063 - The 3 Growth Killers You Must Fix to Scale

When you're a CEO looking at these things, your statistics dictate your action steps. In the beginning, my statistics would dictate my emotions, okay? But what I realized is my statistics shouldn't dictate my emotions. My statistics should dictate my action steps.

Hello and welcome to Build you'd remarkable Practice podcast. This podcast is dedicated to chiropractors who are in the season 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.

What's up, team? Welcome back to the Build your remarkable practice podcast with the fantastic Dr. Lona Cook and myself, Dr. Bobby Lojasiewic. Dr. Lona, what's happening? How you doing? How's practice? How's life been? Easter break, really, truly is just fresh upon us. Did you get some time to just recharge the battery?

We did. We went camping for the first time in the season, so that was super fun. Yeah. How about you?

Well, that's pretty exciting. Tell us about your camping. Do you go on, like, a tent when you camp or you stay in cabins or how do you do it?

No, we just bought a class C RV last year and I'm becoming an RV mom. And so we. We went up north like three hours. It was so cold, but beautiful, but luckily the camper has heat, so it was a great waterfalls and hikes and it was just. It was awesome.

So is that like an actual rv like in the movies? Like, holiday where family trip goes away and you guys are driving at the front, the kids are at the back. Really?

That's how we're coming to Orlando too. We're coming in the rv. Like, we're going to do, like, you know, United States, go all over in the RV over the next, like, three to five years while my kids still want to do things like this.

How cool is that? So you guys bought an rv? You've got your own one?

Yeah. You got it? Yep.

Nice. I love it.

So, fun story. Do you know why I even started looking at them is I saw a chiropractor that had built out and refurbished an RV as a mobile practice. And I was like, it looks awesome. I want that. And then as I was looking at him, I'm like, if we're gonna buy one, we should just buy and actually camp in it for a while. And then eventually I Could flip it into a mobile practice, too.

Too funny. Of course, someone's converting one of those into a chiropractic clinic. That has to have happened somewhere. Great idea. Well, you never know when moments of inspiration or ideas are going to strike you. Right, right.

Yeah. How was your Easter?

It was fantastic. It wasn't RV related, so we had a nice summery Easter still here down. Down under. So I got to the beach a little bit, spent some family time together, which is always nice. We went away on a trip last week as well. Five days, so it's good to have couple weeks break. I was just on Mastermind calls this morning talking about that and just talking about the importance. I know we've chatted about it on previous episodes about taking time off and literally, you know, the more levels that you grow, the more time off you require because you're accessing using areas of your mind, of your subconscious, of your brain that you know to tap into those areas. They work best when you're fresh. So, yeah, I love this time of the year because there's, you know, a lot of public holidays around. We combine that with a bit of a trip as well. And, you know, we usually have to do that in the middle of the year as well. Somewhere around June, July, August, and then somewhere around Q3 as well. So we had a great time. It's very good.

That's awesome.

Yes. No RVs. No RVs were harmed in the filming of my holiday. That. So maybe something for the future. All right. But seeing as you talked about practice in an rv, here's what we're talking about today. So today's topic is one, that when you and I, we're masterminding on this, you know, previously, we're like, okay, what would you say are some of the top killers to practice growth? In fact, I know that we could probably come up with seven. When we chatted, we're like, all right, there's kind of seven. There's seven that we see across all the offices that we work with as common traits that are killers for practice growth. But then we were like, well, let's challenge ourselves and let's say if we're going to distill it down to our top three, like, if you could only have time for three, what would you say right now are some of the three top killers to practice growth? Whether an office is in build, so it's just kind of building up and we're trying to fill ourselves up, or whether an office is in scale, which means we've got multiple associates and we're trying to build up multiple chiropractors. I find that these three are areas that you've got to double down on and you've got to understand more thoroughly in order to make smarter decisions, in order to be able to scale your office. Right. So let's unpack those without further ado, because I know you guys are hanging on. You're like, all right, what are the three things, pen and paper eagerly in hand that are stopping my practice from growing? Or that if I lean into more, it can actually leverage my practice to grow at a faster rate and at a more efficient rate? So without further ado, Dr. Leonard, why don't you take us through number one? And this is in a particular order. We didn't say number one is the most important. Number two is the second most important. There's no order here. But what's the first on your list as a practice killer? Stopping people from growing.

Yep. Okay, so number one is no weekly consistent role playing or team training. Right. So that may be if you're a team of one, you're not consistently training yourself. You're not consistently working on what you're going to say and your scripts and your, you know, flow and your communication acumen. But if you're a team of more than one, you're not training your team consistently going through the rhythms. And if you're certainly starting to scale and have multiple doctors, like, are you pouring in? Do you have the right amount of training for the docs, for the CAs, for the entire team together, where you're actually role playing, where you get uncomfortable and you give feedback to each other, and you're methodically going through a weekly schedule and a rhythm of training. So that would be number one.

