294 - Pirate Ship vs. Battleship

When you do not set expectations and agreements and your culture and your business is assumptions and fantasies, you're running a pirate ship and you better get ready for drama. You better get ready for rough seas. So with the patients and with your team members, Dr. Pete, set your business so your culture runs on expectations and agreements like a battleship versus the assumptions and fantasies that you'll find on a pirate ship.

Hello and welcome to the Remarkable CEO Podcast, a show dedicated to chiropractors who want to transform their job into a business so that they can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one. With your hosts, Dr. Pete Camiolo and Dr. Steven Fransen.

Welcome back to another episode of the remarkable CEO podcast, Chiropractic's number one business podcast. I'm Dr. Pete Camiolo.

And I'm Dr. Steven Fransen.

Hey, thanks for joining us today. Truly is an honor for us to be on the ship with you, to be journeying with you through the waters. Dr. Stephen going all the way back when we first started recording in 2019. Who knew what torpedoes were going to come at US in year one of our podcast in 2020 20, we, we've been going through the seas of the change that we've been through for the last five years and man, we are thrilled to be on the journey with you. If you are have been with us on the ship for a while. Hey, we are so thankful and grateful to have been journeying with you. If you're new to this CEO podcast, welcome aboard. We're so glad to have you with us. We just love the fact that, you know, we get to journey with you. That's our goal. Our goal at this podcast, Dr. Stephen, is that on a weekly basis you would just get your cup filled, that we would just be able to fill your cup so that as you continue to walk out your calling, as you continue to serve your mission, as you continue to be on purpose, that this would be something that would keep you on, on track. It'd be something that would be a source of encouragement, a source of enlightenment, a source of challenge for you and giving you some direction. So, Dr. Stephen, I am excited because actually we have a theme at our team building immersion. And this is you and I just coming in hot in preparation for our upcoming team building merges that are going to be happening both in us and Australia. And we're going to have a theme and we're going to have some fun with this theme and we're going to be talking about turning that pirate ship into A battleship. And today we're going to really unpack a little bit of what that means. We're going to get, we're going to get clear today. So for all of you are listening, this is going to be a great episode for you. Dr. Stephen, looking forward to our time together.

I love the story, man, and I love this theme. It's a lot of fun and it's perfect for our remarkable team building immersion. You know, when people ask me what I do for a living, like, I'll be on an airplane, I fly around a lot. I have that conversation pretty regular with people. It's like, so, so they'll hear me make. What do you, what do you do?

Like, what.

And I'm like, I turn pirate ships into battleships. And it's just a great conversation starter. People like, tell me more. I mean, I think, I don't think it needs much of a description if you're a business owner, if you are a leader at any level, if you're leading people, even if that means leading a family. Pete with his 15 kids, I mean, there are, there are mornings when the Cameolo House runs like a pirate ship. I'm sure of it. And thinking this morning might have been one of those based on, you know, some of the things I heard. Right? So. And other days it runs like a battleship. Right? So. And we want to have some fun with this because that pirate ships are awesome, battleships are awesome. They're all awesome. We just want to ask you the question of what do you feel you're.

Called to do, right?

So are you, are you called to captain a pirate ship or captain a battleship? It's like, what do you think God has seeded for you? Like, what do you think net net is going to be the greatest arc of a career for you? What is it? What do you feel is going to be the most sustainable, scalable, durable, eventually transferable? What's your, what is your legacy play like? So there are characteristics of a pirate ship and characteristics of a battleship that I think we can have some fun unpacking here and just asking yourself a question. It's, it's not really, am I a pirate ship or am I a battleship?

Right?

So is my practice a pirate ship? Is my practice a battleship? Is my team much of pirates or am I running the Navy? Right? So it's a continuum.

It's.

This is a slider, right? And we all know that from week to week to week, that slide moves around a little bit, right? So just, just is, it's like, to what degree am I Functioning like a pirate ship here or to what degree am I functioning like a battleship? I think it's a healthier way to look at this Dr.

Beat.

And just to recognize like, hey, listen, we all walk with a limp, right? So this is not about perfection, it's about progression.

All right?

And let's just make this actionable, right? So I'd love to break it down. I can kick it off. And again, through the lens of Pirate ships are awesome. Battleships are awesome, but they are different, right? So as regardless of where you are in your, in the arc of your career, are you in launch, build, scale or exit? So wherever you are, just be asking yourself, where am I functioning more like a pirate ship and is that serving me and my destiny well, or am I focused or functioning more like a battleship? So let's start with just the state, right? So I will tell you like some of the greatest practices in the world spend a season as a pirate ship.

And I'm using the word practice really intentionally here because, you know, we differentiate practice from business, right? So some of the greats, right? Some of the all time greatest hits, right? So the legends, they spent a season as pirates, you know, you can ask them and they're proud of it.

I.

Yes, you're describing me, right, So I get it. But they could also very quickly tell you the stories of pain that came on the backside of that. Whether it was just not sustainable, it wasn't scalable, the impact that it had on their health or their family or when it came to the exit, or you know, just the legacy play like. So whereas battleships are sustainable, battleships are scalable, they're durable. It's where you take a job and turn it into a business, right? So I love the expression you can't fire a cannon from a rowboat, right? You bolt cannons onto battleships, right? So ultimately my vision, my view for, for chiropractic and how we can serve humanity at the highest level, Dr. Pete, is to create battleships, right? To have the infrastructure that have the culture, that have the people, the team and leadership that it takes to really run a multi generational battleship that really makes a generational impact. So first, let's start with the, with the state. So passion driven versus mission driven, right? So pirate ships very often are just passion driven, right? So they're super passionate and you know, they're the first ones to tell you all about it, right? Which is awesome. Passion is an awesome energizer of a practice and a business, but it just can't be the replacement for infrastructure and structure. In a business. Right. So it can't just be, hey, we're going after this as much as we can with just lots of passion and talent.

