iconpractice started by scratching my own itch. As a chiropractor running my own practice, I wanted a practice management system that better reflected how a chiropractic practice actually operates, so I built one for my own use.

That origin still shapes what makes iconpractice different: it’s built by a chiropractor for chiropractors. It comes from firsthand industry experience and an understanding of the day-to-day realities of practice, rather than approaching practice management purely as a software problem.

Most of our new business today comes from word of mouth and referrals, supported by SEO and content marketing. In a specialised market like chiropractic, trust and recommendations from within the profession are particularly valuable.

The next step for us is developing more scalable, predictable acquisition channels. We’d like to explore paid channels such as PPC alongside the organic and referral-based growth that already brings people to iconpractice.

Our first customers came through personal connections within the chiropractic profession. As a chiropractor myself, I already knew a lot of other chiros, so those relationships gave us a natural way to find early users.

What wouldn’t scale today was the amount of time I spent talking directly with those customers, listening to how they worked and getting detailed feedback. It was very hands-on, but at that early stage it was incredibly useful because those conversations helped us understand what chiropractors actually needed from their practice management software.

We haven’t really had a channel that we kept pouring resources into despite it clearly not working. The bigger challenge has been PPC. For a niche product like ours, the cost of acquiring a customer through paid search can make the economics difficult.

That’s reinforced the value of the channels that already work well for us: word of mouth, referrals, SEO and content marketing. We’re still interested in making paid acquisition work as a more scalable channel, but it has to make commercial sense rather than pursuing growth at any cost.

I’d largely do the same things again. First, I’d talk directly to chiropractors and spend time understanding the problems they actually want solved. Second, I’d use those conversations to build relationships and generate the first word-of-mouth referrals. Third, I’d start creating useful, relevant content early so SEO can compound over time.

With no audience and no budget, I’d prioritise getting close to customers over trying to manufacture reach. The early conversations don’t scale, but the insight, trust and referrals that come from them can.