Yeah. And let's talk about a little bit more detail as well, because I look at people, because this is a people conversation. Now we've got people on our team. There's a term that's used for people, and that term is hr. Now, HR stands for human resource. Okay? So just like any resource, like, if you look at another resource, a naturally occurring resource is gold, Right. Or oil. And so we understand the value of oil because it's a natural occurring resource. Well, guess what? Humans are a resource. Okay? So if you, down the line, you know, want to build a practice that has some kind of, like, impact or that's aligned with your vision, your goals, probably it's going to require for you to expand outside of just yourself. Okay. A natural rhythm of a practice is to be growing. And as a Practice grows. Sooner or later you're going to have to expand outside of yourself. Or if you're listening to this and you've already got 10, 20, 30 people on your team, you'll know that in order to keep growing, you're going to have to expand the people, expand the team. So when we start talking about people, I always look at that and go, well, what does every single human being have that we talk to our practice members about every single day that we're looking after? What is the one system that controls everything in the body?

Dr. Lila the nervous system.

Bingo, there it is, the nervous system. It's no surprise to everyone, this goal. So the nervous system is headed up in the brain. And one of the things that we talk about is how the nervous system can adapt and learn. Which means there are things that probably at the start of today that you didn't know that by the end of today you're going to know. And you're going to know that because your nervous system learned that, right? So it's really, really interesting how we talk about this every single day. Yet there's plenty of people that don't either take training seriously or they don't do it. And they're missing the biggest opportunity, which is being able to influence someone's nervous system. And then that person carry out a task better and better and better than what they're currently doing. And quite frankly, a lot of times carrying it out better than what you do as well. Right. So then the asset that the universe or that God has given to us to help humans become better is the asset of training. That's how I see it. We have the asset and the tool of training. And training has been given to us so that we can produce better resources from humans. That is actually use those nervous systems to expand, to evolve and to grow. Because I don't learn, maybe I'm missing the market, but I don't know any other tool that allows someone to expand better other than learning and training. Do you know of one? No.

Because training is repetition and repetition is mastery, right?

Yeah, exactly. And it's focused repetition. It's like, all right guys, there's key things in the chiropractic experience that we need to become masterful at. So let's train in those things. And I always love to use analogies because analogies help me understand things more thoroughly around other world class things that occur. And I look at how that happens. So, you know, many people might know that I'm like a football, or you guys call it soccer Tragic. And my team is the greatest club in the world. They're about to win the Premier League now, right, which is Liverpool Football Club. Now if you look at these guys, every single day between games, they're training and training and training. They're training on the fundamentals to begin with. So fitness drills, ball skills, passing, dribbling, shooting. And then of course they run more advanced tactical training as well. And they are the best in the world because of their dedication to training. And it's not as if, oh well, you know, once upon a time they train now, they don't train anymore. In fact, what got them to this level in the first place to have the privilege of playing for that club like that in any sport is the fact that they probably trained their backside off. Okay? So training is the tool that's been gifted to us to help get the most out of the humans that have been entrusted to us. And I'll tell you when you really start to feel how well you've dedicated yourself to training. Here's when. When you remove yourself from your practice and you go on a vacation for a month and you're in a remote area or a village of somewhere where you cannot get in contact with anyone, the only thing that you have then to rely on is how well did you train up until that point.

Right, right. You know, and you can ask yourself too, like, maybe you're doing the training, maybe you have. It's just like, do I have it to the. Like, would I give myself and my team an A plus here? Or are we training at like a C plus or a B plus level? Like can we keep evolving our training so that nobody gets bored, it stays like exciting and relevant and everyone's growing because you may be doing it and it may be fairly effective, but could it even be better? Right. Like that's again, training to become the best means that training keeps getting better too.

Spot on the mark. Exactly right. And you know, if you're by yourself, now's the time to just train on your own because it's going to shape your leadership skills. So when you start to have a team around you, you're going to be better at training. Okay. And if you're right now listening to this and you're a scale doc and you have multiple associates, you can't be on the front line doing all the work. You can't do all the day ones, all the day twos, all the adjustments, all the re reports. So you want to look at yarn to see. I don't want to give away Point number two, I was like, I'll almost give away point number two. All right, but you want to look to see. Okay, well how do I through my training direct my energies to make sure that I get the most out of my people? Okay, so training something that you want to continue to evolve, get better at, have structure, follow a curriculum, because it's the resource that we've been given to help humans reach their potential. And if you're not maximizing it and always asking, how do I make it better? You are missing the opportunity.

One last thing I'll say about training is if you find like for some reason you don't have enough time, first of all, training can be tight. You just got to get it in. Second of all, use video. Like, if you have associates that you want to train on something and you find that you're like not finding enough time to get where you get to sit in a room and have them go through something, have them do video of themselves and you watch it at a better time, maybe it's not overlap time that you have in the schedule right now so that you can give feedback.

Yep, spot on. Love it. Nailed it.