Right.

And we're just going to figure it out as we go.

Right.

Versus the battleship. The battleship which is mission driven. Clarity of vision, knows exactly where it's headed, knows the course that it's got charted. Right. And it's got a very specific definition of, of how we're serving our purpose to manifest our vision. Battleships are mission driven.

Yeah Doc. It's such a powerful framework that, and I love that we are able to give the perspective of Both are awesome. They're just different. My message here is, is really simple. I think for all of you who are listening in is if you could imagine trading in your pirate ship in exchange for a battleship. That's how I want you to think about this. If you were having a vehicle, let's say you had a vehicle, you were going to trade it in, you're going to get a new vehicle. Like I just want us coming into this in terms of. Most likely we all have. We all started by building a, a pirate ship. We all started out with a pirate ship probably in many ways. I know I, my, mine was a pirate ship. I would say I had because I, and again you've heard my story. I'm very thankful and grateful for all my coaching and coaches and mentors that I had and I. The very intentional investments in those things early stages of my career so that I would at least start exit the harbor with a, with a vessel that was going to be able to take me to do significant things. Which I'm grateful that God blessed us and we did. But, but even though that was true to a degree, we did have a vessel that was, had capacity. It was still a, it was a pirate ship. It really was. And so for all of you pirates out there, ahoy. You know, but I'm going to encourage you like in this theme of 2025, hey, we're getting a new wine skin for the new wine. I want you to think about trading in your pirate ship in exchange for a battleship. And, and as we go through these, just recognize that all those people that Dr. Steven, you shared and I shared relationships with who we love and you know, have, have a pirate ship, had a pirate ship. But they came to that point that you just said where they realized that this is not sustainable. This doesn't exit well. Unfortunately we've been on the side of seeing the exits not going well. Been in too many of those conversations I think probably a lot of you have heard about those things happening. We are, we, we often are intimately involved in those, in those processes, in our positions and roles in our profession. So we come at this from a place of perspective that's deep and that's visceral because we are in situations and, and, and we've encountered that. And so while the pirate ship has a purpose, I'm going to imagine, I want you to trade it in. Just imagine trading it. And so here's the thing. Passion driven versus mission driven. Mission driven doesn't mean you don't have passion, okay? It means you have passion that is organized inside of a mission, right? You distribute the passion through the mission. And, and so because it's organized in a, in your vision story, clearly defined vision statement, it's organized inside of your purpose statement, inside of your premise, it's organized inside of your product. Your passion is distributed through it. But it's in a way that's organized, it's and, and systematized and that's, that's the difference. You still have passion. I mean, some of the most passionate people are, you know, are on a battleship, right? So it's, it's not that. So the second attribute, Dr. Stephen, was being wind blown versus course charted. With the charted course. So here, think about this. So the wind blows on all boats, right? Just like the tide comes in and all boats rise, the wind blows and it will have an impact on any vessel, right? But when we rely on the wind to blow us and we go wherever it takes us, that's wind blown. Wind blown is, let's see where it takes us today. Let's see what happens in Q1, you know, let's see how, you know, this lack of a marketing strategy goes for our new patient goal, you know, or whatever. Let's look at this through the lens of, okay, if I'm being blown by the wind, I'm allowing this situation and the circumstance to direct my path versus situation. Circumstances are happening. But we have a charted course, so we're going to be able to navigate through to our target towards our destination, even in the midst of the storm. It doesn't mean that, as we know, Dr. Stephen, there are some times when you have to target, go around the iceberg that's there. You actually have to change course because there's an iceberg or there's an island you didn't see, and we're going to have to go around the island to get to our destination. So course charter doesn't mean like, you know, Full speed ahead and battle ramps like drive through it. No, it doesn't mean that. Sometimes you got to take a left and then turn back right to get back on track. There's going to be course charted means there's going to be changes and we're going to stay the course because we have a destination in place. So course charted to me means there's a destination that's a clarity, that clearly defined goal, which is your vision measured. It's a measured vision that's course charted. So we have a path, we're going to get there. So do you have that for your business, Dr. Stephen? This is us looking at our map and saying, hey, do we have a, we have a chart and are we on track?

Do we have the plan? We have a plan, A, plan B. We have contingency plans. We're checking, we're assessing and adjusting as we go. And we readjust the course, Right? So brute force versus leveraged operations. So pirate ships are run and grown on brute force, whereas battleships are run and grown with leveraged operations, Right? So brute force is just, hey, put it on my back.

Right?

So there's more that needs to be done. Let's do it. Let's just push harder, let's work longer, let's work stronger, right? So let's just get this thing done, get our legs moving and yeah, you know what? There's lots of hustle regardless of how you do this. Like, you don't, you know, easy doesn't pay well.

Right.

You're not going to get out of this without some work, right? So. But at the end of the day, it's not about you as the captain of the ship, just trying to build this thing, grinding on brute force, but rather leveraged operations, which means that you have operationalized and you've professionalized the business so that you have recruited the people. And, you know, it's not about just you doing everything. It's creating scalability and durability, right? So that you have optionality. Whereas what is the highest and best use of my time? So leveraged operations implies that you have some depth in your bench, that you have redundancies across the positions, right? And you have the right person in the right seat focused on the right.

Work, the right way.

Hey, Doc, Steven Fransen here. If you're like me, you know that we're in the business of saving lives. And when business is good, everybody wins. That's the good news. But here's the bad news. Most chiropractors don't own a business at all they own a job. It's a job they love, but it's a job. And far too often it feels like that job owns them. Is this true for you? Do you own a business or a job? Have you built and do you run your practice on brute force? Does it rely fully on your time, your effort, a pound of your flesh? Are you responsible for all growth, for all new patient generation? How about new patient conversions?

