045 - Scaling Your Practice: Insights from an Associate-Driven Leader

Of the biggest mistakes that that docs make is we love it ourselves. So we hire people just like us, which is the worst thing you can do because now you have everybody at the same strengths and the same weaknesses. Things don't get done.

Hello and welcome to Build your Remarkable Practice podcast. This podcast is dedicated to chiropractors who are in the seasons of launching and building their practice. Join myself, Dr. Lona, and my co host, Dr. Bobby as we have conversations each week as it relates to building the practice of your dreams. And remember, you can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one. We are here to lead you on the way.

All right, guys, welcome back. Back on the Build you'd Remarkable Practice podcast. And we have a treat today. We have the famous, the tall. The tall, dark and handsome Dr. Eric DeMartino with us. I was joking with him before we got on the call that someone was explaining who's the tall chiropractor at TRP and, you know, said some of his story. I said, oh, you're talking about Dr. Eric. So anyways, we have him joining us today, and he's going to be sharing some gems on, you know, costly mistakes that many chiropractors make in the season of build. And I know he's going to be sharing some of those mistakes he made as well. So welcome, Dr. Eric. We're so glad to have you. And jump right in. Tell us a little bit about who you are and your story.

Yeah. So thank you first for having me. It's always an honor to talk to our remarkable tribe. Yeah. So I've been in practice 22 years. I graduated from Palmer in 2002. Actually met my wife at Palmer. She's a chiropractor as well. And I'm originally from Pennsylvania. She's from Michigan. She won. We end up back in Michigan. And so we moved back to Michigan in 2002, worked as associates for a year each, which is super valuable. I highly recommend docs, even if you know you're an entrepreneur, definitely work for another doc because you learn a lot of great skill sets that you don't learn in chiropractic school. And you learn what you want to do, and you also learn what you don't want to do. And so it's a very valuable learning experience. I recommend everybody do. And so we knew that we wanted to be business owners, so we spent a year working as associates, and then we ended up finding a place to open our practice, did the build out, did the whole thing, and we were Very fortunate that, you know, we had a lot of great mentors, and we did a lot of research. We didn't just open on a whim. We had, you know, I think we had 45 new patients the first couple of weeks that we were open because we had prepped ahead of time. And so we were lucky that we had a jumpstart practice. We got busy pretty quick. We were about a hundred a week by the end of the first month. And it was awesome. It's just me and my wife, and we ended up hiring somebody like, two weeks in because it got kind of busy. And so we did that for about two years and grew really well. And then my wife got pregnant, and she actually was adjusting on a Friday, gave birth at home on a Sunday. And she told me, eric, I'll be back in two weeks. That was 19 years ago, and she still has not come back. So she fell in love with being a mom. And we have three amazing kids right now. And so. Yeah, and so she is. She's taken the mom role and done an amazing job with it. And so. So it was just me then. And, you know, for, gosh, about a decade, I was the typical owner operator that I'm sure our listeners hear about a lot about that. You know, I had what most people call a great practice. I was seeing about 300 patients a week by myself. I had two casual. Did that for, like, a decade, and. And made good money. And I thought that I was a success. Everybody said, oh, you're so successful. And it was a bit of an ego trip, you know, and it felt good, right? But then after about that decade, I started to realize that if I don't show up, like, nothing happens. Like, I am the business. I. I am. And my kids started to grow up, and they started having sporting events, and I missed them. I couldn't go to their dance recitals. And I. Because I was tied to the practice, and I. I knew there had to be a better way. But, you know, it was challenging for me because I never had a mindset that every chiropractor I knew, that's what they did. They owned their own practice. They were their own doc, and they just. That's what they did. And so I just thought that's just the price to pay to be a chiropractor and do this amazing thing that we love called chiropractic. You know, I learned pretty quickly that there was other options for that. What.

I learned something there, Eric, I want to, like, click on, which is. It's like waking up and realizing, you know, kind of like, I have a house of cards if I didn't show up on Monday. Right. And I think most of us associated with TRP have that epiphany somewhere along the lines of, like, wait a second here. What happens if I don't show up here? You know?