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All right, so let's talk about number two. Now. Second, second thing that we see stuffing breaks from growing. I'll reveal this one and then I learn. I'll let you reveal number three. So number two guys is not keeping proper, thorough, accurate statistics. Okay. So not keeping proper, thorough and accurate statistics and, or reviewing them on a regular basis. Okay. Because in the early days, I'll let you give me a clap though. Okay, Sorry I interrupted you. That's a clap. Thanks, Leila. So in the beginning, you know, when you start on your own, I always like to start in the beginning because we all started there. Okay. So really the only steps I needed to keep is, you know, what were my day one show up rates, how many reported findings did I have, how many converted into care? What was my total volume like? I could get a good understanding of my practice by knowing like five key things. And it kind of gave me a sense of what the practice is, is doing. As your practice grows and evolves, the complexity grows and evolves. So then you want more nuances, you know, you want more things like, all right, well, what's the stick rate? What percentage of people like, are sticking through to care plans? What are resign rates, what are our compliance or kept visit average rates. Right. And then as you start adding team, you want specific individual stats, you want to see each individual car, what their day one show up rates, each individual chiropractor, what their day two shot rates are and what their conversion rates are. Because at the end of the day, when you're a CEO looking at these things, your statistics dictate your action steps. In the beginning, my statistics would dictate my emotions. But what I realized is my statistics shouldn't dictate my emotions. My statistics should dictate my action steps. That's one thing to understand.

So don't shy away from it. Because many people shy away from stats for a while because they know I'm going to look at this. I'm not going to like what I see, but I'm just happy plotting along and it's growing, I'm pretty sure. But your statistics dictate your action steps. So they show me where do I need to lean in and put energy into, where do I need to take that tool of training and leverage it. Maybe we're having poor day two show up rates. Well, what are we doing in day one that needs to be trained in order to increase that. Okay. And then you want statistics from the whole patient journey.

Literally from.

We call it top of funnel. Top of funnel is like, people don't even know that you exist. So we want to work out, well, how many. I quite frankly, want to know everything. I want to know how many impressions we had. Then impressions lead to how many people click on it. Then clicks lead to how many leads do we get? Then leads lead to how many new patients do we get. So I want to know, like, every step of the journey. If we're looking at a screening, I want to look at how many people were at that screening event, number one, how many stopped, you know, to chat to us, how many got screen, how many booked to day one. So I want to know, like, every step of the process, because then again, it allows me to see where we're missing the. Where they're missing the mark. And very often I found that you can make small little tweaks but double your throughput. So I was on the mastermind call this morning, and someone was getting leads for $60 a lead, and they were doing really well. And it was like, all right, if you focus on this and this and bring that lead cost down to 30 bucks, you actually double your throughput if you put the energy in the right area. And he initially was like, well, how do I get my day one shop rates better? Because his day one shop rates were not quite where the mark was. I'm like, just first create more content. So you bring that lead cost down because that in itself will double the throughput. And then let's also work on how did we improve the day one shot rates. And that's when you exponentially start growing. What are your thoughts on stats keeping. What's your mindset on this?

Yeah, I think a lot of people, maybe they're keeping some stats. Hopefully you're keeping some stats. Like Bobby said he was keeping some stats to begin with, and then as he grew, he wanted more stats. Right. And you also said something earlier where it's like, how often are you actually looking at them? Because it's one thing to have them, it's another thing to methodically, every week, every month, every quarter, to be unpacking them and actually comparing we last quarter to this quarter, and are we comparing apples to apples, or are we not actually aware of what we're even looking at? I think for many people, they don't understand the value of slowing down enough to get the stats actually Organized. And that's why we feel like we're spinning our wheels and we can't figure out exactly where our team needs assistance. So we're frustrated with our team a lot of time versus if we would slow down to get those stats in order. We actually have some time to spend with our stats and then we could more effectively train our team and more effectively position our team to know how to carry out the vision. So just know it's one of those things like work smarter, not harder. And this is one of those things that if we keep skipping that step, we're like shooting ourselves in the foot.

Yeah, yeah. Success leaves clues. And you know, I've had the great pleasure and had the great pleasure to work with a lot of high level people in my life. People that range from millionaires to multimillionaires to hundreds of millions of dollars right in like their businesses and their assets. And I can tell you one thing, I know that the higher up the scale that you go, the more emphasis is placed into dashboards and statistics and being able to understand your business to the T through every single stat and then not letting those stats overcome you. Because sometimes people, I feel as though the stats can almost become overbearing or the stats can almost become like monotonous in terms of like, oh, great, we're going to stats again. Okay. They shouldn't, they shouldn't. We shouldn't let it lead to that. But what they're there for is because they allow us to know where and where to put the energy into in order to get the best ROI for moving towards our vision. That's what it is.

I'm so glad you said that because on a mastermind call earlier today, I said, don't lose the forest through the trees. Like, if you're even with, you know, when you're talking to your team about stats, they need to understand them to understand how to work effectively. But the, like, the why and the vision and the values and all the things that are a little more feely. Right. Like, that is equally as important too, for the energy to stay right. So we can't get so like left brained about this too, that we lose the juice behind what we're doing.