Is it all up to you?

How about patient care and delivery? Are you a sole practitioner, an owner operator who owns the practice but is also the only one that his head down and bum up taking care of all the patients? Is revenue generation or collections all up to you? Let me ask you the most telling question, Doc. What would happen if you took 90 days off? What breaks in my experience, most on purpose chiropractors do not lay awake at night worrying about their practice. They worry about their business. Let's slay that dragon. The Remarkable CEO program has helped hundreds of chiropractors, characters just like you, turn the job that they love into the business that they've always wanted. Are you ready to run and build your practice on leverage instead of brute force? Do you want to create the scalability and durability that will allow you to make a bigger impact and a bigger income? What would it mean to grow your practice, increase your productivity and your profitability? Do you want to get your time freedom back? Are you ready to turn your pirate ship into a battleship? If this sounds like you, then the remarkable CEO program is for you. Just last year, 53 of our remarkable clients received the Seven Figure Club Award, meaning they hit the million dollar mark for the first time or their next million dollar level, be it 2 million, 3 million, 10 million, up to 36 million and growing. Now, Doc, is it crazy to imagine that your practice could be next? Click the link below and learn how to apply. Apply for the next cohort of the Remarkable CEO program. We look forward to working closely with you in creating the business that supports your remarkable life, not competes with it.

Yeah, Dr. Stephen, I think this idea of leverage is a word that you'll hear us talk about a lot. And you know, I personally, growing up doing a lot of landscaping work, we had one of my favorite tools, which was called the bar. And the bar was this big black bar that when we had to, because we did, I put in a lot of, you know, patios and driveways, a lot of stonework. And we had to get this bar because there was no other way. You could, you could be pickaxing around that thing, digging around it all day long, it was one of the most amazing things to experience. Dr. Stephen, when you had a boulder, you just couldn't move something. Oh, my God. Hey, go get the bar. I remember when that, that announcement would be made, somebody said it, it would sometimes be me. Somebody said, go get the bar. You know, and it was like, all of a sudden it was like this. Everybody just goes. It was like this sober, like, feeling came. I was like, oh, the bar. The bar was leveraged. The bar was like, okay, this is going to need the bar. Like we, our brute force. It ain't going to get that boulder moving, at least not today. And we got to get this done today. So we are, we're leveraging operations because we're on a mission. We have a timeline, We've got a job to get done, right? And so you go get the bar. So leverage is huge, which is, which is a big part of all of our success. So that's the, that's the next one. It's chaos and stress versus having a clear vision and a plan. What we like to say is where, where you lack, you know, data, you have more drama. Okay, so if you think about this in terms of, you know, having a clear vision and a plan, this is, do you have it written down? Do you have, do you know what the data says? Do you know what the goals are? Do we know what our historical performance has been? Do we know the things that we do that influence driving better outcomes? If we have that, then we can have a very data driven, process driven conversation and we're going to have less drama. When you, if you find that there's more chaos and drama, there's going to lead to more stress. Stress for you, stress for everybody in the team, stress for your patients coming in, they feel it. You might think like, oh, they don't feel it. They do. Everything will float up to the surface eventually and you're going to see that. And so what fixes this, Dr. Stephen? You know, having this chaos and this stress. That seems to be a trend. It's like, man, I'm dealing with this again, like it's another chaotic situation. More stress, most likely. We lack a clear vision and a clear plan. We have. We're relying too much on memory, we're relying too much on, on emotion and not enough on the data and not enough on process, procedure, and systems. So we've got to get clear on our vision, but we've got to get clear on the plan as well.

So I love this concept of of clarity, right? So clarity being your greatest accelerator, and wherever you experience chaos and stress at, first thing you should first stop is like, do we have clarity? Like, do we have clarity? Like, what are we. Where are we trying to go? Like, what is our goal? What's the problem we're trying to solve? Does everybody have that clarity? Right? So this is. It's just the first place to just kind of. Kind of ground yourself, you know, say, okay, do we. Okay, does everybody get it? And we have a plan, and everybody understands that plan, and they're rolling that plan, man. It's just so important. All right, so how about pirate ships are busy and complex versus battleships are productive and profitable?

Busy, young and complex. This is the motion piece of this. We're as productive and profitable as the movement, right? So everybody knows the book traction, but most people don't know the book wheel spin, right? Wheel spin traction was actually in response. This concept of traction in business is in response to this concept of wheel spin in business. Wheel spin is when you are picture a truck stuck in the mud, your tires are spinning, right? The only thing worse than sitting still in the mud is actually sitting in the mud with your tires spinning because you are roasting your resources, time, energy, focus and money. You're spinning, you're consuming resources when you're having wheel spin, right? So traction is when your treads, the treads of your tire, dig in and grab terraforma and lurch the machine forward, right? That's when motion turns into movement, right? So traction is the key to taking all that motion consumption and turn it into movement, right? Which is gaining growth, right? So that's the productivity side of this. And being able to do it efficiently is what drives the profitability of it, right? So the way to achieve both of those productivity and profitability, the way to gain traction is accountability, right? So making sure that you recognize that the key here to go from a pirate ship to battleship is accountability.

