087 - Better Results Faster: Education that Drives Retention

Many docs struggle with people staying believers. Believers are awesome initially, but we don't want them to be believers for long because believers are heavy. Those are the people that are showing up because you told them to, not because they want to. Right? They're asking you a million questions. They really don't get it. Our job is to get them to become understanders. Because the great thing about chiropractic is you don't have to believe in chiropractic. You can understand chiropractic. And when you understand chiropractic, you want chiropractic. It's that simple. But most docs, I find, don't have great systems from getting people from believers to understanders.

Hello and welcome to Build you'd 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.

Welcome back to Build you'd Remarkable Practice Podcast and I am with my favorite guest to have because he is just like a wealth of knowledge, Dr. Eric DeMartino. Many of you know him from TRP stages as well as probably coaching many of you that are listening. But he is going to jump in tonight and talk about how we turn people in from, you know, someone who comes in believing that chiropractic to can help them, to somebody who really truly understands that chiropractic is a necessary part of how they take care of their health and well being. So welcome to the show, Dr. Eric. And let's just dive right in.

First off, thanks for having me, Dr. Lona. It's always fun to join you for these. Yeah. So this is something that's kind of been on my heart lately. Working with a lot of clients, even the docs that work for me, is really getting effective at turning believers to understanders. And if any of you listeners are familiar with the TRP lingo, we talk that there's basically four stages of the patient journey in our offices. The first stage is being a seeker. People are seekers. They come to us on day one as seekers because they're seeking a solution to a problem and they're hoping that we can help them with that. Next step is believers. Patients become believers when they basically say yes on day two and they accept our recommendations for care. They believe that we can help them but they really don't understand anything at this point. The next step is they become understanders. Now, a lot of docs think that when people say yes on day two, they think that, oh, they understand chiropractic, they're in it for life. But that's not true. Nobody could possibly understand the depth of chiropractic in just two days in our office. What they're saying on day two is they're simply saying, doc, I don't really understand all this yet, but I believe you. You made that empathetic connection with me. You had me take ownership of my problem. I see that, and I believe that you can help me. I'm willing to give this a shot. That's what they're saying on day two. They're believers. Now, many docs struggle with people staying believers. Believers are awesome initially, but we don't want them to be believers for long because believers are heavy. Those are the people that are showing up because you told them to, not because they want to. They're asking you a million questions. They really don't get it. Our job is to get them to become understanders. Because the great thing about chiropractic is you don't have to believe in chiropractic. You can understand chiropractic, and when you understand chiropractic, you want chiropractic. It's that simple. But most docs, I find, don't have great systems from getting people from believers to understanders. And here's the difference between the two. You know, when you look at your. When you start your shift and you look at your list of patients coming in that day, and you look at all those names, if there's a couple of names you look at and you get this kind of visceral, horrible feeling in your gut when you see that name. I promise you, they are believers, I promise you. Because you know they're going to be the challenge. They're going to make you want to pull your hair out. Those are the believers, the people you look at, you're like, I cannot wait to see that person. Those are the understanders. Understanders, they want to come in and say, hey, Doc, it's great to see. I'm here for my adjustment. Lay down, get adjusted. Awesome, Doc, I'll see you next week, right? Those are the understanders. I like. How many of those people could you adjust in a day? Right? Endless, because it's effortless, right? We call them helium balloons. They're weightless, they're fun. Whereas those believers, right, the believers are those they're just. They weigh you down and they just drain your energy. Right. You can take. You could easily feel like you have.

To do a song and dance each time they come in.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you could easily adjust 150 understanders in a day, but like, 30 believers and you're ready for a nap, you're just, like, wiped out. And so we want to be able to turn them from believers to understanders. So the fourth stage, just for reference, is ambassador. Right. Ambassadors are people that not just understand chiropractic, but they're passionate about it, and they want to tell everybody that they know. Right. So we want at least get them to understanders, and if you're really good, you can get them to be ambassadors.

