108 - Why Clarity Will Define the Future with Dr. Peter Kevorkian

People know that there is a truth when we talk about what we do as chiropractors. And if we allow our languaging to be consistent and honest and not continue to live within the dysfunction paradigm as a chiropractor, spend so much time to become part of the system. But it's the fact that we are different. We look at things different. We look at the body different. We see health and well-being and vitality very different than just being free of symptoms and disease.

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, welcome back to Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast. I am here with one of the celebrities in chiropractic.

Oh, I thought I was with the celebrity in chiropractic.

Oh, that's nice. Yeah, Dr. Peter Keforkian, who is actually—

did you know that I was president of the Lana fan club?

I think you might have told me that.

Yeah, you see, you see?

Okay, all right. He's also the president of my fan club. That just sounds so arrogant of me saying that. But truly, you've for many, many years been high up in pretty all organizations that promote true chiropractic, whether it's New Beginnings, the ICA or ICPA, Pathways, Sherman, just so many things. And now he's president of Life Chiropractic College West. Yes.

Super exciting.

Yes. Very exciting. He was with us last weekend when we were in Phoenix. TRP.

Oh, what a great group. Oh my God. I mean, I've known Steve for ages and, and, you know, known of the group, but that was my first time being immersed in TRP Energy. Oh my God. What a great inspirational group.

That really is great.

We had a great time going out and riding the bikes around, downtown Phoenix.

Yeah.

On the way to dinner.

It's fun.

So we are together actually in Montana this weekend for their inaugural kickoff of their new chiropractic council, a new state association that has been created to stand for chiropractic principles as well as defend against drug inclusion in our scope. So it's pretty great to be here as well this weekend.

Great to be here.

Yeah.

Great energy.

Yeah. Peter, we're going to chat today. You know, Dr. Peter has practiced for 40—

how many years?

42 years. Had a huge family practice in Massachusetts and practiced with his wife Patty. And from your perspective, for, you know, not only being in private practice on a high, high level for so many years, but now all the things that you've done over the years in politics and now leading a school, you know, when we look out at the profession to start with, like, what are you hopeful about and what are you also hoping changes?

In the words of Jerry Klum, Dr. Jerry Klum, who was the first president of Left Chiropractic College West, there's never been a better time to be a chiropractor. And I firmly believe that. Our profession has evolved a lot, and I think the world is more ready for what we have to offer than ever before. I think COVID was a huge awakening in that. I remember when COVID first happened and I was still in full-time practice, there's a part of me that was devastated. I said, oh my goodness, everybody disappeared. Didn't these people get the big idea? And although the immediateness of the, the sheltering and stay home, you know, it hit everybody. As people started coming back into practice, I think it, it really brought to light and amplified and put a microscope on the dysfunction that has existed in healthcare. So I really believe that this next phase of, of healthcare needs chiropractic more than ever. Yes, the Maha movement. Yes, all the, the stuff that's coming into awareness relative to, you know, inappropriate things in research and, and medicine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But viscerally people know that there is a truth when we talk about what we do as chiropractors.

Yes.

And if we allow our languaging to be consistent and honest and not, and, and not continue to live within the dysfunction paradigm as a chiropractor, spend so much time to become part of the system. But it's the fact that we are different. We look at things different. We look at the body different. We see health and wellbeing and vitality very different than just being free of symptoms and disease. And that, that I think the world is more ready, more prepared for us than ever before. I think public awareness of chiropractic is more than ever before. So we need to be really clear with our languaging and our positioning to move forward.

I agree. I agree. And, you know, sitting in this conference right now, we've both spoke already and both of us said like, there is opportunity right now, but there's, there needs to be more of us. So that's one of the things I know you're actively doing is trying to steer a school to bring more chiropractors in who know what chiropractic is and who are doubled down on that philosophy.