It's good. We like to say that everything that you want in your business and your life is on the other side of greater accountability. So where could you increase accountability? There you will increase traction. Where you increase accountability, there you will increase productivity and profitability. Huge. One of the things I love that we teach our patients is that there's two different types of chiropractic care and one of the types palliative care. You wait until, you know you have a symptom, you have an ache or pain, and then you go to the doctor and you tell them, hey, this is where it hurts. And Then they take care of where it hurts and then you leave. And the next time it hurts, you go in, you go back to the doctor. That's the traditional medical model. It's the treatment and the alleviation of symptoms. And that's the definition of success in that world. When you choose to go that path, that route that leads to results that are unpredictable because there are, there's no clear plan, right? So the recommendations, there's no clear recommendations for care, therefore, the results are unpredictable. And that's not what we do, that's not what we teach, right? We talk about how, you know, with corrective care, you have a clear plan, you have goals, we have objectives, we have outcomes. We're driving. Well, when you're in a battle in a pirate ship, it's unpredictable, right? Just like the wind is blowing you where we're going and there's chaos and stress, there's also this level of unpredictability. Now, I'm not saying, and Dr. Steven's not saying that, you know, everything's going to go your way every time. Unpredictability doesn't mean on the other side, everything is going to go exactly way you design. It's what are the best practices to create predictable success, right? So we want, we want results that are predictable. We have the better best chance of getting the goals and outcomes, right? My recommendation always based on two things, your goals and my findings. So if I have clear findings and you have a clear goal, I can give you the best plan that's going to get there. Are you ready to hear my best recommendations for you? So this idea of unpredictability versus creating durability and this sustainability, this is that it's having a plan that's in place that has, it's directly connected to a goal. If you don't have a clearly defined goal, you don't have a clear understanding of where you're currently at in your business. It's very hard to create durability and sustainability. Dr. Steven, a lot of people are moved by the word scalability, right? They're like, hey, I want us to be in scale or scaling. That's awesome. But the durability is what eludes most, right? That's the can. If you took six months off, what, what would happen in your business, what would break? Right? That's the durability piece. Is, is this truly durable? Will this sustain without me even in your absence? Right? That's that. So unpredictability is the exact opposite end of the spectrum. And you know, just like we teach our patients, listen, you can, you can go at your healthcare that way. Absolutely. But it's gonna, it's gonna lead to a life of crisis to crisis. And that's right, you know, unpredictable results. Hey, we don't need to manage your health from crisis to crisis. We have a better way. We can create durability, we can create sustainability. We can do that with your business just like you help people do with their health.

I love that. And perfect tee up for the next one, which is rough seas versus smooth sailing, right? So we tell people in with their health, listen, you, you're going to have health challenges, right? So, but I would always teach my patients that it pays to be healthy when you get sick. Let me say that again. It pays to be healthy when you get sick. So there are sick people walking around who are unhealthy and when they get sick, it's a bigger deal.

Part of your wellness lifestyle is you are going to have symptoms, you are going to fight infection, you are going to have quote, unquote sickness, right? So you will be. But it pays to be healthy when you get sick, right? So when we talk about smooth seas, rough seas versus smooth sailing, if you're, if, if you intend to set sail and get out into the ocean, you are going to experience rough seas, right? So the question is, is, are you going to be constantly in rough seas or are you going to have the opportunity and the ability to choose to either circumnavigate those rough seas or to head into the storm because you are, you are seaworthy and you are ready and you are called to be in that rough sea is like, there's a difference between those, right? So when you're. One is, you're on add a fact. And the other one is that you recognize that that's just going to be part of it and we are ready for it, right? So if you're flying in a commercial airliner and you're flying from Boston to la, very often you'll hear the pilots say, hey, we're going to experience some turbulence. So I'm going to change altitude here. It's like they're not surprised by the turbulence. They know the turbulence is up ahead, right? There's all kinds of radio communications and they've got the data and the technology that alerts them that they get turbulence up ahead and they can choose to get out of that turbulence by changing course, right? Same thing with us in our business, right? So at the end of the day, there's going to be strategies and technology and culture that will either lead to more rough seas than you need or more smooth sailing. Right? So I like to look at it this way. If you run a business that's based on expectations and agreements, you're going to have less drama and you're going to have smoother sailing. Would you agree? It's like if you're doing a great job of setting up expectations and agreements with your team and with your patients, you're going to have less drama. And to me that means smoother sailing doesn't mean you're never going to have rough seas or get into any storms. It just means that you are by nature going to have smoother sailing. And expectations and agreements is a strategy or a technology to employ to decrease your chances of having rough seas and increase your chances of having smooth sailing. The opposite of expectations and agreements is running your business on assumptions and fantasies.

When you do not set expectations and agreements and your culture and your business is assumptions and fantasies, you're running a pirate ship and you better get ready for drama. You better get ready for rough seas. So with the patients and with your team members, Dr. Pete, set your business so your culture runs on expectations and agreements like a battleship versus the assumptions and fantasies that you'll find on a pirate ship.