Yeah, it's scary. Like, luckily, I. My health, knock on wood, was always great. I didn't ever broke an arm. I never did any of those things that literally would have shut down my practice. And so fortunately, you know, we talk about durability and trp, I definitely had no durability whatsoever. And so it was always interesting to me, too, looking back on it, was that, you know, I would go to. I used to grow up in the world of de, you know, dominate essentials. We went to life force, went to. I was. I'm the big. Love the chiropractic philosophy, the vitalistic philosophy, and always went to those different types of events. And I'd be talking to docs there, and they were all like, man, I just love being with my patients. But I just. I hate the business. I hate dealing with the marketing and the paperwork and the hiring and the firing. And I always thought I was kind of a weirdo, because that's the stuff that I loved. Like, I remember literally being with patients. I love my patients. But I remember adjusting patients and thinking, I can't wait to get back to my business office and work on the next marketing plan or the next project or whatever it was. And I hear I'm talking to docs. They're like the exact opposite. They're like, I'm in my business office. I can't wait to get out and start adjusting people. And I just thought it was kind of a weirdo. And I would never admit it because, you know, that's like, you're a heretic if you say those things. But then, oh, 100, 100 again. I love chiropractic, love my patients. I love the business side more. And I remember it was about 2011, I was introduced to something called strengths finder. And it's a personal assessment. My good friend Dr. Mark Mao, and many of the TRP community know him, he introduced me to this and said, you got to take this assessment. It's awesome. So what it basically is. It. It tells you your strengths and weaknesses. Basically, there's 34 talents that we all have, and it ranks it for you from 1 to 34. Right? We all have strengths. My first is competitive. Oh, number two is achiever. Number three is Analytical. Yeah. So analytical.

I figured that would be out there. Yeah.

Okay. On that guy. Yeah. And so. So we all have strengths and weaknesses. So it ranks them from 1 to 34. And so it tells you what your strengths and weaknesses are. And I think the first realization I had was like, okay, we all have strengths and weaknesses. I don't have to be great at everything. Like, there's this pressure on yourself as an entrepreneur sometimes to think you have to be awesome at everything. And I realized, you know, we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses, and.

That you can't have any weaknesses. Right. You would have to hide those under the rug.

100. 100%. And I remember, well, the second big takeaway I had from them, and this is probably the most revealing or. Or, you know, the most pivotal for me was that they said that, you know, since we all have strengths and weaknesses, you should only be working in your strengths. You should not be working in your weaknesses. And I remember thinking, you know, growing up in grade school or high school, we all got our report cards, right? And. And if you were like me, you had an A in math and an A in science and. And, like, a C in English, right? So would. Would my teacher say, you know what, Eric? You're clearly just better at math and science, so just forget English. Don't worry about that. Right? They would never say that. They're like, you have to get that English grade up. Let's focus on that. Well, strengths finder said the exact opposite. They said, identify your strengths and weaknesses, only work in your strengths, and then delegate your weaknesses to other team members where your weaknesses are their strengths. And that was like a light bulb just went on for. For me at that point, because we always talk about the control freak, owner operator, right? And that's what I was. I was like, I had to do everything. I had to micromanage everything because I was in charge of everything, right? And I just put all the weight on my shoulders. But then everything was dependent on me because I just didn't know how to delegate. But when. When I heard that, it just, like a light switch went off in my head. I'm like, okay, so what I can do is find team members that their strengths are my weaknesses and delegate. Now we're all working on our strengths. We're all happy, more productive, more effective. I was like, okay, I can see this happening. And I literally started a journey over several years of just pivoting and finding ideal team members where their strengths are my weaknesses. And so we complemented each other. One of the biggest mistakes that that docs make is we love it ourselves. So we hire people just like us, which is the worst thing you can do because now you have everybody with the same strengths and the same weaknesses. Things don't get done. So in Rockwell practice, we always say you don't have to be awesome at everything, but you have to build a team that is awesome at everything. And that, that really is what I started that journey in doing. And so over the next, I went from being me, the solo doc, everything on my back, over about a five year period, I pivoted to, I built an associate driven practice. And, and what that strength finders taught me, like I share with you, competitive, analytical achiever. I had all the attributes of an entrepreneur. Right. All the attributes that make a great doctor, like a great caregiver. I was pretty low on and so that's why I was like, okay, I love chiropractic. I care about my patients, but I just don't want to be adjusting them all day. I'd rather be running the business. And so what I did is I started targeting associate docs who are the opposite of me. They're the ones who are like, I just want to adjust people all day long. I don't want to hire, fire and fire people. I don't want to deal with payroll or taxes or, or, you know, projects or marketing. I don't do any of that. I just want to show and be a great doctor. And so what we've done is I build an associate driven practice where over the last eight years, I now have two practices. I have six associate doctors, I'm the CEO of the business, both businesses. And it's freed me up to, to, to be as a coach at trp. I've been a coach with TRP for a little over three years now and I love it. So I spent my time being a CEO of my businesses, you know, helping reach way more people in my community than I ever could have done by myself. And then I get to mentor docs, which is one of my favorite.