Well, so often people go to school, they graduate, and then they, then they realize what chiropractic is. They either didn't, never got the philosophy in school, and they got it, oh my God. Or they, they were in school and they might have gotten the philosophy, but they didn't have it in their hands, so they didn't have the confidence to be able to, to apply it. And then the other part is they, they might have been good in chiropractic technique and, and their philosophy, and it was the communication side that was deficient. And then you had the people who might have had the philosophy, might have had the technique, could even communicate, and didn't have the business side. So, so it's like there's So many attributes. So if we could graduate somebody that's competent, being able to analyze the spine and adjust, yeah, give a very specific adjustment, had competency of understanding our philosophy and being able to communicate the philosophy effectively within our world, and an ability to be grounded and confident in doing all that stuff, at the same time having a business sense, I think we have a winning combination. Yes.

Well, and that's what we were just talking about offline, is like after last weekend in Phoenix, Peter's perspective, and, and then knowing that As chiropractors, a lot of us are very much relational and heart-centered and went in to help people. And so this learning business acumen and being able to put that structure and utilize business concepts to learn how to grow our practice so we can reach more people is a huge part of what TRP is doing. But also, as we were chatting, like something that a lot of us need. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's. I think there are many pieces to it. If you ask most practicing chiropractors what they feel is the most deficient in chiropractic school, yes, you might hear the philosophy. Yes, you might hear technique, but probably across the board, they're— they don't teach enough business. And during my time in practice, I, I had 42 preceptors. So students who would finish off their program for a few months in my practice from a variety of schools. And I wanted to make sure that all of the students not only learned, you know, office proc— you know, the office procedure in terms of patient environment adjusting and all that stuff, communication, but also got a window to how does the business side run both at the front desk side as well as the accounts payable side. How, how that— so I would take time with my students and, and show them everything. And so it would be throughout their process. If they were there for 3 months, we'd take a few hours over that period of time and go over things. And you could literally see their eyes like glass over after about 15 minutes of talking about business. And it became apparent to me that Students do not have the bandwidth to learn business procedure. And yes, you could teach more business, but more than teaching business techniques, it's a business mindset. That, and that business mindset, in my opinion, has to start at the front side. You know, we're making it very easy for a person to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. Okay. By signing a piece of paper, right? Being given lots of money. And we don't take the responsibility to really building an understanding of what does that mean and how do you manage expenses and income in your life?

Right. Because we're all running mini businesses called our personal lives. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And so students need to start doing that. I mean, even as an institution, we need to look at that. If there's a shortfall, oh, we need more contributions. And I said, contributions are great, but the business itself, the business of academia needs to self-sustain itself. That what you are doing in terms of your product in most, our college's tuition that can sustain the, the foundation, the college. And yes, contributions are great. That's, you know, do capital campaigns to, to, you know, build buildings and grow your programs and things of that sort. But the business needs to run efficiently, effectively. And that is—

whether it's a practice or a school or personally.

And so that's what needs to be given to our students. I think today more than ever, because it's so invisible. Used to be, you'd always pay for things. I remember taking a seminar a number of years Years ago, I'll limit all your credit cards, cut up all your credit cards and do everything with cash. And the intention behind that was if you had to take, reach into your pocket and pull out bills to pay for things, you were gonna think twice whether you were gonna lay that money down. Now, just so easy to hand somebody a card or put your phone up and ding, ding, and it's almost unreal. It's numbers. It's not even, the money doesn't mean the same thing. And they think that's what they do in Las Vegas or any place you gamble. You're using chips because that doesn't have the same reality behind you. So, so I think having a business sense is what students need.

Yep. Well, and, and not all of us need that awareness too. I remember graduating chiropractic school and luckily I had a, a father that always says when I would spend money, he'd say, you know, that's the last $20 you'll pay off. And I kind of got annoyed at him for saying that to me. But also when I sat down in the room on the graduation day and I was handed my folder that showed how much student loan I had, that was the first time I'd seen that number. And to your point, whether it is learning how to pay back student loans or learning how to invest in the next phase of your business, whether that's launching a practice or investing back into the practice to hire the next associate or to get a bigger space or whatever, like all of them, there is a business sense that has to understand, like, I'm going to put this in and my, my left brain is going to go to work to understand how that also means that I'm going to be able to serve more, more will come back in through this exchange that happens. And the system will be better for me making this happen.

Right.