I want to point one thing out. Number one is like, I think a good process of thinking about what Eric just said there is like, think about your own evolution in chiropractic. If you're the chiropractor or a CA listening to this, like, yes, you continually go deeper in your understanding, which generally makes you more excited about it and more likely to become an ambassador. And also to that point, you can think about another business that you love to do business with. You know, generally it's because you understand the value, and that makes you a raving fan, sending people to them. You know, this is true not just in chiropractic. We can think about this kind of process or this journey that we're taking people on in. In why they need to understand and also then how it becomes that they are referring people into the office.

Absolutely. And. And I like to say that, you know, satisfied customers don't refer. Excited customers refer. Right. We're satisfied in many of our interactions and with different businesses on a daily basis, but we're not raving about it. When we get excited about something, if we had some amazing experience, we're like telling everybody that we know. And it's not just, you know, like a restaurant. The food was awesome in chiropractic. It's like, here's this idea that many people have never heard. And when they hear it and they get it, they're like, oh, my gosh, this just makes so much sense. And then they get the amazing results that chiropractic provides. That's when they become raving fans. Right. And so that's what we have to do effectively in our office is, is help them understand that it's through the educational process. And so the way I like to frame it when I'm coaching docs is that we. We teach the first four in trp, where the first four is the first four months of care, we call that the initial intensive care. That's after they commit. On day two, after those four months of care, we're going to come to a reexamination, what we call the R4. Right? At that point, we're going to be showing them, you know, objective tests that we redo compared to day one, see how they've improved, and we're going to be then recommending corrective care or possibly maintenance care based on what their goals are. Your success of the R4 is based on one key thing, and that is the patient answering one question correctly to themselves. And that question is, what would happen if I chose to stop getting adjusted today? The patient's not going to ask you docs that, but they're going to ask themselves that question. Man, I'm doing really well. I've been coming to Dr. Ilona for a couple months now. Like, I'm doing really well. I wonder what would happen if I just stopped getting adjusted. So we have to think of it from a doctor's perspective that you have four months to get them to answer that question correctly. And you can define correct however you define that. But in my office, we define answering that correctly as, if I were to stop getting adjusted, I would lose my gains, I would backslide and end up back where I was before. To me, if we can get our patients to understand that, answer that correctly, they will continue with care as long as they value their health every single time. And so, docs, you got to think about what do I have to do in those first four months to get them to answer that question correctly? What would. What would I have to know? Or would a patient have to know so they can actually answer that question correctly? So even after four months, when they may be completely symptom free and functioning, great. Why would they want to choose to pay you to continue receiving care in your office? That's the key thing. So we reverse engineer that backwards. In trp, we're like, what do we have to do right in those first four months to make that a reality? There are several different things. So one thing we start with is a better results faster workshop, right? That we call that day four in the TRP system because that's going to give them that.

Space, that 45 minutes or so space to actually have their epiphany. You could be great at table talk, but the problem is that your patients come in, you have their entire lives been taught that the outside in paradigm and Approach to health is the right way to do health. That's what they've been taught, right? And so we teach the exact opposite, that health comes from within. That is an inside out game. And it's kind of funny because if you think about it in our society, like, nobody would ever think it's smart to address the effect of a problem versus the cause. Like in any other aspect of our life, we're always taught to address the cause. But except with our health, it's like, but we just accept it as gospel because we've been so brainwashed throughout our entire lives that that's what you do. You get a symptom, the symptoms, a problem, you treat the symptoms. Right. And so we're, we're battling this paradigm that the people have been taught their whole lives by every person they trust in their entire lives. And so to do that, it can't just be as simple as some little table talk here and there. Like we have a framework for changing that paradigm so it's actually accurate.

Yes.

