro #1 was deeply experienced but had a 100% opposite treatment style. He worked for awhile and then become too polarizing in her practice and she asked him to leave.

Chiro #2 was much more similar to her style and seems to be well liked. But then she notified patients that #2 was biting the dust also. Not because patients didn’t like him or that her underlying situation had changed. But because she couldn’t justify the cost of bringing in substitutes.

Her decision was to come and go as her needs changed, leaving months with no coverage for her patients, while hoping that Chiro #2 could eventually buy the practice.

Of course you know that hope is NOT a strategy and the practice will be worth considerably less if she’s not serving clients reliably and consistently.

The thing is, she still had boatloads of bankable trust and goodwill in the first transition. And plenty left with the second. But the third move—that is not client-centered—is not going over well.

Moral of the story: once we trust you (and your work), we give you lots of rope—but only as long as we know you care about us.