But if we haven't been taught to think like that, no, or at least not be exposed to that, you know, I, I worked in a chiropractic office when I was 19 and I, I sort of laughed because I remember certain things that stuck out to me working in this office and it was the CAs and like what they talked about. Cuz they like gave me a, like a privy to like life in the next 10 years of my life. but I certainly could have picked up a lot more about systems in an office if I would've even known what I was looking at. Right. And if you don't know what you're looking at, you don't know what you're looking at.

Well, I, I remember, although I, I never was a coach, uh, in practice, there are loads of people I coached. Mm-hmm. And for sure, very often when I talk to somebody, they'll say, oh, I wanna have a practice like yours. You know, wellness practice, people coming in, bringing their kids, staying for a lifetime. Uh, I, I would ask, you know, some very Very the rock bottom data in terms of statistics. How many new patients did you see last month? How many visits did you see last month? What were your billable services? What'd you collect? Those 4 numbers, you learn a lot. You learn a lot. There are loads of metrics and most people say, oh, I don't do that. And it's, what do you mean you don't do that? You're serving people. This just gives you a measure of what you're doing. And I can tell knowing those, just starting there, do they need to work on collections? Do they need to work on patient education? Do they need to work? You know, where, where can you begin to intervene to make better changes in your, your practice.

Well, with that, cuz Peter was just speaking and said like when he sold his practice or left his practice, there was over 200 people who were getting checked and adjusted weekly for over 20 years and that his PVA was over 200 visits for an average patient, right? So when you just reflect on that, Peter, like what do you think were some of the most impactful parts of how you practiced or how you ran things that you and Patty did right to create that?

The simplest one is you took care of people like family.

Yes.

Yeah.

That's not a metric.

Was that?

I said that's not a metric.

No. No. But your metrics tell you that.

Exactly.

Okay. Yeah. You know, when you have 200 people that have been under care once a week or more for over 20 years, they are family. There's a degree of trust.

Yeah.

That's down. Total transparency. If every patient paid the office visit fee, which when I left practice was, I think, $65 per visit. Every visit, $65. Every time they came in or their spouse or their kids came in. That's not affordable. You know, if we were to charge per visit for every single person who walked through your door for every adjustment, that fee-per-visit mindset Yeah. Would never sustain people. It's just financially improbable. I mean, if you, if you had a family of 4 and you had to pay $12,000, $15,000 a year to check that family of 4 once a week.

Yeah.

Forever. Yeah. Right. Most families would find that outside their budget.

Right.

Okay.

Yep.

And so it's creating a fee structure that makes it possible for people to do that. Right.

It's an integrity with how you want to practice.

Right.

And, and so, and, and that's helping us.

You know, I, I remember I, I once heard a speaker once say, I'm gonna guarantee you make the amount of money that you could conceive. Uh, let's say you pick a million dollars a year. Okay. Yeah. You wanna make a million dollars a year?

Great.

Okay. You wanna make a million? I'm gonna guarantee you're gonna have that. How many people do you wanna serve in a week? 50 or 500? Now, if the answer to that was 50, my, my system would never work.

Right.

But if what you wanna do is serve more people and know, and so you can make whatever amount of money in chiropractic that you want to. Okay. You, you just, you have to figure backwards, you know, what, what's your capacity? Yep. And what would you need to charge per person to, to, to pay you to receive that? And then how do you, how do you make that affordable to people?

Well, and as we were just talking about, like, I think especially in chiropractors leaving school or, or maybe they're associate and they're thinking about owning their own practice, a lot of times they haven't played with the math like that enough to just even conceptualize what could be possible. In a higher volume setting and how much abundance could flow to you, which is part of creating it, is you have to believe it's possible.

Right?

Yeah.

Have to believe that you have to believe it's possible. You know, there are loads of exercises you can do for that, but very often I'll ask people, I said, well, what's the most people you think you could serve in a day? And most people said, oh, 20 people a day. Great. And then the other people say 300 people a day. A person who sits at 20 people a day saying that that's the most people I could serve in a day. Look at the person who says, oh, I can serve 300 people in a day. They can, all the stories come up. Ah, how could you serve? How do you give quality care? How do you, how do you, how do you, how do you? But yet you go to somebody's practice where somebody is serving 250, 300 people in a day. Nobody's rushed. Right. There's connection, competency, and being able to deliver the adjustment, but it's all the, the mindset of what the stories that we attach. To things. If I ask most people, how long does it take for you to adjust your spouse?