Yep, spot on the mark. Exactly right. So that's why, you know, you got to learn to love it because you love what it does for you and what it does for you guys. Moving towards the vision that you hold.

Yes.

Right.

Love it.

Cool. All right, so that was number two, not taking stats seriously enough, not keeping them or not Continuing to double down on how well they keep. And then number three, I'll reveal this one because this is one of my favorite areas to talk about. And that is ready. Okay. Drum roll, number three. It's not investing enough in marketing. Okay. Whenever I.

That's one of your favorites.

So.

You know, Lona, I always cringe. There's a little part of me that cringes when I hear someone say, we are a 100% internal referral practice. And I'm like, I cringe because I'm like, there's so much lost opportunity there. Like, I'm not saying that's a bad thing that you get a lot of internal referrals. It's a great thing. But if you're so good at getting internal referrals, do you know how well we could compound that? If we actually started switching on proper marketing from multiple channels, and then your expertise in generating internal referrals, you could compound that. And if the argument is to help as many people as possible or, you know, to be as service as possible, well, then if we learn how to market properly, you have the opportunity to talk to more people, Then you create the compounding effect of your internal referral systems that are so flawless. And then you get more new people to help and serve anyway. Ryan? Yes, I love internal referrals, but let's be frank. Every single major company has a marketing budget right now in front of me. I'm looking at Apple products. I'm looking. There's a Toyota product here. There's a Toyota car. My wife has a hybrid. I see. What else do I see here? Sony, the same television. All of those companies, guys have marketing budgets. All of those companies are on the front foot with putting products or putting things in front of you. They're spending money on marketing. Now, actually, this RAV4, did we buy that because it was a referral and someone was like, you know what? It is the most, simplest, easiest car. When you have young kids, it wastes no fuel. You don't care if it gets dinged around a little bit. Like, yeah, totally. You could kind of say it's internal referral. Right. However, in saying that Toyota doesn't just sit around and go, in fact, Toyota, I think, is number producer vehicles. It could be Tesla now, but I think Toyota was it for a long time that I just sit around and go, we just got such a great internal referral network. It's just our customers and those people. No, there are Toyota ads left, right, and center bombarding us everywhere because the product is great. If you're looking for a reliable car, hassle free motoring, efficient and effective. But I don't know that unless I marketed to. Right, right. So you should be looking at your marketing. And I want to market intelligently and if I know my stats, I can market intelligently and aggressively. And when you learn to do the two, you own the market.

So good and for at any stage. Right. Like what Bobby just said, realizing that you want to build into a position where you are aware that you're going to want to continue to feed your team. Right. So maybe you are the main doc right now and maybe you have enough new patient action for your practice to be where you want for your vision right now. But if you add another doc or you build a bigger team, you know, this is also where we really need to start to think about like how do we bring the, the message to the masses. And it's not possibly that we're going to just rely on internal referrals. We would build out these other roads into the practice that certainly I believe. You know, you think back in to, you know, we all came, we all had dissemination down from Dee Dee Palmer and Didi and BJ would have used all these roads to sped up to spread chiropractic like wildfire. So we have that opportunity to do that as well.

Yeah. So to keep it a high level. And I don't want to go down the marketing rabbit hole too much because I know we could talk about hours when it comes to this, but just from a high level point of view to give you something to work towards a good marketing budget that I shoot for and an aggressive marketing budget is 10 to 13% roughly. And this varies a little bit. But I want to make it easy for you. 10 to 13% of your goal revenue. Now let me distill this down. If right now you're a million dollar office and you're shooting for in the next 12 months that you want to become a $2 million. Okay, well a $2 million office is $165,000 collections in a month. Let's say right now we're doing $84,000 collection a month, which is a million dollar offers. I would look at that and I would go, okay, so my Runway from 84 is first I want to get to 120amonth. Then I want to get to 140amonth. Then I want to Get 265amonth. So I will take 120amonth for the next quarter. Take 10 to 13% of that. Number and that becomes my marketing budget.

So that way that I'm moving towards $2 million and I'm going 10 to 13% of $2 million extrapolated on a quarterly basis. Does that make sense what I just described?

Yeah, I think so. Just that you're always investing in where you're going next based on what the marketing budget should be.

Yeah, exactly. But the amount is important because what I encourage you to do is have a look on the back of this podcast. How much last year did you invest in marketing total? So count up all the screenings that you did, Facebook ads, any agency maybe that you're paying. How much did you invest in marketing total? Now you do want to work out what was your roi? So you want to work out, you know, what was your return on investment at 3 to 15 to 18 to 1, 10 to 112 to 1. Right. There's ways to do this intelligently and then when you are able to analyze that, then you look forward facing go face to now goals. Here becomes the marketing budget and here are the systems that we're going to use to execute to get the amount of new patients that we need to move from 1 million collections to 2 million collections within the next 12 months. I know that there's a little bit of complexity around what I just said there. If you do have questions around that, guys, feel free to add either myself or learn on Instagram and just message us the question about marketing. Because when you understand that equation and formula, your growth becomes almost uncapped to eight figures. Chiropractic office. And I'm seeing it now happen with offices. Yeah.