And you just made that sound really easy. But I, I know that there's many highs and lows in that process. One of the things I would like to directly ask you is like with StrengthsFinder, how often, like, first of all, how soon do you take that with someone? Is it right away when you think that you've got the right person for a right role and how often are you kind of coming back to those things with your team?

Yeah. So what I really like to do for an Assessment for my team members is, is that what's called the PRO scan or pdp. And many of our TRP people might know we did strength finders as a group several years ago. I that on my newer people because the PDP of the PRO scan really tells me everything I need to know about what their strengths and weaknesses are. But I mean, certainly you could do disc analysis. There's lots of different assessments out there. The PRO scan is kind of my go to at this point. But I specifically know exactly. And you know, in TRP we've built out avatars of what an ideal check in CA looks like. Checkout CA Tech CA Business Builder DC Caregiver dc. And so we know by those pro scans exactly what they're, what their type is. Right. What their attributes are. And so we purposely put people in that, that zone of genius because we know they're going to excel. And it doesn't mean that you can't work outside of your strengths. You absolutely can, but it drains you right? When you're working in your strengths, you get energized. When you're working outside of your strengths, it drains you. And you can do it, but you're exhausted at the end of the day. And that's really how I felt when I was seeing a hundred plus patients a day by myself. I was wiped. I was only in my 20s and I was exhausted at the end of the day because I was doing something that, that, that wasn't in my zone of genius.

Mm. So good. So good. So your first, you know, thing that you shared is like learning how to delegate is partly by honoring who you actually are and then learning how to trust other people's essentially strengths then to like move the initiative further right.

100 and that's one of the three things I wanted to share with our listeners tonight, was three things that there's a lot of things I've learned that we do wrong and build. I did it many wrong myself. But I picked kind of the top three things that I want to discuss with our listeners tonight. And the first one is as owner operators, we don't delegate well. When we're in build, we do not delegate well. I, like I said, I spent a decade in my career doing that. I think a lot of it is, is we just don't trust others to do it as well as we do. We just don't.

And we maybe don't trust ourselves. I think that a lot of times we don't trust ourselves to be able to build that team that we would feel like we could trust too.

Y. Yeah. And honestly, a small team's easy, right? I have in two offices. I have 19 employees now. It's definitely more work to manage 19 people than is to manage two people. Right. But I have the benefit of two awesome businesses that don't depend on me. I could leave for a month and my businesses will still run perfectly fine without me there. Obviously, I could not do that. In fact, the story Dr. Fransen always loves to tell about me. Yeah, my first. My first 15 years in practice, I only closed the office. I'm sorry. I was only out of the office for two full weeks. Once was when my father passed away in 2007. He lived in Pennsylvania, so I had to go close out his estate. And the other time was in 2004 when my wife and I got married for our honeymoon. That was it. In 15 years. I did the typical chiropractic vacation like Thursday to Tuesday, right? So you pile everybody in. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you leave Thursday, come back Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I just did that for 15 years. And now, gosh, I take four, six weeks vacation a year because it's not.

Dependent on me, thank God, right? Yes, absolutely. And your energy is so much better, right?

So much better. Yeah.

That's awesome.

So going back to not delegating well, a lot of it is we just don't trust others. And so we know that, hey, I know I can do it well. And so I'm not going to take the time to try to train somebody else or God forbid, they don't do it as well as I do. And so we just put everything on our shoulder. And that can work to a point, but eventually it just doesn't work anymore. And we think, you know, it's going to take me an hour to train somebody. I can do it in 10 minutes. And that may work in the moment, but after a few times of that, you're now losing time because you didn't take that hour to train somebody. And so we always want to be buying our time back when it comes to a team member. And then what I found is once I did start to delegate, I micromanaged people because again, I didn't train them effectively, I didn't trust them. I was always over their shoulder double checking. And we talk about a players in remarkable practice. It's a players only the best of the best for our team members. A players will not put up with being micromanaged. They will leave you. And so I had a team of a bunch of BNC players. I had that for, for years. And sometimes as an owner operator we love that because it's like, hey, I'm, I'm the center of attention, ego trip. I just have a bunch of assistants that support me but nothing of consequence gets done because it's all on my shoulders. And when I realized that, I started to attract much better team members because there was structure. They knew that I set proper expectations. They understand exactly what success looked like for them. A players demand that, right? And that's great because that's exactly what we want for our team members. But it took me some years to actually figure that out. So it's one of the things that I hope build docs listening can understand. You know, doing using assessments or finding out what your strengths and weaknesses are for your team members. Because we don't just delegate blindly. There's actually a four step process that we talk about in trp. The first step of delegation is you identify and then delegate. So that means you identify the task or the responsibility. You want to delegate and identify the person that it's in their zone of genius. We want to make sure we're delegating something that somebody's going to excel at. But we don't just stop there. Right? Next step is we delegate and then train. Right? Because we don't train, they're not going to do a good job. Then we're going to say, see, I knew they couldn't do it. I'm going to take that thing back. And then we stay being an owner operator. So we have to train and equip our team. It's the biggest return on investment you will ever get in your business is to train and equip your team members. But we still don't stop there. Next step is we train and then trust. It's hard for entrepreneurs to trust, but we have to let them do their thing. We cannot micromanage because again a players will not put up with being micromanaged. They will leave you 100%. But we don't stop there. The last step is we now trust and then verify. So we trust them. We say, hey, I've trained you, I believe you can do your thing, but I'm going to verify in the back end. With different reporting systems, whether it's scorecards or scoreboards or all the TRP tools that we have for our clients, we're going to be able to verify, know exactly how well they're executing on their tasks. So that's the, the kind of the, the, that's how you close the loop of delegation and So I hope our listeners can understand that's how you delegate effectively.