Couple minutes.

Couple minutes. I said, well, do you love them? The thing is, a spouse or a child or a family member, you're not visiting. You're there, you're adjusting, and you're moving on. So if we took out the part that you think you need to do and realize that can still happen. I mean, at the end of my day, you could sit down with me. I could have seen 250, 260 people in a day. And I could probably tell you the names of all the people that I saw. I could also tell you if they were married or not, what their names of their kids are. They probably are also coming in. Yeah. I, I could tell you what their jobs were and what their hobbies were because as you meet people and get to know them over a period of time, you get to know them. So I don't need to visit when I'm with people.

Yeah.

If that interaction is just gonna be for a few minutes of my goal is I want a lifetime relationship with somebody.

Yeah.

I don't want, I don't want it to just be for acute care.

And you told people that.

Yeah, I did day one. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. I remember you or Patty saying that at some point when I was listening. Okay. So in kind of rounding this conversation out, we could talk forever. As you look ahead in your leadership position, as well as just your— you make some moves in chiropractic, you're around on all sorts of different seminars. Like, what is your hope for like this next, let's just say, several years in chiropractic? What would be a win that you see happening in the profession in this space that we're in right now?

I feel as though we need to make a clear delineation of what is the uniqueness of chiropractic. And, uh, the biggest problem that I believe happened is D.D. Palmer never defined what chiropractic was. And, uh, and, you know, you've had this push-pull from the leadership within our profession saying, oh, chiropractic is whatever the state says you're allowed to do. Yeah, to chiropractic is just this. Okay, I'm going to propose that the real magic of what we need to offer society today is doing something to build the health, well-being, and vitality of humanity.

Instead of reacting to the disease.

Rather than just focusing on a pathology that we're treating. So we need to move our languaging and our focus is what's going to allow the creation of better health. And if we can put our attention there, we will be the leaders in that. Because the practice of medicine has nothing to do with that. Medicine is defined as the diagnosis and disease-based. So if we wanna move away from an allopathic paradigm, we need to shift our languaging and our attention to optimizing the bodily function. So that first becomes in terms of our big objective, we're here to enhance wellbeing and vitality, not just treat conditions or problems. Obviously, we know it makes a difference. That's why we exist today. But part of that is also beginning to look at what are we addressing to get there? So we're not— the unique thing that we do is our spinal adjustment. And we're doing— what we're doing is a spinal adjustment. My next question is why you're doing that to take pressure off the spinal cord and the nervous system. How do you know you're doing that? Because you're addressing this phenomenon called the vertebral subluxation. If we're looking at the vertebral subluxation as a pathology, we are gonna remain as a subset in the medical process of allopathic protocol that we're gonna be treating this condition, a limited condition. And in the mind of the patient and the mind of our profession, we're renaming the condition. The condition isn't the cephalgia, the sciatica, the neuralgia, the bed slitting, the tongue tie. It's now the subluxation condition. So I'm proposing that our languaging begins to shift the subluxation as being pathology that's being addressed to a set of phenomena and indicators that let us know that the nervous system is in a less than optimal state.

Yes.

We're not treating that. We're saying, okay, what input can we give into the system that allows the body to organize itself at a higher level, to adapt to the world better, to have a greater degree of adaptability, flexibility, sense of coherence. So to remove this pathological idea of the subluxation and allow it to recognize that it's a set of findings that gives us a window of how we give input to the system. That necessitates that we have monitors and measures of the nervous system, meaning that we are specific in our analysis. So I would like to see the word treatment eliminated when we're in chiropractic world and leave that to the aspect of a practice that will be the diagnosis and treatment of a condition. And that we utilize the term adjustment to be two very, two specific things. It's the analysis of determining where to put a force and the force application. So an adjustment lives in the chiropractic world and the treatment lives within the medical paradigm.