Which is interesting because the rough seas are just as they are manifestation of your lack of having expectations and agreements. Right? We create this so that that one is internal, right? That one is self perpetuated like you create oftentimes the rough seas. It's a, it's an effect, a side effect of us not having those clear expectations and agreements, which there's a room for all of us to grow and improve here. And you know, last difference between a pirate ship and a battleship is that, you know, you own a job if you're on a pirate ship, right? You, you own a job if you, speaking to you as a CEO, if you, you know, if you leave, if you leave, if you're the captain of the pirate ship and you leave the ship, ain't no treasure gonna go got, get got by anybody else. You know, it's like that ship is, that ship has sailed, you know, and it's just that ship, it sinks to the bottom. And now it's a place where people go dive in and they go find, you know, really cool fish that live near the sunken pirate ship because they went down because the, the captain's gone. You know, yo, you, you exit the pirate ship there, there ain't no more mission. And this goes back to the first thing we Said is that, you know, it dies with the, with the leader, you know, the. And, and unfortunately, in chiropractic, you know, we've seen this a lot where, you know, down goes the leader, down goes the practice, and that's not a legacy. And Dr. Steven, you talked about this right at the beginning. We talked about this multi generational view. If you have a multi generational view of your business and you say, hey, this business will live on well beyond me in my, my lifetime, then you will be forced to turn your job into a business because you know that it won't if not sustainable. And that's what a battleship is. Battleship says, you know what? I built this job, but this job is centered around me. I'm an owner, I'm the operator. And you could have gotten all the other pieces right and turned your pirate ship into battleship. But you've got to make sure you turn your job into a business and that's that transferable value. That's where someone would say, you know what, Dr. Stephen, I love your boat. I'm going to buy it. And you know what? I want to buy your boat. I'm actually. There's a line of 10 people behind me that all have their checkbook in their right hand and they all wanted to be the first one in line because people are going to compete to buy your boat. They're going to say, I want to buy that ship. That is a battleship, man. They got. Look at that crew, man. Look at, look at how, man, it's shining. Check out the windows, man. It's shining, man, I love. Man, look at that thing. Look at that, the hole on that thing, man. Like, I love that mass. They've got. Like, I love the paint job on the side. They did a great job. Like that thing. Look at, look at all the, the, the medals that thing has won for the, the wars that it's fought. Like that thing has. That is battle tested, man, that. I want that ship. Like, I, I want to have that in my legacy. Transferable value. Says, man, I will, I will. There are people lined up there said, man, when that, when that boat goes on sale, oh, I'm. It's like Facebook marketplace. You know how people are on Facebook. They're just waiting for that next thing to come. I was like, as soon as one comes up, I'm all over that. As soon as they see that battleship goes up for sale, we're coming after it. That's transferable value. People will compete to get access to buy to get that. They will also compete and Line up to come work at that place and make man. I love to get a job on that ship. I want to go on that ship. Guys. That ship has not sailed. That ship has not sailed. That ship is just coming in in 2025. I'm telling you right now, there is hope for you and for your future. You gotta. You gotta trade in that pirate ship. You gotta trade it in for a battleship. That ship has come in. It's time for you to board the ship. It's time to turn our pirate ship into a battleship. It's time to set sail. Please stick around for more business insights from this week's bonus interview with our remarkable success partner, dedicated to helping you more successfully help more people. Enjoy.

All right, guys, Dr. Pete Camiolo here. Excited to be in the studio. My studio. And Mark's in his studio recording. And just gonna have a great discussion here today with Mark Murdoch from Aspen Thera Light. I actually got to meet you, Mark, for the first time in person. We were in Tampa. It was so good to meet you. Being together in the room. I love your energy and I love what you're doing and what you're up to. I was actually introduced to you by Franton, and I know that you've been running with the UAC Group, and, man, you're doing great things in our space, and I love that you've got a heart to help chiropractors, help more people to solve problems that people have, drive greater impact, drive greater revenue and doing in a way that's remarkable. So we're honored to have you and your company. You guys are success partners, and we're excited to have you on board here in 2025 and excited for big things that are coming and things that are already happening. So, Mark, why don't you just little intro who you are to our audience? You know, we've got chiropractors listening in from all over the world, and they love learning and they love being remarkable CEOs and building remarkable businesses and doing it in a more remarkable way. So, you know, who are you? And give our audience a little taste of who's who they're listening to here today.

Yeah, thanks, Pete. Appreciate it. Good to be on. Yeah. My background is actually I was a college basketball coach for 17 years up until 2010. That was my true passion in life. I thought I'd do it forever. God had different plans. And I got out of coaching in 2010 and was fortunate enough to be on the team that introduced whole body cryotherapy technology into the United States as a business model. It had never been done. 2015 was on part of the team that introduced what we would call medical grade whole body light therapy to the US market. There was aesthetic based whole body light before that, but not really what we call medical grade. And I've just been doing consulting and have about 400 chiropractors that are personal clients and about 35 professional athletic teams, about 35 Division 1 athletic departments that we do both laser and full body light therapy with and consult with and grow. I've been the CEO with startups, two startup companies and taking those to Inc 5000. I've been an employee, I've been a guy that's out there doing this stuff every day and trying to get it off the ground and then been at the other end. So got a pretty good depth of, of experience. I don't know what they call it knowledge. I call it a lot of failure, a lot of dumb tax. And I can, I can tell people definitely what not to do.

Well, I love that you're in, we're in good company then, you and I and then everybody that's listening to this because I think we could all relate with you. We've all been in the position where wear all the hats. You know, we're, we're doing everything from attraction to conversion to retention to the team building to collections and doing it in ways that we failed and doing it ways that we are successful. The beautiful thing for you is that you've learned through your journey and you're now at this stage and you're, you're coming into a remarkable practice community of doctors who are just hungry to learn and really, you know, enthusiastic about new ways to reach the people that they're serving, their communities. And that's why when you and I discussed what you're up to, I said, man, you would be a phenomenal partner with remarkable practice. And so obviously you and I, we were able to meet at the event. You came to our first event in 2025 and it was just awesome to have you there and just getting to see what you're doing and learn more and it was awesome. So, so happy to have you as an expert and guest here on our podcast here today. So, you know, my first question for you honestly is tell me a little bit more about what you're up to now, Aspen, Sarah, Ly, what you guys are doing. You know, I want our audience to really have a full understanding of what it is that you're up to and, and why you've chosen to Work with chiropractors and how you're helping these guys.

Yeah, I mean, photobiomodulation is what we call light therapy, the scientific term. So if you go under PubMed and search and you search photobiomodulation, there's about 81 different names that light therapy is called around the world. But photobiomodulation is our science term. I have a love for it because in, you know, 35 years in human performance, human development, and the last 14 in really chiropractic world, I've never seen anything that moves the needle more for patients. Health for patients, immediate impact on their body, for long term, impact on their overall health and wellness and not just quantity of life, but quality of life. So it became a passion for me and I kind of left everything else behind. And it's 99.9% where I spend my time, because I don't see a bigger way to impact more people around the globe than by helping practitioners impact their patients. I'm not a practitioner. I don't have a skill with my hands. I don't have probably any tactile ability or any of that, but I can put modalities in the hands of chiropractors that may reach literally millions of people around the world without me ever meeting them. And that's a real joy to me as a coach, as somebody who doesn't come from a sales background, I never have. I just do everything as an educator and a coach, and that's my passion, is to teach people about photobiomodulation and light therapy.