And most of us have some pretty painful stories of where we did not do that loop. Right. Maybe we trusted, but we never checked. Right. We never did that last piece, which is like verifying that they actually carried out what needs to happen. And I know you and I both could probably go through horror stories of what we've heard both in like, oh, I thought my ca was collecting money or I thought, you know, this was getting billed or this was happening. That' the common one, right? Where like nobody actually checked on some of these things. We just trained and entrusted and forgot about it.

Right? Yes to you have to to verify on the back end. That's important. And I'm making this sound easy. I did this a million times wrong before I actually got it right. So it's not easy, but it's worth it. It's worth figuring out because it makes your life and your business so much easier and more successful. Without a doubt.

What's up Remarkables? Hey, let's face it. 95% of our problems are people problems. You can't find a players, can't keep a players. Don't know how to leverage your team, create expectations and agreements, or hold people accountable in order to optimize your team. Doc, what would happen to your practice if you were finally able to get the right people in the right seats, doing the right work, the right way? For most chiropractors, it would change everything. You'd increase your your capacity to see more people. You'd make a bigger impact and a bigger income. You'd be able to delegate and scale your business. Or maybe you need to get your associate relationship dialed in. That would mean you get your time freedom back. You could get a handle on your schedule, maybe even become a CEO. If this is what you want your 2025 to sound like, make sure that you join us for the remarkable team building immersion in Tampa, Florida, January 31st 1st and February 1st. Or in Brisbane, Australia, February 28th and March 1st, 2025. I can't wait to be back in Australia, Doc. Bring your team with you. Get everybody on the same page. They'll be back in your office on Monday with more clarity, more accountability and more purpose than ever. Energize and mobilize your team and see your practice grow. What are your goals for 2025? Is it a seven figure foundation, a seven figure revenue, seven figure profit, or maybe even a seven figure exit? Whatever season you're in, you'll need a seven figure team. Click the link in the show notes below and register today.

And one more thing I want to point out from that, for those that are like, yeah, that sounds great, I'm right at the beginning curve of learning how to do those things is to realize, you know, first it's usually learning the what. When I'm teaching someone, I'm training someone, like how did I learn it? And trying to reverse engineer that for someone else, which allows you to learn it that much better when you're teaching it to someone else. And then as you have more team members, you realize not everyone learns the way that I did. Now I have to become in a more adept trainer and start to figure out, well, for this person I have to like use more language for this person they like doing. So I got to train by more doing. You know, there's so many different things to unpack just within that piece of it, right?

So yeah, that's knowing your people. Yeah, 100%. And then what I also find that's a challenge for, for docs and I went through years of this is that even when we get good at delegating, right, we start to delegate for people. What happens is we don't always allow our team members to problem solve for themselves. Right? We want to be that white knight that rushes in and just solves the problems because that's as entrepreneurs, that's what we're wired to do. We're problem solvers. Like you cannot be an entrepreneur unless you are really good at solving problems. So we want to jump in and solve problems. We get to be Super Eric and the superhero that comes in and does it. The problem with that is you actually will steal your team members authority and resourcefulness by doing this. And I learned this the hard way as well. And it's funny because, yeah, I'm sure we all have. And so it took years for me to really let go and let them actually problem solve. And it was funny because a couple years ago I had a doc who wanted to come shadow me and he wanted to just check out my office and see how we're doing things. And so he came in front on Monday afternoon and we hung out for like four hours and just chatted. He just kind of watched what we do. And I hardly ever see patients anymore, so I think I met just to maybe 10 people in those four hours. And, and so he and I were just talking and, and he's had a great practice, but it was really dependent on him. He had a couple associate docs and, and so we went through the Four hours. He just kind of watched everything. And at the end of the day, I asked him, I said, so, so what are your takeaways? And I thought it'd be something like, you know, how we were busy, we saw over 100 patients in those four hours, but yet, you know, we're pretty good in our practice. It never gets to chaos. Right. We're busy, but never chaotic. I thought maybe you talk about our systems or how we educate our patients. He didn't say any of that. He said, eric, he goes, in the last four hours, not one of your employees has asked you a question or asked you to fix a problem or solve something. He goes, I can't go five minutes in my practice without somebody, one of my team members coming to ask me to fix something. And I never had that awareness, but I was like, oh, I was consciously, over years of training my team members to problem solve for themselves, but also not micromanaging and trusting and let my team members know, you know, we're all humans, we're going to make mistakes. That's okay. So you don't have to run every little thing by me. Right. I trust you to do your job effectively and if you make a mistake, it's okay. Right. We're going to learn from it and, and get better. And so we want to be able.