Medical, yeah.

And that's creating clear languaging that bridges that and create fee structures within our practice that bridges that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it was Dr. Autumn Hicks-Cor who said to me, I, I'm, or she said she was at a seminar. You could hear a pin drop in this room where she said, I'm not here to talk about subluxation. And we were in a principled room. And so everyone was like, oh no, like, what is she going to talk about? She's like, I'm here to talk about everything that's right with you. And it was just that slight shift of those. Doesn't mean that subluxation is wrong. It's just like, she's like, We're about the innate intelligence. We're about, like, the body's amazing ability to adapt and be resilient. Let's talk about all of that more and be more about that than why it's subluxated in the first place. Right.

Otherwise, we're constantly having to make somebody broken. Now, I'm not minimizing all the things that we do, whether it be X-ray or HRV or, or a surface EMG. All of those are tools to give us a window into the spine. Into the body and how we can best care for somebody. But you can use that either from a pathological standpoint or you can use it from a salutogenic or vitality standpoint. And that's what I'm proposing that we need to, we need to have clarity on that. You know, I, I remember, you know, in practice we, we used the model of subluxation degeneration phase. You know, it should have a normal curve in the neck. Phase 1 is that curve is straightened. Phase 2, there's some degeneration. Phase 3, there's more degeneration. Phase 4, it's fused. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

And I, I remember I'd I look at that and a number of years of doing that as patient education, I would say I just created the subluxation disease. I said, oh, bad bone.

And I'm talking about everything that's wrong with you.

Right.

Yeah.

Right. And so I didn't stop doing that. But what I did is I reframed how I explained it. And I would go to a patient. I said, you know, I know you're looking at this and this shows that you're in phase 3. I said, and there's a part of you that's gonna say, oh my goodness, I'm falling apart. And I said, I want you to know that is a sign of the brilliance and the genius of your body. If that didn't happen, probably something worse would occur. I said, your body is striving, always striving to do the very, very best that it can. So to have them recognize that, yes, that isn't preferred, obviously it's not preferred. But what we want to do is minimize the need for the body to do that. If we could take pressure off the nervous system and the spinal cord, it will allow that body to adapt better. It may not need to continue. And no matter what, less pressure on the spinal cord and the nervous system, your body's gonna be in a better place.

Yep.

And, and that's the, that, that's the, the piece or the, the bridge that we need to begin to add in terms of the articulation.

So good. We all need to like go back and re-listen to that.

Yeah.

And then share it with a younger chiropractor too. So good, Peter. Thank you for all you do for our profession and being able to be a trailblazer to have a different conversation.

Hey, honor being here.

Mm-hmm.

Keep the power turned on. Love you guys.

Thanks, Peter. 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.

Hello, remarkable CEOs. It's Coach Dr. Eric Janowitz here. I'm excited to be in studio today with Mark from Aspen Live Well. Mark and Aspen Livewell is one of our Remarkable Success partners, and we just love our Remarkable Success partners because they help further our mission of helping our docs help more people. So welcome today, Mark. It's great to be in studio with you. Please take some time to tell the audience a little bit about you and what your business does.

Sure, sure. So I was a college basketball coach for 17 years. I got out of coaching in 2010. And started the whole body cryotherapy industry in the United States. So I was the originator, one of the originators of that industry and launched that. Got involved in light therapy about 2015 and then went into that full time about 2018. And I'm now with Aspen Live Well. I'm their VP and we've got 4 brands under that. We do Class 4 medical laser. We do whole body, full photobiomodulation light beds. We do panels for in-home use and then we do topical, the world's first optical clearing gel for on-skin and off-skin laser and light panels.

Great. That's great. And so, you know, we always are teaching our remarkable CEOs out there that, that every business exists to solve problems. Right. So can you kind of share with our listeners what problems do you guys specifically solve for chiropractors?