I'll tell you something, when you started breaking this down for me, I was just like, man, this is gonna be such a good podcast episode and time for us to meet. So, you know, we use a term, subluxation, which is hard enough for people to understand, and so we try to make it simple for people. For you, photobiomodulation. Say that 10 times fast.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

So, you know, and you said this is light therapy is what the. They call it on the street, but what it actually is is photobiomodulation. Talk to me a little bit about this. What is it? What is it actually doing?

Yeah. So light therapy is actually chemical medicine. People think it's like an infrared sauna. Well, that's not chemical. That's. That's heat that deep heats the tissue from the inside out, causes you to sweat out toxins. That's far infrared. We're talking about red and near infrared, literally two opposite ends of the spectrum. What, what light therapy does is it goes in as waves of light, rays of light. And your, your body has molecules called chromophores, which in Latin, those two terms, chromo and four mean color lover. And every ray from the sun, every wavelength is a different color. We can see the red, the blue, the green, the yellow. We can't see the many, many near infrared spectrum, but they all have actual colors. So every wavelength is a different kind of photochemical response in the tissue. So when that light comes in, hits a chromophore, that triggers a chemical response in the tissue that has two primary functions. But that chemical response is dose based medicine. That means a person who is 65 pounds, a person who is 110 pounds, a person who's 250 pounds, you would never give the same dose of chemical medicine, aspirin, tylenol, morphine, right. You would have adverse or no reactions. You could gave them the wrong dose. Light is the same way. You have to give the person sitting in front of you the appropriate dose and the appropriate dose for them at whatever stage they're at. Because your dose should actually, if you're doing it right, should decrease as that person heals. So it's pretty important. But those two main chemical reactions are, number one, it disassociates the nitric oxide particle from the oxygen. And as you go back to your time in school, when we looked at chemistry and photochemistry and what's happening is oxygen is supposed to flow into the cell, supposed to flow into the mitochondria. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and uses that oxygen to produce adenosine triphosphate, ATP. It's what every cell in the body uses for function. What happens as we age and we get exposed to environmental factors, toxins, lack of sleep, stress, too much exercise, not enough exercise, right. Most people fall into not enough. Now we have a lot of the too much bad nutrition. All of these things impact our bodies. What happens now is that oxygen flows into the cell and your body has built an abundance of nitric oxide, which is a necessary anti inflammatory property. But when it builds an abundance, that nitric oxide needs a job. And the job it does is it goes on and latches itself on to that oxygen particle. Now you have two problems. That oxygen particle cannot go into the mitochondria. So your ATP level drops, cell function slows or stops. The second real problem is the binding of oxygen. And nitric oxide is what we know as a free radical. It's the gene expression of every major disease known to man. Not Just cancer, where we hear it the most. But diabetes, heart disease, gangrene wounds, Inflammation. It is inflammation itself. So what does light do? Very simply, you shine light in, it disassociates those two particles. Oxygen is here. The nitric oxide, the free radical particle, is disassociated and absorbed in the blood vessel walls. And now the oxygen is free to go back into the mitochondria. So what have you done? You have eliminated the free radicals in the cell, which means you've kicked oxidative stress and inflammation out of the cell, and then you've allowed oxygen to flow back in, ATP production to be boosted, and cell activity to either speed back up or restart in some cases where it's totally stagnant. What does that do to the body? The body heals faster. Right. So if chiropractic is setting the human body up in the central nervous system, where messages can flow freely and the body can heal itself, light is the chemical version of that. Right. So we are. We are working at the solution from two different sides, and one is good by itself, but together, you see, really magic.

I love this lesson you just took us through. I think everybody went back to their first year of chiropractic college, maybe their undergraduate, just with that. So that was. That was solid. That was like part one boards. Right now, recap. So that was a bit of a refresher for everybody. Great, great. So. So let me ask this then. How are chiropractors? You said you work with hundreds of chiropractors. How are you. Give me some examples of how it's integrating into these practices. Like, who are the patients they're serving? What kind of things are we seeing happen? What kind of results are we getting? I know I'm just going right after it, but, like, talk us through. Okay. That's amazing. Sounds like 100% aligned with what we teach philosophically, practically. What does this look like?