To clear places where communication about things can happen so that they don't have to worry about when they're going to be able to like, get their answers or, you know, touch base with you on something.

Yep. But they're effectively trained. They know and they, they know that they have my trust, that they can make their own. Own decisions. Yeah. So it's powerful.

So that's.

The first one is really learn how to delegate. Well, that's. You can't, you can't scale without delegating. Well, you just can't. I know some of you are out there going to think, well, I'm better at than my, my ca. So why would I want to delegate to somebody who's not as good as I am? This is the rule we like to go by. And this is from Dr. John Demartini. He said, if somebody can do it 80% as good as you delegate it. If they can do it 80% as good as you delegate it. Because guess what? 80% is, is great. That's good enough because you just bought your time back. You can pay a $20 an hour ca to do something 80% as good as you. And your. Our time is worth 200, $300 an hour, wherever that is, I'm happy to have somebody do it a little bit less than me. But what I really found out that was interesting is a lot of the people I delegate to, they actually did it better than I did it. So not only was, not only was I saving my time and money, but now I have somebody that's executing a better level than I did because it was in their zone of genius.

Right?

Super important 100%.

So.

So the second thing I wanted to bring up that I see is a big issue with build docs is their systems aren't defined and they're not captured in manuals. This is a huge one, right? And so what happens is many times the, the owner, operator, they are the system, right? And they might have some systems in their head and maybe some basic things with their team, but if it's in the owner's head, they can just change on a whim and that. I went through years of this too. I just kind of would wing it and I'd be like, all right, I'm going to treat this new patient this way. This one, I'm going to do it this way. And that. The team members had no idea what I was going to do that day. They didn't know what, what was going to happen. They were just waiting for me to tell them this is what I'm going to treat this patient or this patient. And, and, and you know, I'm going to do a four month plan for this one and a two month plan for this one and this one can pay per view. It's like, you know, it was just a mess because I just kind of made it up as I went. Again, A players will not put up with that. They hate chaos, they hate unpredictability. BNC players are fine with it because they just show up for a paycheck. They're totally fine. Like I'm just going to show up and see whatever Dr. Eric tells me to do today. Right? But we don't want B and C players. It's A players only. And so we have to have systems that are defined in manuals that your entire team knows. They know exactly what to Expect on Day 0. Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Workshop progress exam progress reports R force the entire patient journey has to be in manuals. So not only does the team understand it, but they know what they're expected to do, what their role fulfills, to support that. And, and we have now something to train on. Now we can do our weekly trainings, we do scripting, we do role Playing. So we know that every team member is, is trained to the point of mastery where they can execute at a very, very high level, right? The key to success in business is having systems in place that everybody can execute so that it's not all dependent on one person. And now we know that that entire patient journey has been taken care of. So we always talk about the chasm of different expectations in trp. This one my favorite things to explain to my team members and so they understand the importance of training is that when patients show up on day one, they have very different expectations for what they want than what we want. So I like to view this like big, like the Grand Canyon. Like they're on one side showing up with a five year old problem that they want us to fix in one visit. They want insurance to cover the whole thing. They don't want X rays, they don't want to do anything else, right? Here we are on the other side of the Grand Canyon saying we want you to come to us for life, bring your entire family and pay cash. Right? So very, very different expectations. So we know that we're not going across to them, right? We're not going to meet them where they're at, we're going to bring them to us. But to do that you can't, they can't just make the huge leap over the Grand Canyon. We have to build a bridge. And you build that bridge, plank by plank through the entire patient process. Your day zero phone call, the day one new patient, what the doctor's doing, what the CAs are doing. Day two, what a docs are doing, what CAs are doing. Day three, you know, table talk, workshop progress, exams, progress reports, R4s, R5s, everything throughout that process. And if we are a highly trained team that can execute all those steps at a high level, we make sure all those planks of the bridge get laid down so we can successfully bring those people over to us. But if we don't have systems or we're not trained to mastery, somebody's going to forget something or miss something. And that's like not laying one of those planks down the bridge and the patient falls through. And when the patient falls out of care, they don't just sit home and suffer, they end up in the medical system. And we all know what happens there. Nothing good. So that's why we say in TRP that we train like lives depend on it, because they absolutely do. It's a huge, huge part. But you can't train if you don't have something to train on and so it's important out there docs that you don't have systems right now. Create them, write them, get them in the manual. And TRP has literally figured it out, all out for you. That's what we are pretty much know.