Yeah, I mean, light is a photochemical solution that most chiropractors can't address in their office. You— does it mean that adjustments don't have some chemical reactions in the tissue? They do, but not at a photochemical level that would be like injecting somebody or giving somebody a chemical, a drug. So, so first it would be like morphine. I can take a laser and have a morphine or tramadol or Toradol effect on a nerve. I can turn a nerve off within 10 minutes of the first visit and get 90% of people pain-free. Right away. So that, that's pretty amazing in and of itself. But then that the real benefit of light is the long-term tissue repair, ligament, tendon, bone, muscle, brain, disc, skin, all of those things. Every tissue in the human body heals about 30 to 40% faster with a photochemical infusion of light. And whether that's a laser or a panel or a bed, we're still getting those kinds of responses. So the first problem it solves is it gives chiropractors a whole nother patient population that they currently can't address with traditional chiropractic or decompression or the things that they're doing right now. So it's a whole nother SKU, and in business, we're always looking for as many SKUs as we can to bring revenue in. So it brings people in the door that may also take chiropractic services or may leave their chiropractor and go, well, I can go to my chiropractor and then I can go over here to, you know, Dr. Demartino and do light therapy. But why don't I just put everything over with Dr. Demartino and do it all at one stop? So that's the other part. The real problem we also serve for chiropractors is we give them a business within a business revenue stream. That doesn't involve their brain, their time, and their hands and their back. A light business can operate completely independent of the chiropractor. Chiropractor doesn't have to be there, doesn't have to meet the patient, doesn't have to do an assessment, doesn't have to write a prescription. The staff can run the light therapy business and produce as much or more revenue than a chiropractor can produce with their own time and their own hands or their own talent. So that's a pretty big metric for everybody that's in the Remarkable Practice that's in that looking to scale, right? How do you scale if you're just one chiropractor and one assistant and one front desk billing girl, right? You can only scale so far and you can't clone yourself, right? And, and assistants are more expensive, right? So staff and payroll are more expensive. So if you can clone a business within your business and it doesn't involve you and it can send you revenue, We call that freedom, right? I mean, that's when you get exit, when you get all the way to scale, grow, exit, that means it's sending me money and I'm, I, I can choose to continue to work or I can choose not to continue to be in the office and it still sends me money. And that's really what the light therapy business does for, for chiropractors.

Absolutely. And like you said, it helps solve complex problems when the body can't heal itself, right? And as chiropractors, we, you know, we remove subluxations to allow the body to heal itself and the body can do that. But when you can use other services that speed that process up, it's a huge advantage for, for the patient, obviously, but also for the, for the office as well. And so just for my listeners to say, you know, I use Mark's, you know, Class 4 laser in my office. We implemented it last year and it's just, it's pretty amazing what it can do. I was always kind of skeptical because I was always that hardcore chiropractor, no adjustment, only adjustment only. And then my, it's actually my associates that twisted my arm into getting one. It was, it was amazingly impressive. And what I love about it is that it sells itself. Like what Mark said earlier, that literally he can turn off a nerve in like 10 minutes like a treadmill does. It does that. And so it's the easiest sell ever. And we just started to offer it to our existing patients who had maybe other issues, knee issues, hip issues, or even spinal issues that just weren't progressing as fast as they want. We offer them a free session, right? And, and literally the free session sells itself. Sells itself because this person who's had years and years of chronic pain, let's say it's a shoulder issue, you do a 5, 10-minute session with laser, they go from a 10 out of 10 to like a 2 out of 10.

Yeah.

And suddenly they have this massive range of motion like, holy cow, I've had this for 10 years and now I can move like I haven't been able to in over 10 years. Now obviously that doesn't last. We need repeated sessions to reinforce that, but it sells itself because they're just like, oh my gosh. Right. Whereas most services don't give that immediate response, but it sells itself. So you offer a free session, existing people, and boom, they just buy packages. It's really as simple whole thing in the office. So super powerful. Yeah, I appreciate you guys for providing that. So, you know, as CEOs, we always talk about, you know, anything that we do, we want to get a positive return on investment for it. So how do you guys provide that positive ROI for docs? You kind of went into this a little bit, but I don't know if you can share like some of the, you know, the financial benefits that offices can see. What kind of return do the offices you guys work with typically see from using your services?