So we start that with a better results faster workshop so they can have their aha moment. That, that, that safe space to have an epiphany like, oh my gosh. And I tell my clients all the time, like, I still do the better results faster workshop in my main office, even though I pretty much pulled out of patient care just because I love to do it. It's my way of still connecting with people because I don't know most of the patients in my office anymore. And so it's my way to connect. And almost every single time I do the workshop, somebody comes up to me afterwards and says, doc, I've never heard that before, but that just makes sense. That just makes sense. You can see their brain kind of like glitching. Like, wait a second. What he just said makes so much sense, but it goes against everything I've ever been taught. Right? And so that's what we do with the workshop. We create that, that epiphany. It's like, wow, okay, I didn't know this was a thing. But it just makes so much sense. That's what I love about what we do. Like true health is common sense. What our health care system does does not make sense. So we just have to unearth that or just remove the fog so the patients can see that. I personally think it's really hard to do in just everyday table talk. 20, 30 seconds here because you're battling all their belief systems. So that's why the workshop is so essential. Docs. And it's craz as community. It's something. I don't care what technology does in the future. Getting together with people and, and hearing somebody speak about this is such a powerful thing. I don't think it'll ever go away.

So doing that first point, using technology also to stack lots of resources to keep telling them the story or to begin the story with digital means isn't a bad thing either, Right? Like, more times you can hear it, the better, right?

Yeah, 100%. But I still love that feeling of getting together face to face with patients in that. In that workshop and then reinforcing after the fact with Table talk with digital assets. Like, all that stuff is really, really good. Yeah, absolutely. So it's starting with that better results, faster workshop. But now we can't just leave it there. We can't be like, oh, they got the big idea. I don't have to bring it up again. It's like, no, no, no, they're going to go back out into the world and have all these pharmaceutical ads and everything just, you know, hitting them all times. So we got to reinforce it. And that's what Table Talk does. You know, your everyday table talk that simply reinforces and reminds them of everything you taught them at the workshop. That's why the workshop is so powerful. If you don't do a workshop and you're trying to do table talk every visit, it's a lift, right. Because you're trying to tell them something they have no framework for. But if you've done the workshop, they now have a framework for everything you're telling them, and it can just kind of drop into that framework in their brain and it makes it.

And I think it keeps building. Right. It's like, I mean, many of us have had to hear things so many times for the epiphany to fully happen. Right. So it's like the more ways that you look at, like, how are we dripping the same simple messages over and over and over again and connecting it with different analogies is our best chance to, like, maybe, you know, you're peeling one layer back, you're peeling a second layer back, you just keep going deeper.

Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. And. And why we do all this stuff is that, see, I. My experience has been is that when patients come to you, if you don't do this stuff well, they'll continue with care. They'll go through the first few months and they'll be like, wow, I'm feeling so much better. And they'll appreciate us and they may come to you and say, you know what, Dr. Alona, man, I was. I was a mess when I first came in. I was just down here not doing so good. And you got me doing so well. I'm like, at a high level. I feel great. I'm functioning great. Thank you so much. Now, at that point, if they think that if they stop care, they stop getting adjusted, that they would just stay at that high level until they did something stupid again. That's what a lot of patients think who drop out. They think, oh, Dr. Luna helped me. I'm so grateful for her. And I'm doing really, really well. And as long as I don't do anything to screw it up, I'll stay doing well. As long as I don't have that fall or that car accident or that, that slip or that bending lifting improperly. They thinking, hey, as long as I don't have a macro trauma, I'll stay here for months or years. And then when I eventually do something dumb, I'll drop back down and I'll come back and I'll see Dr. Lohna to fix me again. That's whenever you hear a patient say, hey, doc, thank you so much for everything. I'll come back when I need you again. Right? That's like nails on a chalkboard to me when I hear that. Right. But that's what they're thinking. That's what they're thinking because they didn't fully understand what causes subluxation in our everyday life. We always say that if patients don't understand what causes subluxation in their everyday life, the regular chiropractic care just doesn't make any sense.

Doesn't.