Yeah, I got a follow up question too. So when you're investing, let's use the 1 million to 2 million example there.

Yep, yep.

You know, like this is what I'm going to need to do to feed the right amount of new patients into this growth.

Are you usually looking at this simultaneously? Do you start doing the marketing before you maybe have the team hires that you'll need to execute at 2 million or when does your brain start moving into that direction?

So I do both because I don't want to build a system that we don't have a team to execute because then I'm burning cash. Right, right. However, I have a philosophy inside of our business and the philosophy is that we sprint towards our vision. We don't crawl towards it. So one behavior that I don't like when I see in the company is, oh, we're crawling towards things. Oh, we've been hiring for four weeks. There's still no team member. We do it. It's like we're at that run rate because we're crawling towards our vision. We're not sprinting towards our vision. Okay, so I don't like having all conversations. I like having and conversations and end conversations. Mean, if I know we're at 1 million and I want that where we're going to $2 million, what are we going to need to go to $2 million? Well, I can tell you already, if I know your practice, you'll need likely to level up your digital presence. You'll probably need a dedicated call center. When I say call center, that could be a call center or one person, but you'll need one person whose job full time per week is calling leads and booking new patients in for all of your. All of your associates, for example. Right. So I'll start or chiral matchmaker. Say again?

I said or Chiral matchmakers.

Yeah. If you want to leverage, if you leverage companies and stuff that, you know, help do hiring for you. Totally. But I'll be honest. If a company says to me it's going to take us 90 to 120 days, depending what it is. If it's an associate, I get it. But then I don't want to be hiring an associate when I need an associate now, I'll be hiring one now, knowing that you know what, we're good for the moment. But I can see based on that vision, we're going to need someone in six months time. Now I'll start looking and if I find someone awesome, we'll grow quicker. But I'm not also dependent. It doesn't become the bottleneck. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Right?

Yep.

So if you just start with that mentality, we sprint towards our goal, not walk, not crawl towards it. Makes all difference in the world. Yeah. But second to that, quite frankly, is yeah, I do both. And then I look at my marketing budget and I adjust it based on our projection. So if we're doing $84,000 a month, $2 million, $165,000 a month, first stepping stone is $120,000. I'll take 10 to 30% of $120,000, whatever that is. 12, 15 grand. Right. And that becomes my monthly marketing budget for that next quarter. And then I start building up the team through that, positioning my ads through that, doing everything for that. Because I'm setting myself up to get $2 million.

Was masterful. Thank you for that. Cool last nugget. Yes.

So I hope you guys write that Down. Now, I know it can be a little bit confusing, but it is. At the end of the day, for me, the only two things really that concern me in the practice is cost to acquire a customer. How much is it costing you to get a new patient through the door? And number two, lifetime client value. And lifetime kind of value can be increased through multiple different avenues. In fact, one of that would be a good podcast episode. How do you increase your lifetime client value? Because it's not just pva. It's not just getting to stick around for longer. You know, that's one part of it. But there's other triggers in there that increase your lifetime client value. And at the end of the day, someone's worth more to you. You can spend more when it comes to marketing and therefore grow faster.

All right, we'll add it to the list.

Got it. All right, team, so there you have it. The three bottlenecks. Right? So these are the three things I want you to focus on. I want you to take your training to the next level, I want you to take your stats to the next level, and I want to take your seriousness about marketing to the next level. If you guys want to see how Dr. Alone and I put it all together, we share a lot of stuff on our Instagram, follow us on our social guys, follow us on our Instagram accounts. And if you want more information about how do you put that marketing message together or how do you put that marketing system together and know how much you should be spending so that you can just unleash in this next quarter, message myself or learn on Instagram and just message the word marketing and we'll know exactly what's related to this podcast and I'll shoot you over exactly what you need to know so you can just start taking it to the next level. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much for everything. You're a rock star.

Thanks, Bobby. See you soon.

See you, guys.

Hey, everyone, please listen in for this next bonus interview of one of our remarkable success partners. They all help us help more people find the benefits of chiropractic. So listen on.

Hey, Remarkables, it's Dr. Kahl here. Listen, Today I'm stoked to be online with Dr. Steve Tullias. I'm excited to talk to you today, Doc. I'm really pumped about it. I know we know each other and I'm just excited to be here with you. It's an honor to have you on. And we've got an amazing CEO audience here with us. Some of them may know who you are, and some of them may not. So maybe you can take a moment, just introduce yourself, help us get to know the expert in the room, tell us a little bit about your story and what's led us to ultimately being here together today.

Awesome. Thank you, Doc. Like you and many of the listeners, I believe I was born to be a chiropractor. I believe it's a purposeful universe. And when I look at everything that brought me to this point, it's pretty clear that, that this was all purposeful. And I love chiropractic. It's that big idea of every man, woman and child being checked from birth throughout a lifetime and what that would mean for humanity. That thing closest to a utopia that BJ Palmer shared with us, that vision. And so my journey was one of starting at Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and not getting the philosophy. Philosophy was presented as history and we were given the 34 principles, the 34 being may the force be with you.