Yeah, we've got two sides of the same coin. Aspen laser is our Class 4 medical device. Medical laser Saralite is our whole body device. Same technology, two different devices. We tend to see anybody on the laser side that walks in the office that has pain, acute subacute chronic inflammation, limited range of motion. It is a. I need it now. Fix me now. I hurt now. I can't move my shoulder now. I can't turn my head. Right. We can immediately solve that problem or at least get them a major result within 10 minutes of the first session. Now, people that are going to be hearing this are going to say, well, I have a Laser that doesn't do that. We can talk about dose dependent medicine and our uniqueness in that, but a quality device, if you're delivering the right dose, should get 85, 90% of your patients down to that 0 to 1 on a 0 to 10 scale, 10 being high pain, 0 being none, 0 to 1 scale within 10 minutes of the first visit, and mobility as well, that should have an immediate impact. If you're not, it's the wrong dose, I can just tell you it might not be the wrong laser, but you're giving the wrong dose. And we teach how to do that. But that's the primary function we see. So we can even treat those people with chronic issues. Because what we see with light therapy, other than immediate pain relief, immediate increase in mobility, is we see a long term effect of collagen production, cartilage production, we see stem cell production increase. So we see all these long term effects as well. With the bed, we tend to look at patients in that transition. For a practitioner from acute and subacute care, can you build a multi million dollar practice fixing hurt people? Absolutely. But what's easier to once you fix enough hurt people to transition those patients into lifetime wellness? Because we know that patients flux in between acute, subacute, chronic and lifetime wellness back and forth. But it's those losing them in the gaps where they come in hurt. You make them feel better and they go away until they hurt themselves again. And now maybe they go to a different chiropractor because they, they forget how far they came with you and then they get hurt six months later and they go, oh well this time I'll try something else because I'm hurt again. Well, yeah, it's a different injury, right? You hurt your other knee playing pickleball. Right. Pickleball is the new CrossFit. CrossFit was the new running. Running put chiropractors through, through their paces in the 70s and 80s. Then it was CrossFit and now it's pickleball. So that's the one side of it. The bed transitions those same patients once you get them out of peril, out of I can't move, I can't breathe, I can't walk to. I need lifetime wellness. I want to transition to something where I may not need everything every day, but I can come in a couple times a week and do things that not just impact one area of my body, but what we call in theralite is a cascade of healing, a cascade of wellness. They start doing the light bed for one thing, and they see in the first two or three weeks, see seven other things taking place in their body. And they'll come to you and they'll tug on your shirt and say, doc, can I, can I get a minute? Say, sure. And they pull you aside because. And they talk real quiet because they're like, you know, I came in for skin or my back pain or whatever, and that's definitely better. But I didn't tell you I was struggling with some pretty severe anxiety most of my life. And I found that I've been able to decrease my medication even the first three weeks of using the Therolite. Right. That's a systemic whole body condition. So we approach people from both sides and we use whatever device we need, or both devices as they go. But the Therolite is grind it out overall wellness a couple times a week for 15 minutes. And you, you grab a patient for life. And then as they have certain areas of need with adjustments or laser or other stem shockwave, other things you do in the office, they're always there. But we find that they're like, creates that sticky environment that regardless of how patients feel today, I feel pretty good. I don't think I'll go to my adjustment or I don't think I need an adjustment this week. They don't skip the Therolite sessions. They're doing that two to three times a week, two minimum. And some people do it every day. It creates this interaction every day with your staff, but it doesn't take really your staff's time because they walk in, go in the room, do it themselves, 15 minutes, they turn and walk out. So you've got this sticky environment where patients are there all the time. And you've created this long term, lifetime goal, lifetime wellness platform that exists in your own clinic.

Man, I love that you're speaking our language there. You talk about the different phases of care, you talk about their goals. Our recommendation is always based on two things. Your health goals and life goals and our clinical findings. And that you can connect lifetime family wellness care. Right. The idea of that people can graduate into a wellness or a maintenance membership that they can also do the same thing with this, which is huge. So it aligns perfectly with the, with the model that we're teaching as well, which is why I knew right out of the gates this is going to be an awesome, awesome fit. So talk a little bit about roi. You know, we talk about the investments that people are making to grow their business. You know, we're always looking for a multiple in, in, in return.

Right.

Whatever we're doing. Whether you're hiring a coach or you're bringing on another doctor or you're bringing on some sort of a device. Right. So talk to me a little bit about what are we, what are we seeing and looking at right now in terms of what you guys are doing in the marketplace?

Yeah, so. So some of your listeners are going to be pretty well versed in light therapy and some of them have done it, some of them have done it and failed. Like, I tried a laser, didn't work. You know, don't get some results, don't get some. Some of them have no idea. So as we transition to roi, there's a caveat there that you're using dose. I go back to dose dependent medicine. So let me kind of precursor before we go to the ri, what that means. Those of you practitioners are listening. I've been down the light therapy road. It didn't work. ROI was terrible. If you don't get 90, 85, 90% of your patients pain free in the first 10 minutes of the first visit, then you've given the wrong dose and that's why your ROI sucked. I mean, I'm just, you know. Right. If you adjust the wrong thing and they don't get better and, well, of course they're not going to come back. So what, what happened in the light industry 40 years ago was light is physics, it's photophysics and it's math and it's, it's not easy. So every practitioner in the world was doing their own physics and they screwed it up. So you had inconsistent results in laser therapy or light therapy because you had millions of different doses being applied all over the world. So what the laser companies did is they took the low end of a condition and the high end of a condition and they stuck it in the middle. They said, now this is a preset protocol. Practitioner, don't think, just press. Knee osteoarthritis, it's got a prescribed setting, prescribed time, everybody gets the same treatment. Problem is, we go up into that 65 pound person, 110 pound person, 250 pound person, the depth of tissue is different. So if you do the middle of the road, it's going to work great for the segment of people who are in the middle of the road. But people who are less than that, you're going to do damage because it's an overdose. People who are bigger than that, you're not going to do anything because it's an underdose. So when we talk about how we get results that May be different from your listeners ROI they've experienced in the past. So on our laser we call a course of care. Six sessions over 14 days. Six sessions in the first 14 days. If a patient came to me and said well I can only come in once a week for the next six weeks, I'd say don't waste your time. Wait till you have a time, a block of time where we can hit you with six sessions in the first 14 days. What does that RI look like? Most of my practitioners drive in anywhere from 15,000 to $30,000 a month with a single laser. And the doc isn't the one applying the laser. It's a delegated duty which means anyone on his staff that he or she delegate that duty to can perform the laser. So I've got a low dollar value employee compared to the chiropractor in another room producing as much revenue every 15 minutes as that doc can produce with his or her own hands. That's an attractive roi. But you have to be applying dose dependent medicine to get the result immediately. And really to get a result every single time you try. Doesn't mean we get resolution with one session, but we will get resolution if there's resolution to be had. Yes, some people are going to be on chronic care just like anything else. But that ROI is there. On the therlite bed, the ROI is even higher because a couple things happen on therolite. Number one, it's self serve. It needs no practitioner to apply. The patient goes in their room by themselves, gets undressed, gets in it, it runs for 15 minutes, it turns off, they get dressed and they walk out. Five minutes later the next patient comes in and goes. In fact I've got clinics that are now running therides 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, after hours and in evenings and all through the night and on weekends with no staff, no payroll, literally making money while they sleep. But the ROA is even higher because that that really falls into a membership model, right? It could be 199, 250, 300, whatever you want for different iterations. Eight sessions a month, 12 sessions unlimited. But those are generating where from 20,000 to $60,000 per unit depending on how many hours you're offering that service to the public. So that 60,000 end is up people that are doing it 24 hours a day. Like whether we're here or not, you have a key fob. You can come in after hours and do your theralite session. So that revenue people, docs always Ask me, which one should I buy first? Well, a salesman would say, buy the Therlite first because it's more expensive. I told you before, I'm not a salesman. I always say start with. With a laser, because a laser is the entree. It's a stepping stone to the. The bed. It's an easy. I hate the word sell. But if I get somebody that walked in here with frozen shoulder, and it took them a month to go from here to here, and in 10 minutes I get them to here, I don't have to sell them a thing. They beg me, can I do this again tomorrow? And my first response is, no. But I will see in 48 hours, because it's a process, not an event. And we let the medicine dose take its time with the bed. There's a little bit of a give me 30 days. We'll show you how you change your life. But the funny thing is, once you apply a laser like that for somebody's shoulder, they go, oh, I wish you had an hour. My neck, my low back, my. My left knee, my right ankle, my tendonitis. Like, what are they asking for? Can you treat my whole body? Yeah, if I had three hours, I could treat your whole body. But at that point, I would always take that patient into the other room, and I just turn on the Therlite bed, and the whole room lights up in red, and they're like, is that for the whole body? And I'm like, absolutely. And they're like, I want it. I haven't even told you how much it costs yet. I don't care. I want it. So those are your two sides of the iri roi. But they both go together. Doesn't mean we haven't had practitioners start with a fairlight. I usually advocate start with a laser. You'll grow into it. That laser will produce enough money for you to pay that staff person or staff people that are doing it to pay for itself to generate, and it will provide revenue for you to go get a fairlight bed without you ever having to come out of your pocket for it.