As assistance people manuals for you.

Yeah, yeah, we literally give you the manuals and so you don't even have to to think about it. We literally give it to you and you can then get with your team members, delegate appropriately and train. That's how you build a successful business. Yeah.

So good. So good. You know and I was thinking about when you had said like, you know, you thought that the guy that shadowed at your office would say, oh, I like your systems. And you know, like it didn't feel busy and there was a lot of people in here and you know, I always, and this is a way that I'll, you know, being in the service industry, which I think a lot of us at some point works in a service industry. When you had a really well oiled machine in the service industry, it might be super busy and everybody's touching each other so that plates don't get spilled, drinks don't get whatever and it, and it just rolls. Because everybody knows what they are going over here and this is where they do it and then they go here and, and I say like, it's like, we know it's controlled chaos but because everybody knows their role so well that you can roll and be nimble and know who's at your backside and who's on your front side and who's not going to bump into so and so and drop the whole platter of food. Like that's what I'm going for in my office too. I want to see as many people, I want to help as many people as we can. But doing it through the fact that we're so well trained and so well oiled in our systems that it just feels like butter. Even though there's a ton of people that have come through and everyone's just like, oh, is it even busy here? I didn't even notice, you know.

Yeah, amazing too because when you break through those new levels, right? So for one office it's like 50 patients a day is like crazy busy. And they're like, they can't imagine. Then they do 60 and they're like holy cow, that was really hard. But then they do 60 for a couple days, it's like, it's easy. And then they do 70. Then you, you're doing 120 a day and they're like, wow, this feels easier now than 50 did you know, six months ago? It's just like changes the mindset and it's just something about it and how we handle that and respond to it and work together as a team. It's hugely important. And I think it's great to go visit super successful docs and just see it in action because we can't see it up here. There's no way we're going to manifest in our office.

So true. So good. Thank you for that. So that's a good action step. Also, go shadow an office that's busier than you soon.

