Why Netflix & Amazon are burning you out

I reckon between them, Netflix and Amazon have probably messed up the majority of chiropractors to some degree. And I've got to record a video to explain what I mean by that, because something I'm seeing more and more, and I've talked about this in other newsletters as well, is bigger and bigger problems coming, both with new graduates and with clinic owners and experienced DCs as well. New grads are trying to master 10 skills at once. New grads are trying to wear 10 hats. Sorry, clinic owners are trying to wear 10 hats at once in practice. And it's putting both them on the fast track to burnout. And that's impacting their results themselves. It's impacting their own confidence, but it's also impacting the pain patient care that they can deliver as well. So this video is coming off the back of a podcast I listened to recently with Dr. Mark King, who's the president of the Motion Palpation Institute. If you've been living under a rock and you haven't heard of these guys, they're some of the best teachers for adjusting skills out there, particularly in the US Side of things. Anyway, and Mark has been the president for a long time. He runs a fantastic practice, big multidisciplinary practice over in the US but he's worked with lots of different amazing instructors and real experts in palpation adjusting. And he was sharing something he'd noticed that they all have in common. What's allowed them to become unique experts where there's only one, one person in the world who does what they do. And he said basically what they do is they become, they put in the effort, years and years of effort to really master one thing which for mpi, is adjusting and palpation. They become amazing with their hands at picking up what they need to and at delivering, you know, world class adjustments. Then each of them went and became a master after 10, 15 years of doing this in something else. You know, one of them is an expert in nutrition and now combines amazing adjusting with amazing nutrition. Somebody else became an expert in DNS, you know, Brett Winchester, who now delivers like some of the best rehab you'll ever get as a chiropractor and is amazing with his hands. So what they did is they mastered one skill, which took a long, long time, and then they mastered another skill. And the combination of those two means there's probably no other practitioner in the world, certainly, you know, very, very few who are so amazing at those two things combined there. And this is what he was talking about, is that he sees and I see the same thing. Many, many new grad master 10 things at once and thinking they need to be great at adjusting, but also great at, you know, diagnosis and great at rehab and great at soft tissue and great at taping. And those all things can be really, really useful, but you can't become a master in all of them. I've talked in recent emails about why I think the clinical toolbox and another tool for your toolbox is a bit of a scam just to sell techniques really. But also, even if you want to learn and be able to use multiple things, that's fine, but you can't master all of them. And this is why I think Netflix and Amazon and these kind of things and these social changes that we're seeing in the culture are really messing us up because we have no patience anymore. You know, we all expect to become great immediately and you know, just go out there and do that one thing and learn that and then you'll get everything you want. We, our goals and our expectations for what good enough is arising and rising, but our patience is actually dropping. And that's a recipe for disaster, you know, And I feel it myself. I can remember more than once being on Amazon or something like that and going, oh, it doesn't have next day delivery. Going to have to wait three to five days for this. I then go and buy a more expensive version of the same thing just so I can get it sooner. So this, this affects me too. It's ridiculous, but this is the world we live in. But if we're not careful, we let that affect our career and our progress. Now I've also had some chats recently. New graduates who, you know, are talking about they've only been out in practice, say three, four years, and they're talking about maybe setting up in a few years or this kind of thing. And I'm not saying you should never ever do that and it'll always end in disaster, but I will say it puts a lot more stress on you because really what you should be doing for the first 10 to years in your career is getting really, really good as a chiropractor. Learning those one or two things that you're going to master, become really good at those. And then when you do that, then you can, you can open a practice. Because opening a practice is a whole new set of problems and things you have to learn. And starting from scratch and doing that before you've had at least a decade getting really good at the craft. It's like opening a restaurant and then going, well, I'll kind of learn, you know, the finer bits of how to cook once I run the restaurant. No, you won't. You'll be stressed out running a restaurant the entire time. But for some reason, as practitioners, we often think that's what we need to do. So for newer graduates, I would say take the time, really, really hone down and pick one thing that you're going to master. Yes, you might see some patients in the next year or two who couldn't benefit from that particular instrument assisting soft tissue tool that you would have learned earlier. But your patients in 10, 20, 30 years time will be getting a far superior level of chiropractic and a far superior level of care from you because you put in the work to dedicate to that one thing, really become a master from it. And that's where your confidence comes from, by the way. Not from more tools, not from certifications and letters after your name comes, from knowing that you're really, really good at one or two things, not becoming just a bit of a jack of all trades, all of them. However, I