Yeah, from the laser, you know, we see anywhere from $12,000 additional revenue per month, all the way up to $30,000. It just depends on how many sessions you're doing a day. A course of care in laser is 6 sessions over the first 14 days. That's where we start everybody, no matter what they're coming in for. We want to hit them with 6 sessions in 14 days. That package usually in the United States sells for somewhere around $360 to $450. So if you're selling 3 6-packs a day, it's over $1,000 a day of laser revenue. We don't really do it by how many sessions we do because those are prepaid packages, but we do it by how many laser sessions we sell a day. So what I talk to most docs is when I do a demo day, I say, okay, now you've seen these results. You've seen us do 15 patients and get 15, 15 out of 15 results, 100% batting, 1,000% batting average, right? How many six packs do you think you could sell in a day? And they're like, oh, a lot. I said, do you think one? And they say, well, I think, yeah, that's a pretty low bar. Well, great. I mean, if you're selling one six-pack a day, you just put another $6,000 into your bank account. And that's our super low bar. I've got docs selling 5, 6 packs a day. So that's kind of the light there. The light bed is even better because it can actually operate 24 hours a day. It needs no practitioner. So you could have it memberships and we do that in membership. So you could say we're going to have memberships and people come into the office anytime we're open and do it. And then after hours when we're closed, they just give a little key fob, just like your gym, right? Your gym is open 24 hours a day, most of them now, and nobody has to be there. You just slide that key fob, and if you have an active membership, the door unlocks and you go in and do it. Well, the Theralyte can be done the same way. It unlocks the front door and then unlocks the room. Now, everything else in your office is locked up— records, laser, right? You know, nutritional— that's all locked up. But the Theralyte room and the front door open with that key fob. Now you have a 24-hour income with zero payroll attached. That's the dream, right? Payroll's the most expensive thing we can do in business. And then when you've got the Therago, which are our light panel products, doctors are now selling our Therago panels to their patients for in-home use. Because the patient may say, look, doc, I love coming up here and getting the whole body Theralyte, but I can only come twice a week. Is there something I can do at home to kind of accentuate and add to kind of homework, right? We're always looking to give patients homework. We know that when we— they come in once or twice a week and we adjust them and they go home and do nothing else, that's, that's an uphill battle. But if they'll participate and be compliant in the things we're giving them to do and the bridging exercises and all the stretching, right, they'll be better. So the same thing with light. People want something to do at home. So that's what the light panels. And then the last thing is the topical, which is Lucium, and that has just now hit the market. That's the optical clearing gel. You sell that to your patients. On the light bed side, they put that on their skin and then they get in front of a light panel or in the Theralyte bed, and that makes the skin no longer be a barrier to light where light is absorbed. It passes through like a window and goes deeper into the tissue. And then on the laser side with Lucium, you wouldn't actually sell Lucium to your patients, but Eric, you're going to find out when we send you next month your first bottle of Lucium, you're just going to put that on before you apply laser and you're going to have another level of response that you, you, you're, you know, ecstatically happy with what you're getting now. But now with that gel on there that optically clears the skin, light goes through even deeper and you get a faster result. So what's taking you 7.5 minutes on average to do right now with the laser is going to drop down to about 5 minutes, if even that much. So pretty amazing result with that. So all of those sweet package really build a business within your business. Again, that you can be gone for a month and that business operates without you as a practitioner.

Yep. It's that monthly recurring revenue model we love to have as CEOs as well. Yeah, that's great. And my experience was we, you know, we got a pretty nice high-end laser that, you know, wasn't cheap, but within 4 months it was paid off. And we honestly didn't even promote it that well. We could have probably done a way better job, but in 4 months it's completely paid off. And so everything now is just pure profit that comes in from it. And, you know, patients getting great results.

