Well, 2021 went by quick, and I hope you had a great year.
I’ll be doing a podcast on my lessons learned from 2021 but for now, I want to go over what I see happening in 2022.
Obviously, I don’t have a crystal ball but I do feel pretty confident about a few things that will happen next year.
I hope you can use these to your advantage and they help you find success in 2022.
1. Inflation isn’t going anywhere.
Most people have heard of inflation but very few people have actually paid attention to it until recently. The average inflation in the US in my lifetime has been about 2%.
That basically means the cost of things typically goes up by 2% per year and the buying power of a dollar goes down by 2% per year.
They called this the Cost of Living Adjustment ( COLA ) when I was in the Army. Every year I would get a 2.2% raise because things just get more expensive.
I definitely don’t have time to go into the history of our monetary system and why inflation actually exists but it is very important for you to realize that it’s happening.
The current estimate is that inflation in 2021 has been closer to 6-7%.
That’s a really big jump and I’m sure many of you see it in goods/services you use on a regular basis.
We have mainly seen this large jump due to additional money that has been added as a response to COVID. This happened both under the Trump and Biden administration. Affinity to adding to our nation debt is one of the few areas both the Democrats and the Republicans seem to agree on.
I can tell you as well, owing a cash practice throughout 2020 and 2021, the PPP loan/grant was incredibly helpful. That’s obviously not the only money that was added. In fact, we have seen our national debt go from a whopping 20 Trillion at the end of 2017 to almost 30 Trillion at the end of this year.
When we add more dollars to circulation, we see each dollar decrease in buying power.
I’m telling you this at the risk of you either you falling asleep or getting bored and not reading the rest of this because I think it’s very important for you to know this.
There are a few ways to not let inflation continue to erode your savings and financial stability.
The first is to have hard assets. I know not everyone can afford to do this but if you can, it’s a great strategy.
The primary vehicle for most people is real estate.
In fact, many of you that own homes have noticed massive increases in your home value over the past 2 years.
A lot of this can also be attributed to inflation. A dollar has less buying power now than 2 years ago so it will take more dollars to buy that house you own.
If you don’t own a house, I think it’s definitely good long term decision to buy one. That’s assuming you plan on staying where you live for a while.
The other thing you can look to do is refinance your debt as lower rates.
Rates are still incredibly low and locking up cheap, fixed debt over a long period of time can help you win against inflation.
The last thing you can do is start your own business. This allows you to set your own prices and make corresponding adjustments to keep up with or outpace inflation.
Speaking of starting your own business….
2. More clinicians will start their own cash or hybrid practice in 2022 than any year before.
I know this is a bit of a bold statement but I honestly believe this will happen.
Here’s why I think this will happen.
-Insurance continues to decrease reimbursement even as everything around us becomes more expensive.
-People are becoming more informed consumers out of necessity. Currently there are an estimated 31 Million HSA accounts. This has increased by 5x since 2011. This is a great sign for cash practices.
-Clinicians routinely are able to replace full time income with 2-3 days of work by having their own cash practice. In particular, this is very appealing to new moms that are clinicians.
-The scalability of cash practices has been proven. Growing multi-clinician practices in a cash model is happening all over the country. People thought this was impossible but it’s not.
-Student debt continues to be a massive burden and is forcing clinicians to figure out how to make more money or potentially change careers to do so.
Take all that into account and you can see why so many people have made the transition to the cash model or are about to in 2022.
I also think there will be many more consumers looking for the services we provide, which brings me to my last prediction.
3. The number of people looking to invest in their health will increase.
The data is pretty clear when it comes to COVID. If you have been hard on your body, COVID will be harder for you to handle. There are obviously outlier and it’s much more complex than this but this is a pretty fair statement.
There’s no doubt this is a nasty virus but if you’re sedentary, obese and have metabolic diseases, I think these past 2 years were a wake up call.
More and more people have realized just how important taking care of their mind and body is. We obviously know this as medical professionals but the vast majority of the population puts no emphasis on proactive care.
This has changed in a significant way since March of 2020.
More and more people are eating better, moving more and prioritizing sleep.
People have switched careers so they can decrease there stress and take better care of themselves.
Insane amounts of investment money is moving into the health/wellness space.More and more people are looking for people like you and me.
People that can educate them, have a relationship with them and help quarterback their health and wellness.
This really has been a great awakening for people to take better care of their health and I think demand for our services will increase significantly in 2022.
The real question is, are you going to be ready for this increase in demand?
If you’d like to get some help either getting started or scaling a cash or hybrid practice, we should chat.
I recommend jumping on a totally free, quick 20 minute call with our team.
You’ll talk to a real person and they will give you customized guidance on your next skills or steps to take to gain momentum in your business.
We don’t sell anything on this call and you literally couldn’t buy something from us if you wanted to in this call.
We just know we can help and we want to prove it to you for free.
Schedule a time that works for you
It’s time to start making some serious progress in your business/life.
P.S. If you have a practice, check out our friends at PtEverywhere. We switched to their software to run our cash practice and it’s been a game changer!