And so I came out not even able to say the word subluxation. And giving a 12 visit care plan was the most I could do at the time. And even that was hard. And fortunately, I had a lot of great mentors along the way. One being my chiropractor, he took me to Parker seminars. I heard Dr. Jim Sigafoo speak and I didn't really know what he was saying because he was talking so fast with that southern accent. But I knew he was on fire for this thing. And that led me to explore and actually pick up my first green books. I'd never even heard of a green book. And I started going to philosophy seminars and I started to learn this thing called chiropractic. And 23 years later, I'm on the board of Sherman College of Chiropractic. I've been vice president of the International Federation of Chiropractors and Organizations. I created a pediatric chiropractic program at Autism1 a few years ago. And now I currently run a company that helps chiropractors put on workshops and reach the sickest of the sick. And with a vision of bringing the profession back on track with that objective and reaching the people that really need us the most. And so that's where my, my heart and my energy lies today, which is what brought us here to talk.

I love that I didn't know that journey that you'd gone through, from where on the spectrum you were, from a philosophical standpoint to where you are now. That's amazing for me to hear as one of your clients as well. It's pretty cool. Thanks for telling me that.

Absolutely.

So one of the things I didn't share with our listeners is the name of your business, Weightless Workshops. And we know, doc, that every business exists to solve a problem. And I know your business exists to solve a problem. I know the problems that it solves. But I'm curious if you could share that with our CEO listeners. What problem specifically do you solve? What does waitlist workshops do for chiropractors and their teams?

Yeah, you know, we solve the, you know, multiple problems. For offices that want to give workshops, we solve the number one problem, which is getting butts in the seats. At the end of the day, you got the best content in the world, but if no one's there to hear it, then what does it matter, right? So we ultimately solved that problem. However, we really solve a lot deeper problems. I discovered workshops out of necessity. In 2012, I sold my first practice and I traveled around the world with my family for nine months. It was amazing. We sold everything. I had literally no possessions except for backpacks and whatever clothes and, you know, computer I could hold with me. We had no cell phones. It was really amazing. But I came back from that trip with two things. One, one was actually the lack of things, and that was money. I came back broke. I didn't plan very successfully, and it was a lot more expensive to travel for nine months without a job than I had anticipated. And I came back broke. And I also came back with a very sick child. My son had developed an autoimmune encephalitis known as pandas pans along that journey. And so I had to figure out how to start a brand new practice on a shoestring budget and so I could feed my family and take care of my. My responsibilities. So I started to, you know, I grew up as a puzzle solver and I knew workshops work. This is right at the advent of social media marketing. So I just got. I got on Facebook and I started running ads, and I started running ads for these workshops, and eventually I cracked the formula. I had 15, 20, 25 people at my workshops every month, and colleagues saw what I was doing, asked if I would do it for them. I said yes. And they actually prodded me to create this for the profession because that wasn't my goal. My goal was not to have a marketing company. I was a chiropractor, not a marketer. But I had solved a really big need. And the biggest need that we solve is that we attract the people that want, need, and value chiropractic the most. We attract the people who have no hope, the people who are actually responsible for this profession actually surviving. And so that we can even talk today, those people who demanded that their chiropractors. When chiropractors used to be thrown in jail, they demanded that their chiropractors be released because they needed them to help them get well and stay well. And, you know, along our journey as a profession, we got sidetracked. You know, I've been heavily involved in chiropractic politics. In fact, I was on a zoom call with the Montana legislature this morning to testify against a bill that would bring drugs into chiropractic.

Yep.

And, you know, we got sidetracked. And not only on, you know, because of the opposition, the others who would have us be something else that we're not, but we got sidetracked in our own camp in the 80s with insurance reimbursement and that reimbursement being primarily for neck pain and back pain. And we got sidetracked with our messaging and our mission. And not that it's not great to help people with those challenges, but that was never the reason why 700 chiropractors went to jail. They went to jail for a vision for humanity that was far greater than that. And so what our program does because of the type of topics that we have, our topics are around neurodevelopment, autism, adhd, sensory processing disorder. They're around the gut brain connection, autoimmune issues, fibromyalgia, digestive issues, hormonal issues, chronically ill people, and mental health matters. Those are our three core topics. Those three topics represent 60% of the Westernized nations of the world. So 60% of. Of the U.S. population, 60% or or more of of U.S. and Canada populations are fall into one. Those people fall into one of those three topics. So there's no shortage of need for chiropractic. But there is a massive shortage of demand. And so what we do is we create the demand. That's what marketing's all about. I never, as I mentioned, set out to be a marketer. BJ Palmer never set out to be a marketer. Yet he realized that he had to get that message out to the world. So he created the first radio station west of the Mississippi. He had his own printing press. And so the vision for this is to create the demand because, as I mentioned, I was highly involved in chiropractic politics. I've testified in front of the US Department of Education twice regarding the CCE and what I Recognized after a while was that I could do a whole lot more by promoting versus attacking. And if this thing that we're talking about, if subluxation is massively detrimental to the expression of health and human performance and function and potential, and releasing that interference has this amazing restorative impact on physiology, health and function, then that message should be valuable enough for the public to grasp and to demand, to have access to. And so I started focusing on demand and creating awareness. And that's the vision for this, having these workshops in every community around every part of the world. We're currently in, let's see, we're in four continents and we're expanding. We're about to go into Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. We're in Australia, Canada, of course.