Yeah. So the third point I want to talk about tonight that I see a lot of build docs kind of mess up is they, they rush the conversion process, they rush day one and day two. When I started working with docs, you know, as clients, and, and they asked me like, well, how much time do you spend on day one and day two? And I tell them an hour on day one and 45 minutes on day two. They're like, they're like, no way. There's no way I could spend that much time. And I tell them, I try to build the value around it. And for those of you listening to think that's insane to spend that much time or there's no way you can do it. You have to find a way. Because day one is all about building an empathetic connection with your patient. One of the downsides about chiropractic, chiropractic is so amazing that literally I could walk into a new patient room, not even talk to the patient, not have them talk to me. I could just take them, scan them, X ray them, palpate them. Whatever objective assessments I want to do, I can adjust them and they're going to get better. That's how amazing chiropractic is. The problem is, is the patient will never give you that opportunity until they've felt that you've heard their story and you understand them. And so I think principal docs struggle with this the most. Right. Because we don't want to talk about symptoms and, you know, but we realize symptoms are the language that their body speaks and that's the language the patients speak. So, you know, if a patient comes in and doesn't speak, doesn't speak Spanish and you don't speak Spanish, you're gonna have a hard time communicating. Well, our patients speak symptoms, so we need to be talking about that, but we have to educate them that symptoms are body signals that are actually intelligent things. The Body do. But we can't just say, no, we're not going to talk about that. But we also have to actually discover what the patient's wants, needs and desires are. Because you could be the best adjuster in the world, the best chiropractor, but if that patient doesn't feel that you've heard their story, they're never going to stick around to receive care. So it's so vital, by taking extra time on day one and day two and doing the systems properly, you will save so much time from day three to day 3,000 because they understand it, they got it, they've committed to care. And now the visits after that can be very, very easy. So we need to set up structures where we can spend that necessary time so that patient feels heard. They, you know, we take with the whole TRP system from the meet and greet to the pre consultation, like it's all scientifically systematized to achieve that. Where they're like, wow, Dr. Alona really listen to me. I feel like she really understands me. Guys, you can literally convert people on day one when you do this, right? You literally can. It's that vital. We can't just think day one is just something that will give me some symptoms, take some X rays and then we'll deal with everything on day two. You're missing a huge boat with that. And then with day two, we always talk about, the focus is about getting them to take ownership of their problem. Right. It's crucial that we do the day two effectively, that that patient now owns their problem. They see it, they get it and they realize, okay, this is my problem and they own it. Because if the patient doesn't own their problem, then we do. Where the doctors are one carrying around their problem, Those are the patients that are just showing up and say, okay, doctor alone to fix me. Right? They think that we wear their problem and, and it. I see docs burnout. They tell me, doc, I'm so burnout. And I'm like, okay, what's, what's your patient volume like? We see like 80 patients a week. Like you see 80 patients a week and you're burned out. They're not physically burnout, they're mentally burnout because they're carrying around all their patients problems with them. They have this huge just, you know, this weight on their shoulders. And so it's important that we actually get them to own their problem. We obviously have systems in TRP to help you do that. But the key is, is that we want to give them such a good Report of findings that when we get to the point where we're going to give them our recommendations for care, our recommendations come across as solving and not selling. Everybody loves to have their problem solved. Nobody likes to be sold. And so I know loan I'm sure you've been there. I've been there. I've been in that report of findings where I'm giving my recommendations to a patient and I'm thinking, you know what? I think I want this more than they do. I feel like I'm gonna have to sell this person healthcare. And trust me, if you feel that way, the patient feels the exact same way. That's an icky feeling. But when you really get empathetic connection, take the time to do that on day one and you do the proper steps to get them to really take ownership of their problem on day two, your recommendations for care will come across as solving and not selling. It's a very, very different feeling. They're going in their recommendations thinking, okay, Dr. Alone is going to tell me exactly what I need to do to solve this problem versus what is Dr. London going to try to sell me here? It's a very, very different feeling. And so we always want to shoot for solving and not selling. You do that by doing an effective day one and doing a really, really effective day two.

That's so good. And those are very different hats of like your preparation for those two days too. I think some people maybe find that they excel at one and not the other. Like I'm really good at making that empathetic connection but I do not do a good job of passing the buck to the patient which is where then like people fall off, retention's not good, etc. Right. Or they're really great at explaining what needs to be done but no one felt connected, therefore they can't move the patient. Right. So you can kind of think about like, yeah, where do I need to do some work here?

Yeah. And this is where docs if you can, because it if just take the time. It does take time, especially to do a day one if you can first of all schedule effectively so you have your adjusting times and your new patient time so you're not restricted on how many new patients you can get. But one of my favorite hires ever was a new patient concierge. Having that person doing 90% of the day one, the consulting, you know, the whole pre consultation meet and greet, all the things that we go through and then the doctor can pop in for five to seven minutes and do their examination portion. It frees up so much time because that and what I found, like I talked about earlier, delegation, was that when I got a new patient concierge, she was so much better at empathetic connection than I was. Our day ones were so much better than when I did it. And now I can be adjusting patients. I don't have to spend an hour with a new patient. I'm paying somebody 20 bucks an hour to do all that work. I can be generating way more revenue and helping way more people in the adjusted torium. And now we're both working in our zones of genius. And so docs, I would implore you, when you can afford to have that new patient concierge, it's a game changer because it really frees up your time. And if you're like me, they're going to do a way better job at them than I did.

And you and I were having this conversation last week too of like, as you're, you know, maybe moving into that season of scale as you're looking for, who am I hiring too, like you eventually. Just like we know that there's a different DNA to a checkout CA than a check in ca. Like, you may have some docs who are wired more innately to do great in that day one, day two, you know, process versus others who are like, I just love adjusting. I love seeing volume. I'm great with retention, but, you know, I don't maybe like doing day ones and day twos and like on a more robust team. There is a position for all of those people.

It's all about identify. We say that God only makes geniuses, but you have to identify their genius and put them in their zone of genius. And then I've made mistakes in the past where I hired somebody, I thought they were definitely an A player. In fact, I remember it's probably about five years ago I hired somebody just interviewed, just amazing. She was just incredible. And I hired for a new patient concierge position a couple months in was just not good. And I'm like, man, I just totally just did not anticipate this at all. And then I really did some digging and realized that that was not her strength. She was more of a checkout ca. She was a little more of an introvert and very detail oriented and very much the boss of tomorrow compliance day person. So I moved her to checkout ca. She was one of our best employees. She was with me for four years. She just left last year because her husband got his job, transferred in to go across the state. But she was I mean, we cried when she left. She was amazing. And I was getting ready to fire her after a couple months. And it wasn't her fault. It was my fault for putting her in the wrong role on the team. Right. She was an A player the whole time, but I didn't do my homework and I didn't put her in that right position. And once I did, she just flourished. And so docs out there, if you're the owner of the business, it's your job to put people in the right roles.