How do I learn more if I'm listening to this? Because it's like, all right, you said there's a few people in the audience. You've got people that have these right now. You have people that have done it in the past and would say it didn't work. And you got people that this is totally new to them. But I think everybody should at least know more and, you know, have the opportunity to get it. Take a closer look at what this would look like. So whether someone currently is using a laser, let's say, in their, in their clinic or not, whether they have experience or not, I, I personally think everybody should know more about this and actually be aware of what's out there and what the next step should be for. For anybody who's listening to this, if they want to learn more, what would that look like then? To connect with you?

Yeah, so a couple reasons. The first thing I do is I just, I say, look, I'll make this super easy on any practitioner. You name the time, the place, and I'll come to your office for free. I won't charge you a dime. You don't have to put down a deposit. You don't have to promise to buy anything. Let me come treat your patients is what I do for fun, is I get to treat your patients. But I want you to do, I want you to pick the 10 to 15 absolute worst patients. Worst cases you have. I mean, bone on bone, knee bone on bone, hip, multiple levels of herniation, frozen shoulder, can't turn their neck for the last 20 years, traumatic brain injury. Yes, we treat that. So all pick, pick the worst cases. You got the patients that when they walk through the door, your staff, your staff, their heart just drops because we're doing everything you can and that person's not getting better. And you, you're looking for a way, let me, let me treat all those people. I come in, I treat them all day. I don't sell you anything. I just listen to people hug and cry and smile and then I walk away. And then your patience will bother you more than I will. Right, because they're going to beg you to get that. So that's the easiest way. If you reach out to me, we're going to post a couple QR codes that you can do for Aspen Laser or Theralite. You scan those, fill out that form that comes directly to me. But I always give people my personal cell phone and email. My email is Mark Murdoch, M A R K M U R D O C K at Aspen lasers plural dot com. And then my cell phone is 214-641-1827. That's not AI, Mark. That's me, Mark. And everybody's doing AI voice generated sales assistance.

Now that's not.

That's me. You can reach out to me. I'll tell you about both devices. Again with the laser. I just come out to your office and make it super easy on you. At the end of the day, you'll know there Won't be any questions.

Mark, I'm really grateful for you. Thank you for the awesome work you're doing. I know you're committed to serving practitioners, and you've been serving our chiropractic profession so well, and I'm thrilled that you're a partner with us and the ways that you're going to be serving the doctors that we get to connect with and serve, whether they're a listener to this podcast or they're a clinic that's working with us directly in coaching, we're really, you know, we are honored to partner with you. So thanks for taking the time to meet with me here today and share some of your wisdom. Guys, please take advantage of connecting with Mark and, and consider what the next step could be. He's made an offer that would be really hard for anybody to refuse. So I. I hope you have a. Some openings in your schedule moving forward here after this podcast here, Mark. So, yeah, no problem.

I love traveling. I love doing it, and we'll make it work. We'll. We'll get somebody there. Me or, or one of the other staff members. For sure. We'll get somebody in front of you.

Awesome. All right, guys, so you know, you're listening to this is the Remarkable Practice podcast, and we're honored to continue to serve you and serve chiropractic, because what we know is that what the world needs now is chiropractic, and what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. Mark Murdoch is here because we believe that he can help you as a chiropractor become more successful and helping more people. Mark, thanks for your time today and for everybody else. Look forward to being with you again next week on our next podcast. Until then, God bless and take care.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Remarkable CEO podcast. Remember, what the world needs now is chiropractic, and what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, share with a friend and leave us a review. And if you'd like to connect with us personally, direct message us on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram. Now go and be remarkable.