If they think it's the macro traumas, they're going to wait till they have a macro trauma to come back and see you. But once they understand that it's my life, it's the stress, it's all the things that we have in this modern world, then they're going to realize, if I stop getting adjusted, I might be okay for a little while, but I'm going to start dropping back downhill quickly. Right. Within a few weeks. And if they understand that, then they'll be like, okay, I see the value of continuing on with corrective maintenance, whatever care that you put out for them. So that's the way I frame it to my docs and my clients. Like, you have to help them understand that if they stop getting adjusted, they're not going to stay where they are. They're living in life. They have under Gravity. Right. Things are going to go back downhill and if they value their health, they will choose to continue with you.

Yep. Yeah, no, it's great. And I also think there's this element too of like when you deliver the goods and you deliver it at a high level because you truly believe that. So some of you listening, like if you're not there yet where you know that, you know that, you know that chiropractic is great for people for a lifetime, your patients certainly aren't going to get it if you don't own it. Right. So Eric, with, you know, when you're training docs in like, what are some of the ways that you help them get rooted in that understanding or is there any things that you point out to new associates, like seminars, philosophy, like to help them establish that route? Because I, I dare say most chiropractors leaving aren't super. Leaving school aren't super, super rooted on that yet.

Yeah, unfortunately that's, that's the reality of, of nowadays in chiropractic. Yeah. So I mean I can give a doctor every tool, every script, every concept to talk about, but if they don't believe it in their heart, it's not going to come across properly. So we always start with the philosophy. I was very fortunate that I grew up. I went to Palmer back in the days when Dr. Guy Riechman was a chancellor there. And so I got to be exposed to Reggie Gold. I mean my second trimester. Fred Barge was my philosophy teacher. Yeah, at the time it was amazing. Then after that, after I graduated, we went a lot to de down in Atlanta, got to expose all that philosophy. So it was just a part of me and it just made total sense to me. Me. And I grew up medically, I was, I'm the first chiropractor in my family. I grew up getting vaccines and drugs and like I just thought that was what health was. Yeah, chiropractic school obviously changed that. So if you, you need to understand docs out there, the power of what first of all, our body's ability to heal and self regulate itself. Like if you understand the basics of our body's amazing how it can heal itself. It's always adapting to our environment around us. And when you understand that that is, is controlled by our nervous system. Our nervous system literally is a system that helps us adapt to stress. And we are under stress every millisecond of our entire lives. And so when we understand that the nervous system is what does that. And the spine's job is to surround and protect the nervous system. We then realize that we cannot be healthier than our spine. We simply can't be. You cannot be healthier than your spine is. And so just like we want to make sure we take care of our teeth so we can chew and do those things, we have to take care of our spine. And we do that through chiropractic. And once you understand that when you can restore proper nervous system function, the body is. It has its ability to now heal itself. And we talk about innate intelligence and universal intelligence. Now, some of that may be uncomfortable to some of you. Innate intelligence is simply your body working. Like right now, my heart is beating. I'm not thinking about it beating. It's just doing it. That's my intelligence. And because I'm just standing here, my heartbeat is pretty low. But if I were to get up and do 50 burpees, my heart rate's going to go up without me thinking about it. Right. If I go outside, it's 100 degrees, I sweat. That's my body adapting to my environment. And the nervous system is what regulates that. And so if our nervous system's not healthy, we simply won't adapt to our environment. And as a result, we will lose our health. So take. So there's lots of great YouTube videos out there. Go look at Reggie Gold, Fred Barge, Jim Sigafoose, like all the classics. And it's free. Go on YouTube.

Right.

There's great books that Fred Barge has written. Are you the doctor? Doctor? There's many out there that you can get. And it's. To me, it's just common sense. Like, if you understand the basic anatomy of the human body, you understand how the nervous system works, how it controls everything, and that the spine's job is to protect it. And we see it all the time. I mean, if chiropractic didn't work, people wouldn't get better.

Yes.

I mean, it's that simple, you know, People just wouldn't get better. Right. Because we're not putting anything in. We're not chemically doing anything with drugs. Like, we literally just touch their spine and do our thing and they get better. Right. It wouldn't happen if chiropractic wasn't there. So people have to own that philosophy first. Once you own that philosophy now, everything else becomes easy. Like, we can give you. We can give you structure for table talk, but when you get it, you just. You open your mouth and it just comes out.