That was good. That was really good. I think that's an area that many of us are very short, short sighted with, you know, we like to possibly blame, oh, it's this person's not doing their job or they're, you know, poor at this, or I might have to let this person go versus realizing like, wait a, am I being the leader that actually sees the lay of the land here and has provided what needs to happen for this person to actually be in their zone of genius and maybe they're going to be a great employee if I could just get a little higher vision of like what this role needs or do I need to pivot them into a different role that exists on the team, if that's possible. Yep. Yeah.

So good.

Well, Eric, you've shared a lot of wisdom with us. Any, like, parting last thoughts as far as anything for the build, Docs just don't give up.

I mean, we've, you know, I know Lona, you and I, we've both been through this. We've been doing this for a while and, and I just, I don't want the docs in the. They're listening, thinking that, you know, we're just perfect and we're just lucky. It's like we were, we were you guys 15, 20. I was you guys 20 years ago. I had no clue. I just learned through scar tissue and through way too more painful tuition than I should have paid. And then luckily I found TRP about eight, nine years ago and it made my life so much better and easier. So I would say first off, you need to have a coach. Right. I'll share a quick story that really impacted me. It's probably about 15 years ago that, you know, I was, I was had again, a bit of an ego. I, I knew that my practice was good, but it was not where it needed to be. But I would, I refused to hire a coach because I said, you know what? I can, I'm a smart guy. I can figure this out. I'm not, I'm not asking for help. Right. It was almost like a sign of weakness if I did that. And I saw an interview with a baseball player named Alex Rodriguez. You know, people know him as a rod. That's probably 15 years ago. @ the time, he was like, the best baseball player in the world. Mvp, Just, you know, biggest contract. And I saw an interview with him and. And they were. I think it was after he was awarded the MVP that year. And they asked him, like, you know, how did he attain this? How did he get to this point? He said, well, I have to thank my strength coach, my hitting coach, my life coach, my blah, blah, blah. He was thinking, all these coaches, and I'm thinking, here's the guy, literally the richest baseball player, the best. One of the best athletes on the planet, and he has like 12 coaches. Why don't I have a coach? Right? And so we have to realize that we don't know everything. There's just no. Chiropractic school does not teach you how to run a business. And so what you have to do is find mentors in your life that can help guide you to whatever you want to be, whatever success looks like to you. You have to find people that have either done it or know how to do it, and they can guide you along that process. I would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in mistakes had I gone to a coach.

Earlier. So that's one louder in the back. Yeah.

Yeah.

100. Yeah. So good. And so right. And anything that we're not working on, we're basically tolerating, and therefore we're going to get what we get. Right. Well, thank you for your time tonight. We loved having you on. And I think we could probably double click on what you had opened up with, like, your startup story, which sounds pretty remarkable as well. So maybe we'll have to have you back and have a launch conversation about that.

Too. Love.

To. Okay, sounds great. And anyone that wants to connect with them, obviously reach out to us through the channels and remarkable practice. And we'll get you set up with Dr. Eric, too, if you're interested in coaching with him or just touching base. I know he is definitely a resource for.

Everyone. Thank.

You. Hey, Doc, I have a question for you. Do you feel like you own a job or a business? If you're like most chiropractors, you feel like you own a job. In fact, if you're being honest, you probably feel like your job owns you. Hey, I'm Dr. Steven Fransen from the Remarkable CEO Podcast for Chiropractors. Are you ready to make a bigger impact and a bigger income but you want to do it no way that it doesn't just demand more of your time and your energy to do so. Would you like to get back your time freedom? Create greater leverage in your practice? What would it be like to have a world class team that wants to grow your practice? Or finally dial in the seven figure Associate doctor Are you ready for your business to become more productive and more profitable? If this sounds like you, then be sure to check out the remarkable CEO podcast for chiropractors. Join me, Dr. Steven Fransen and my co host Dr. Pete Camiolo as we share the insights, strategies and stories that we've gleaned along our own journeys of going from owner, operator to CEO. This practical and tactical podcast will inspire and equip you to make your own ascension as we keep it real, teaching from the scar tissue of our own experience of turning pirate ships into battleships with our own practices. And now for thousands of chiropractors around the world. Follow the link here in the show notes and check out the Remarkable CEO Podcast for.

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