So with light therapy, you go from being pursuing and trying to sell and convince to, like you said, give them that first session and then they say, can I come back tomorrow? And usually it's no, but I'll see you in 48 hours. Right. It's a process, not an event. We just follow the process. But it makes your staff— a lot of us have a really good as practitioners in closing, but who's the main closer? It's not us every time. It's our, it's our staff. Path, and some of them aren't real great at that yet. And we're coaching them, and we're sending them to the remarkable practice, and we're teaching them how to close and overcome objections and reverse the risk if the patient's going to walk out the door and they're not going to buy, right? But the, the light therapy part of it makes the patient pursue them. So I've taken some really terrible closers and had them at about an 80-90% close rate because all they have to do is apply a laser and go, say nothing and the patient goes, I wanna do, I wanna come back, I wanna do it again. Can I buy more? And I like, yeah, well let's, let's start you with a 6-pack. We just did the first one. Let's buy 5 more and we'll schedule you for 48 hours from now. Well, we'll have you come back in again. So that's a really refreshing change. And then if you, if you look at the explosion of full body red light therapy right now in the marketplace, it's amazing how rampant it is and how fast it's growing. So now you have people going full body light therapy near me. Boom, you pop up, they walk in the door and you haven't spent a dime bringing that, that new prospect in, right? We're always— cost of customer acquisition is really important. Well, you spend $0 on customer acquisition and they buy a $200 a month membership and stay with you for an average of 13 months. Can you beat that return? I mean, you can't beat it in the stock market. It. So it's a pretty good rate of return.

Oh, absolutely. And what I really love about you guys too is your customer service, like your onboarding. And so like, I'll share with the listeners, you know, when, when you— one of my hesitations about bringing laser in is I just didn't understand it and I didn't know how to sell it, right? That was really one of my things. And but what you guys did so well is you, you know, you know, Mark came into my office, spent— he flew to my office on his dime, spent a whole day with my team, explained like the chemistry behind it, like what light does in the cells and why it works so well. So my team would understand on a very basic level. And he told me, he had me do something. I was shocked. He said, bring in 10 of your, your biggest challenges. There are patients here, bring 'em in and we'll do a free session with them and I'll walk you through and actually do it. So we did that. We brought in some really challenging cases and these people got unbelievable results. Like unbelievable. I mean, I'll share the one guy had horrible knee arthritis. I don't know if you remember this guy, Mark, but horrible. He is probably only 60, not that old, but man, horrible knee arthritis where he kind of walked crooked. 10 years of this pain, did laser on both of his knees. He was able to walk normally with No pain. And he was just blown away. And, and, and so I was like, I could not believe immediate results happen with that. And so it's, so I love how you guys really kind of hold the practitioner's hand with, you explain it all, you, you train the team how to do it. So it's, it's just a really easy onboarding process and just makes everything much simpler. So I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I, I always prefer to do that in person. I mean, they, yeah, a lot of them will do, send you a manual and do some online courses. And I, I think that face-to-face person, cuz we're not just showing you how to use the device, we're, we're showing you how to educate the client. Your educated patients are your best patients that know why you're doing what you're doing. They buy in, they, they're compliant with everything you ask them to do because they have the most education. The people that are just there and go, I just walk in, get fixed, and walk out and really don't think about it, they tend to drift off. And, and that— now we talk about ROI again, lifetime value of a patient decreases the higher the education patient, the, the higher the lifetime value of that patient, the longer they stay with your practice.

Absolutely. It's great. So, Mark, tell me, where can our, uh, how can our listeners connect with you guys, learn more about what you do?

Yeah, I always just give people— I mean, obviously you can go to the, the website, askthenlivewell.com. It's got everything under there, all 4 brands. But I just give people my email and cell phone that I like people just call me directly. I, I mean, I have thousands of, uh, clients like you across the the world in 21 countries that have my cell phone, and that's the way I like to do it. So email is Mark Murdock, first and last name, M-A-R-K-M-U-R-D-O-C-K, at aspenlivewell.com. And then cell phone is 214-641-1827. If I'm not asleep and I'm alive, I'll answer.

That's true, you always do when I text you. So that's great. So listeners, definitely reach out, see how Aspen Livewell can help you guys help more people. So I want to thank you so much for being here, Mark. Thanks again for being a success partner, for supporting our, the TRP, supporting all our clients, and again, just helping our docs impact more people in our communities, which is what TRP is all about. So Remarkable CEOs, remember to tune in each week to the Remarkable CEO Podcast. Everyone have a blessed day. We'll see you guys next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Build Your 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.