We'Ve been in Taiwan, Amsterdam. The vision is to have a unified message where we create demand for subluxation focused nervous system based chiropractic. So that's the problem we solve.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I can speak from my own experience. Right. We've used weightless workshops now for I think the last year. Is it about a year, Steve, that we've been.

I think so. At least somewhere around there. Kyle.

Yeah. And I've seen your program work in offices like ours that are scaling and have a big team. I've seen it work. That's one of the things I think that's genius about is it works in big offices that are scaling. It also is really valuable tool for folks that are in that build season of their career where they're really trying to get their office off the ground and get new patients in and see new patients and help people get the word out in the community. So I really, I can see the value of that, you know, in our office. And you, you, I think know this. I was involved in the onboarding of our team on into your program. I haven't yet done a presentation and we have incredible results with your program. Our team does the presentations. It works fantastic. A couple months ago, I think I shared this with you. You know, we had one talk. We had over 70 attendees at the talk and schedule. 30, I think 32 or 33 new patients from that one talk.

Amazing.

Yeah, yeah, it was amazing. So thank you for that. I appreciate your.

Absolutely.

Helping our team with that and helping our community with that. I really, I was stoked by that.

So, yeah, you know, it, our team, you know, we love hearing that. Right. You, our, our call center, we don't, we don't call them call agents. We call them community advocates. Right. And, and they're trained to understand what's at stake. Right. For these people if they don't show up to the workshop. And so when I get, so when I hear, you know, results like that, that just, it makes me so feel so good inside because I know the quality of care that those people are getting access to. Right. And so thanks for sharing that.

Yeah.

And I know that, that, that little anecdote will speak to this a little bit, but CEOs make business decisions, right? So they always want to know what they're going to get for the return on their investment. So could you tell us just a little bit about that from a, like an average example and what that looks like with weightless workshops?

Yeah, absolutely. So now I, I wish that 70 in attendance was an average.

Right?

That was, that was not an average. It was, it was a fantastic event. Our averages are great though, and the return on investment is great on the averages. And this is why it was the only type of marketing I did in my own practices for a 12 year period. So average attendance is going to be somewhere between 12 to 15 in attendance. Some offices are averaging 20 depending upon where they're located and cost per lead average show. So average registrations per workshop is going to be somewhere between 60 to 100. Show rates are going to be somewhere between 18 to 22%. So based upon that then we know that there's going to be somewhere. That's why there is somewhere between 12 to 16, 15 people in attendance. It really is a math problem, you know, at the end of the day, and that's how I look at it. So with a average conversion rate of 60%, you know, and an average, you know, that's to new patient exams, an average conversion rate of people to care of 60 to 70%, then people are looking at an average of somewhere between six to 10 new patients per workshop. The, and then with an average ROI, the or, I'm sorry, an average case value of 3,000. And that's on the low side for most offices. These are people. And that's something that is sometimes hard. You know, I always have to talk about this when I'm, I'm talking with new docs is that I just ask them the question, you know, based upon the types of people that these topics, you know, bring into your practice, where do you think they lie in terms of being mild, moderately or severely subluxated? And so the answer is typically moderate to severe. That's what they typically tell me. And the answer, from my experience in giving over 300 workshops, personally is that.

They'Re usually in the severe range, but definitely moderate. And so these people don't balk at needing corrective care. This program was developed in my practice which was 100% cash and we did year long care plans. That's all we offered. And we had a high conversion rate with these people and 80 to 85% depending upon the associate, you know, who was running this. But this is, as you mentioned, this is highly scalable because I moved to Texas, my practices were in San Diego and those practices were run by associates with. The only marketing we did was workshops. And you know, they had an amazing success rate. So it's a really scalable way to, you know, grow a practice.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I mean it certainly worked well for us and so many clients that, that I know personally. So I'm excited about that. You know, I'm also curious, doc, when you think about what's coming next, what's important next as you look ahead at the challenges that we're facing in the profession, as you assess the needs of the profession in the future, how do you see waitlist workshop preparing docs for what might be coming?

There are several things that I see happening. Number one is.

And this is why, even though I've seen the major challenges politically and the drive to turn chiropractic into a more medicalized.

System.

