How to Grow Your Chiropractic Business Through Acquisition: TRP Case Study #001 (Part 2)

We were itching to expand way before we started expand. And you were the one holding us back.

And in a good way, right? Wisely. Yeah.

I mean, you're like, guys, you're not.

Blessed are the meek.

You're telling us you're not ready. Guys, you're going to duplicate all these problems, and it's just going to get worse. Like, you know, dial in the system. And we appreciated that advice, even though we're like, oh, you know, we wanted to grow and expand. But it was great advice, and we really appreciate that because we would have duplicated a lot of problems.

Yeah.

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. What's up, remarkables? Excited to share with you another success story, another case study of one of our remarkable coaching clients, another doc, another chiropractic business owner like you who has created the business that supports their remarkable life, not competes with it. We know that you're going to find these stories as informative and inspirational as we do. Check this out. What's up, Remarkables? It's another episode of the Remarkable CEO Podcast, Chiropractic's number one business podcast, and it's a special episode. It's another one of our case study success stories. And this one is extra sexy because it's part two. It's the continued story, the saga of The Hughes brothers, Dr. Michael and Dr. David Hughes. Welcome to the episode, boys.

What's up, doc?

Great to be here.

Yeah. So I'm so looking forward to this. Love any time I get to spend with you guys, man. I know that your last success stories, your case study that you did for, in essence, looking back at the last year. So we'd be looking back at like the 22, 23, 24 season. You guys have been up to some big things, and I thought, man, a sequel was called for because I think you guys have doubled, if not tripled the business. Definitely 6x the number of clinics you guys have. So I want to be able to have a conversation around acquisition, what you guys have been up to lately to build an enterprise, let's say it, what it is, you guys are building an empire. And, you know, we want to know what are you up to? And let's talk through your process and your system and your, you know, the series of events that led to this. So let's just back it all the way up. For those who maybe didn't see part one, you should go back and watch part one. But for those who missed part one, why don't you give us a bit of the backstory, give us the background story of the, these twin superpower chiropractic brothers. Give us quick your chiropractic story and then we'll fast hit the fast forward button and start talking about acquisition.

Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of it comes down to what did we want to do when we started in chiropractic, you know, and we, we had our original vision of what we want to do. What's cool is we actually wanted to be chiropractor since we were 14 years old. And so before that we wanted to be a choo choo engine, run a train. You know, that was just some influences in our lives. But you know, at 14 we decided we want to be chiropractors. We were raised in a chiropractic family friendly home and my dad was a big fan of chiropractic, which I think is really cool because he was raised in the Studebaker, traveled around with the carnival and that's how he knew about chiropractic. And we're first generation chiropractors. And my dad said, you know, that he, he, you know, B.J. palmer always said, hey, if the carny's coming to town, take care of them, send me the bill. He loved the carnival. And so, so my, my oldest brother, this is how we, we became so passionate about chiropractic at an early age. It's my older brother, when he was born, he was every, everything looks great. But he ended up having sucking reflex stopped. He ended up having allergies and rashes and boils all over his body that wouldn't heal. And so my parents took him to Dr. Dr. Trying to find someone that could help save him. His final prognosis was he'd be lucky to live in an incubator for a few more months. And it was literally a chiropractor.

He went across the street, took him.

And said, can you save my son? And that chiropractor was the first doctor asked about the birthing process found it was traumatic birth over almost a 10 pound baby. My mom's 54 and petite. It broke her tailbone. So what is that doing to the baby? So that chiropractor adjusted him and literally there's no other thing can explain other than chiropractic saved his life. And so, you know, we were raised with, with that kind of experience starting in our family. And. And so that's why we decided to be chiropractors of 14.

Yep. So yeah, and we, when we went off to school, I. And this is, this is a little side note, but we'll throw it in there because it didn't come without obstacles. One of the things is that Dave and I graduated from high school literate. We have learning disabilities. And so a lot of people when they hear that, that side of the story, it's pretty inspiring. We were homeless for about two and a half months and didn't have. We weren't in school. But we wind up getting one blessing after another blessing where we got our school completely paid for and our undergrad. And so we wind up studying our butts off, wind up graduating on the dean's high honor list, then went off to chiropractic school in Parker. When we went off to Parker, Jim Parker was a huge inspiration to us. He was writing us recruiting letters that we thought were amazing. Like, I didn't know if the guy was hiring like PIs or private investigators. Like, he knew stuff about our personal lives. I'm like, how does he know this stuff?

We still have them.

They're pretty amazing. We do. They're awesome. Yeah, they're great letters. But we loved his vision and what he was creating and having multiple practices. And we just thought we were super inspired by that. And so that's why we chose to go to Parker. He actually passed away this semester. We got there, which was very sad for us. But we wind up graduating and then the little part of the story also I think is important is that this is actually our second career. So once we went to school, we wind up building a insurance business on the side. Just started doing it part time and started making more money than all the professors teaching us how to be successful in practice. So we, we actually left and built that for about 10 years. And then after about 10 years, we, we were kind of bored and we wanted to get back into chiropractic and we hit every accolade we could in that, that business. And then we're like, you know what?

Let's.

We've been wanting to be chiropractors and build together, which we never, never did. And so let's go do something and let's go build it big time. And so we wanted to make the biggest footprint we could in our communities. We with chiropractic. And so we started looking for practice to buy. And that's where we got Our first acquisition.

Just awesome. Awesome, guys. I love to hear the backstory. I have the privilege of coaching you guys, so I, I know the stories, but they never get old. And every time you guys add in.