Yeah.

So you have to have that faith and that belief first. And when you do now, it becomes easy trp, we give you things like the Dirty dozen. Right. The 12 things that everybody must know to be healthy, to give you structure to that. And then some of those things are like, you're designed to be healthy. Right. The nervous system communicates your intelligence, right? Yeah. Your spine is. Can. Protects your, your nervous system, like all those basics to give you structure. But if you don't believe it, it's not going to do anything for you.

That's good. I like Eric unplugged there. It's good.

Something that scares me, to be honest, Lana. It scares me. I'm. I'm 50 years old and I feel like I'm already one of the old people in chiropractic because it's like, I talked to some docs coming out of school and they just have none of this. They don't get it. I don't even know what their guiding principle is when they go into practice because, like, you have a chiropractic degree, but it's almost like you have a medical instruction or teaching. And it's like, ah, talk about a tough way to practice. Right, right.

Well, and. And I think we need to say that more often. Like, I remember a mentor and I, I grew up getting adjusted. So inherently in me, I knew this was, this was for everyone and it was good, like, very simplistic understanding. But I didn't question that. It would be hard to tell people, like, hey, you need to get adjusted. And this is something you do just like dentistry periodically. Right. But a mentor said to me when I was trying to grow the practice that I said, I think, what do I have to do? I think we were at like a hundred some a week, and I wanted to get over 200 a week. And. And he's like, you know, you need to get around people who ooze chiropractic. Like, everything in the world to them is chiropractic. And the analogy that was said to me was, you know, you squeeze an orange, what should come out? Orange juice. You know, you squeeze an apple or press an apple, apple juice should come out. He's like, we're chiropractors. When you get squeezed, AKA you get a tough question. Chiropractic needs to come out. Not medical jargon. And so I started going to New Beginnings and then, yes, listening and reading and doing everything that I could to just go down that rabbit hole of really understanding, like, what's happening when we work with someone's spine. And what is innate intelligence? What is universal intelligence? What is life force? And like trying to Wrestle with those concepts, which we still wrestle with. Like, Erica, I'm guessing if I asked you, do you think you know everything there is to know about chiropract, you'd be like, no. Right. Do you know a lot more than you did 20 years ago? Yes. Do you believe in it? It's like, you know, it's like this element of, like, if you drop the keys, you know the keys are going to fall to the floor. It's. Chiropractic is the nervous system, is the master control system. And there's a force that's working through our body that is greater than us, and we trust that more than we trust something else.

Well, what I love about chiropractic is while my understanding has expanded over my 23 years in practice, the basics have not changed. Like, you can go back to reading Stevenson's textbook, I think it was back in the 1920s, you can read that today, and it is 100 accurate. It hasn't changed in 100 years. Whereas look at medicine, it changes every six months. What they know. Because when it's truth, when it's based on truth, the truth never changes. But when you're constantly trying to manipulate things, it always changes.

Yeah.

And so that's what I love about it, is that I know that as long as I live, it's never going to change because it's simply truth. It's how the body functions.

Yeah.

So when you can own that, everything else becomes easier. And yeah, you just have to own it and realize it. But there's. I think it also helps being in practice and seeing the quote unquote miracles. Right. Like getting out of school, you would hear these things and you're like, man, people, like, their sinus problems go away and they're this and that. And it's like all this stuff you almost like hard. And. And honestly, I think that a lot of chiropractors, if they're taught to only adjust somebody eight or ten times, like you have miracles eight or ten visits, you're just not especially.

I mean, you might. But you also need to know that there's still a process that needs to keep unfolding.

100. 100. And so when you do the right amount of care and it's like, wow, you see babies that had horrible colic, it goes away, and reflux and all these things that are non musculoskeletal stuff, you just, you can't help but believe it because you see it, it happens right in front of you. And so I think there's that belief System. And I think that just enough docs aren't be experiencing that to actually have that belief.