The research has been catching up with our philosophy over the last few decades. You know, there's, there's studies showing us that adjusting the upper cervical spine has a positive impact on the autonomic nervous system. Right. There's more and more research focused on eight things like hrv. We have studies looking at cerebral spinal fluid flow and, and cerebral blood flow. So we have all this really positive data coming out in support of what chiropractic philosophy and science had always been saying. And so I believe that the research is going to continue to really clearly show us and the world, not us, because we already know, but show the world the true value of chiropractic.

And here's something really positive.

I used to have a company called Chiropractic Is and we built websites, we built brochures and posters, things like that. And the reason I called the company Chiropractic is.

Was because I was really acutely aware of the situation on Google where with autofill, if you typed in chiropractic is, what do you think it came up with?

Not positive. Thanks.

Chiropractic is, excuse my French, but bullshit. Chiropractic is a scam. Chiropractic Is pseudoscience. Chiropractic is a cult. Chiropractic, is it safe? You know, all the, these are the things that came up. And if you typed in chiropractors R, it was even worse. Right. And something happened recently. I hadn't looked this up in a long time. I used to speak on that topic for about a 10 year period in the profession. And so I went to go, I was telling someone about this and I went to go look and I started typing it in and it was actually very positive. Right now, I don't know if it was just because of my instance of Google and knowing that I'm a chiropractor, all these things, I don't think so. We should take a sample and find some people who aren't chiropractors to type it in. But it was actually very positive. So I believe, and just based upon trends in giving workshops and hearing the data from our clients, skeptics are far and few between. We don't get the same number of.

Facebook trolls, comments on our ads like we used to, that the tide is turning on that respect. And with JFK Jr taking on his role in the US government here, I think we're going to see a major shift in that tide. So now is not the time to shrink. Now's the time to shine and meet the demand.

And meet the, you know, not only create the demand, but there's, there's a bigger demand since COVID happened. You know, we saw, you know, yes, Covid was a horrible experience for, for humanity, but it was also, I think, a necessary pattern interrupt for a lot of people who weren't asking questions. They were living blindly and, you know, living out of alignment with their own values. And so Covid just shook people up. And we have more people now on the chiropractic side than ever before. And so, you know, here's another quick example. It was just released a week and a half ago in Psychology Today, an article from a psychiatrist called the Gut Brain Spine Connection. I don't know. Did you see that?

Yeah, yeah.

It's everything that the Gut Brain Connection class, which is one of our topics, it's everything that that class has been saying for over a decade. And it's coming from a psychiatrist.

So now not only is the Gut Brain Connection mainstream, it has been for a long time. Now the Gut Brain Spine Connection is entering the mainstream conversation. And boy, what a time.

I think this is by far the easiest time for us to show up. Whereas when our founders were showing up, they were risking everything now we have it pretty easy.

Yeah. Have to deploy the right tools to connect. That's awesome, Doc. Thanks so much. You've shared some incredible pearls here with us, I would say today. I really appreciate it. I know everyone on this call will appreciate it on the podcast will appreciate it. I want to be sure that our listeners know how to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to learn more, get in contact or take whatever the next step is, Whatever that is, we'll definitely put it in our show notes.

Yeah. There's two ways to really engage with us. Number one, if you're interested to look at our turnkey systems and be able to give your first workshop in a four to five week period, jump on a call and that's going to waitlistworkshops.com and clicking on the schedule call button. Super easy. You'll be talking with me and we'll explore if it's right because we know that there's four indicators of whether or not this is going to work. We'll dive into that and find out. The other way to engage is in our weightless workshops free group. So weightless workshops, free group on Facebook where we share all kinds of content. We're sharing videos weekly on everything you need to know to do this yourself. And we have do it yourself courses. And we don't hold anything back because I understand that. Number two things, one, I couldn't possibly serve everybody and two.

Facebook is always.

Changing.

And it gives us job security.

But yeah, that's how people can interact with us.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Doc. I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for sharing with our audience. I think you shared some awesome things. Looking forward to getting it out to our crew of remarkables. And I can't wait to connect with you again, hopefully at the next immersion if you're there. I know you're having a new addition, so you maybe won't be at the next one, but your team will be, I'm sure.

Yes, I won't be at the next one, unfortunately, because I am expecting a newborn in the family. Very excited about that. But I, you know, and I'm going to, I'm going to miss it because I've told you, I've told others.

The.

TRP family and culture that you guys have created is remarkable. The entire experience, and not just the experience. And it's not a rah rah thing. It's the content.

The culture and what you're doing. And I see it in action because the doctors that are working with TRP are getting some of the best results because you guys give them such a solid foundation. From philosophy to systems to business mindset, all the things that we don't often get in school. You guys are giving them such a solid foundation that all they need is a room full of people and they're crushing it. So thank you for everything you guys are doing.

Teamwork makes a dream work, brother. That's good.

Absolutely.

I'll see you the next time I see you. Have a remarkable day.

All right, take care. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Build you'd Remarkable Practice podcast. Remember, what the world needs now is chiropractic. And what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, share with your friends and leave us a review. And if you'd like to connect with us personally, please click the links in the show notes to schedule a call.