will also say for clinic owners, if you are mentoring a newer chiropractor, this applies yourself as well. So you'll already know that starting your career, you were putting practice into learning from a good chiropractor. And then you set up a clinic. You went, why am I giving away half my income when I'm doing all the work? And then you set up your own practice and go, oh, there's a thing called overheads, actually, they take up most of, the, most of the money and the amount of extra work I'm doing and the amount of income isn't quite what I thought. But hopefully, if you're watching this, that's worked out okay. You set up a practice and many of you will have then taken on a newer graduate. I've talked about this. In the chiropractic lifestyle you have becoming a good clinician, then becoming a good entrepreneur, then becoming a good mentor. But for many of you, you are running a business. I spoke to a chap I graduated with about this just last week actually. And you know, he's got some great new grads and he's sent them to the seminar that I'm going to be running in a couple of months. He bought all three of them tickets for it and he was saying, yeah, he's like, I enjoy the mentoring and I know they really benefit and I can really help them. But you know, when you're seeing your own patients and you're running a business, it's hard to really find the time to give them what they need potentially. And it's, you know, it's always a struggle where anything he's like anything that would help me to help them, that's not me. Having to do all the work is really, really helpful. This guy gets it. And interestingly a few other clinic owners I know do. So this seminar that we're running in a couple of months, myself and my friend Jason Gould, we've picked the two things that matter most to new grad. So it's a new grad specific seminar. It's the clinical confidence. It's a one day workshop and we're going to take you through really getting your communication down so you can really explain to patients what you do, why you do it, things they could do, get them on board with the plan. And then Jason is going to be teaching hands on skills a really, really super easy but really powerful protocol for the upper neck, for the neck and the upper quarter because those are the areas that we see most new grads struggle with. And really if you're going to pick a couple of things to focus on your first five years, it should be communication adjusting. If you can't communicate, doesn't matter what you can do, your patients don't get the benefit because they don't come back. And very few patients want to see a chiropractor who isn't a great adjuster. Yes, you might look at the RCTs and the research and go, the literature says that exercise is just as good on average as adjusting. Maybe, but your patients are self selecting. Your patients are coming to see you having decided that they want adjusting. Which means everything we know about contextual effects and the non specific effects of care, they will get better results from adjusting because they already are on board with that. No, no one really walks in to see a chiropractor and says I don't want adjusting, I just want exercise. So no matter what you think, even if you are go really, really evidence based, it's still really important that you can do that. And that will help you develop confidence with your hands, which is really key to then you feeling confident as well. So obviously we've geared that up for new graduates. What I will say it's been really interesting is most of tickets have now sold, there's less than 10 for this thing now. But what's been really interesting is the vast majority of them have actually been bought by clinic owners for their team. So these are clinic owners, they get this they know that they're already wearing a bunch of hats. They're already having to treat some patients and run a business and manage the staff and manage the iPads, manage the protocols and all that kind of stuff. And then they're trying to mentor a new graduate and they know that they might be really good at teaching one or two things. Like I'm really good at teaching communication. I'm not great at teaching adjusting skills. I like to think I'm a good adjuster. I like to think I'm getting better at teaching. It's. But I outsource that to people I know, like Aiden Robertson. He comes in, he's coming again to teach my team in December. He's already taught them, I think two, three times now. So if you want some help with the communication side of things, don't feel like you have to do everything yourself because trying to do it all yourself means your new grad will get a little pattering of everything. But it won't be enough to really help them level up and really build that confidence. So if you're a clinic owner, you want some help with that, send them along. I'll put the details below. It's on the 4th of October, on Saturday. It's a one day one, you know, you don't have to stay overnight, things like that. If you're a newer graduate and you're looking for some help in practice, we designed this specifically for you. It's not like most technique seminars out there where there's 50 people in a room and you get no real attention. And it's not like most people teach a communication where they're teaching you a script and give every patient this script and you'll close those leads and the sales based stuff. This is ethical patient centered care. It is a small group workshop to really give you that one to one attention, help you become confident in the room and really confident with your hands. If you got any questions on that, let me know. But whatever you choose to do, please don't be a jack of all trades. Pick one or two things, become really good at that, you can build a fantastic career off that and your patients will get a better level of care than if you try to just dabble in everything. So I'll put the details for the event below. If you've got any questions on that, let me know. Otherwise, I'll see you soon.