Yep. Yeah. And so, you know, it's equal parts, like, get yourself exposed to the right conversations that grow your certainty and your confidence in what you are delivering and your team are delivering and learn the trajectory of, like, good care, the patient journey, so that we're actually feeding people and understanding left and right. So they should always be full, you know? Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think for docs out there, they just have to focus on what is your philosophy, like, what do you want to have as your philosophy, and then structure your practice around that. But I'm not telling you to adopt what I believe in, figure out what your philosophy is, what jazzes you up, what gets you excited about what you do and about health, and then create your whole structure around that. Your care recommendations, your conversations you have, your workshop, your table talk. Because ultimately, you want your practice to be a reflection of you and your belief system. And by doing that, you'll attract your tribe, those people that resonate with you, which is exactly what you want. We want to be polarizing. We don't want to. To be, you know, hear it all the time. It's like, if you try to please everybody and I'm pleasing nobody. Right. Even though we know chiropractic can help everybody. I am not everybody's chiropractor. Like, I'm polarizing. I'm like, this is what we stand for and this is what we don't. But by doing that, I attract the people that vibe, and I love being around. I repel the people that just don't fit, and that's great. That's exactly what we should do. So very. Get very clear docs on what your belief systems are. And if you feel like you don't have one, then start reading, start researching, start looking at things and just find what. What resonates with you and makes you happy. Because hopefully you're going to do this chiropractic thing for 50 years and you want to make sure that you enjoy it, that it's not a job. It's not like, oh, I got to go to the office today. That's no way to live.

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. One more thing I want to add in, too, is, like, when we're trying to help our patients understand what would happen if we stop getting adjusted. Clearly, that also is true with Teach your staff first and foremost because they're in extensions of what you're teaching, so it doesn't matter if you're the tech CA or the check in CA or someone working virtually, I want my entire team to be exposed to the philosophy and the understanding and sometimes that comes from, you know, really sharing some of the wins we can get. We're in a busy office, so much is happening that we forget to talk about, like what just happened in that reval where you heard these amazing stories, but only one doc was in that room and heard it. And so, you know, we have a team channel where patient wins get shared. And that's been a great benefit for so many layers of our team to understand the process of what chiropractic brings to people's lives if they're not the one in the room.

Love that. So part of our, we do our weekly team meeting and part of our structure is that we open up with reading any 5 star Google reviews we've had in the last week. And it's great because not only is it patient wins, but a lot of times they reference the team, how awesome our team is, and that just fills them up. And then we have the docs share any, any awesome, you know, occurrences they have with a patient, like, you know, stories, clinical results, like anything. And it just jazzes up the team like you said. So that should be a part of everybody's weekly team meeting, in my opinion. I think it's super important we start with that because it's all about the heart.

That's awesome, Eric. All right, so ask yourself, do my patients understand what would happen if they stopped getting adjusted? And that is one of the main questions that we're leading them to understand in that beginning part of care.

Yeah. And if you're brave enough docs, what I would do is ask your patients, right. You know, you come to a progress exam, perfect time, a patient's doing awesome, they're doc, I'm doing so much better things, awesome patience. So I'm, I'm curious, what do you think would happen if you just decide to stop getting adjusted? What do you think would happen? Right. Ask them and see what they say. Right. That'll give you great feedback on how well you are educating your patients. If you get a lot of answers you don't like, then we got to make some tweaks to the system for sure.

All right. You're amazing. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us. Yes. And if you want to connect with Dr. Eric, maybe what's your email? Best way to connect with you or I know you love posting on social.

Media, so yeah, it's Dr. Eric, it's Drearck D R E R I c@the remarkablepractice.com Perfect.

Awesome. And obviously, if you drop in on our website and probably chat with the bot, they can find you as well.

So 100%. 100%.

All right, awesome. Thanks, Eric. You appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Yes. See you soon.

Bye now.

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