A new detail.

And I just love it. I love going out for dinner with you guys because there's always great stories that coming down from that end. So my son got to listen to them the last time in Orlando. Thanks a lot, boys. So, yeah, so let's talk about, you know, you know, before, you know, you guys came to the remarkable practice, you guys were in search for something. Like, what were you looking for? Like, I think you guys have been doing business without coach, without having a coach, without having a system to follow. You probably cobbled together several systems that, that, that Frankenstein approach assistance, but you guys coming from a system, systematic business background, you know, the power of that. What were you looking for when you showed up at the remarkable practice?

Well, before that, I mean, we've always been big on coaches, so we, you know, the best, the best high performers in the world all have coaches. And so we, we've always known that. And so even before we got our first acquisition, we hired a business consultant to teach us how to evaluate practices so we can find a good deal about that. We didn't know how to do that, so we had to learn. And then we, we actually invested in our first coaching program, which was a lot of money that you had to pay for upfront for the whole year of coaching. We paid for that before we ever acquired a practice because we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. We wanted to have somebody teach us. But I felt we, we got to a point where they, they couldn't take us to the next level in practice. And that's when we started looking around and went through a couple other coaching and then we found trp and the remarkable practice has. Has exceeded everything we've ever wanted in coaching. So thank you very much.

Yeah, I'll say this. When we, we signed up for the online version, we didn't know that you personally coached. And so when we signed up for the online version, I was going through these modules and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so brilliant. I love this. It was all resonating with me and I felt like. And I mean, I probably a lot of the clients feel like this. It's like eating an elephant. And I kept telling that to Dave. I was like, this is so much. It's so much. I don't know how we're going to implement this. And the thing that made it difficult is also switching from one coaching system. Right? So we already have all those systems dialed in. And I. I would say that's one thing. Our superpower is like, look, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. If somebody's already having success, I'm going to rob and duplicate everything that they do to the best of my ability. So we had already done that with that other coaching program, so now it's like this major switch. And so that was a challenge, too, because we're like, well, should we hold on to this aspect and just bring in this aspect from trp? And that was really difficult. And so Dave kept telling me it was just like, man, you eat elephant. One bite at a time, one bite at a time, one bite at a time. He kept saying that to me, and I was like, man, I feel like for us to really cross this line, like, literally, we were in our conference room with our team, and we drew a line in the sand and not in the carpet, actually. But we made everybody walk across that line and said, we are no longer doing this system. This is what we're doing. We're focusing on TRP 100%, and we're bringing on Sherry, which, you know, my wife, who's very talented, and we're like, we're bringing her on board, and she's going to want implementing all of the systems. And so if you're not doing these systems, Sherry's going to hold you accountable and make sure that you're doing these systems. This is the direction we're going in our company.

Dude, that changed everything. Everything when we made that commitment.

Yeah, and so when you say it.

Changed everything, Help us understand. It's like, you guys know the categories. Attraction, conversion, retention, team building, collections, personal life. Like, give me a sense of, like, when you say what changed?

I mean, it had to do with, like, you know, how to lead out the team, how to find the team, the right people, you know, creating.

It's.

It's really that whole TRP system, creating the vision and knowing where you want to go and clearly defining what that is.

And I want to talk about that, too, because even, like, you know, when you look at trp, the modules, or coaching with you, the first thing we talk about is that vision and focus. And it's like, look, I need. I can't portray my goals onto you. I need to know what. What you want, what success means to you. And. And that was really important, and that meant a lot to us that you, as a coach would say that, because I've had other coaches that want to project and we don't, you know, I didn't like that and it's not authentic. And so we sat down and spent days and days and days on creating the visions and the mission and all of those things. I think nowadays we can do it with ChatGPT in two minutes but come up with these simple phrases, you know.

But, but you know, getting into conversions, the day one process, the day two, the day two process, just the, the conversation that's all you're having. Just a conversation that's real. You know, the last coaching program was all, you know, they were really big on. If they're, if they're crying, they're buying, you know. And I never really liked that because I felt like you don't need to tear someone down to build them up. You can just simply have a great conversation and help them find what is that they want and give that solution.

And it's not that we're not having em, connections with these people, we still are, but it's, you know, we're not deliberately trying to pull somebody down to crush them and make them feel like, you know, anyway, I get the point, I understand why they do it, but there's better ways to do it 100%.

That empathetic connection where you're unearthing, you know, where they get actually talk you through exactly what's going on with them, how it's affecting their life and what are they trying to accomplish really specifically in the short term, midterm, long term goals. I mean that empathetic connection is powerful and it's reproducible. Right. Like you can train your associates. So you guys have multiple doctors. Right. So talk to us about like what kind of growth, what kind of changes did you see initially with the first brick and mortar and now you guys have multiples.

I, I'd say that we started out with, you know, we got to this practice and we grew it. We, we doubled, almost tripled the practice in our first three years with that other coaching program.

The first practice that we purchased.

Yeah and we were doing out now 5, 5, 550 probably in revenue and you know, kind of hitting the ceiling where we couldn't keep growing it. We have grown it almost every single year. We've always had growth but it was like slowing down that growth. And so we're like we gotta find something else. As soon as we apply the trp. I mean, I mean to bring it up fast forward, we're like 2.3 million projected for this year in five practices. But, you know, I gotta tell that story too, because the five practices that we've acquired, all of that's happened in two and a half years. So we've merged three practice. We acquired five practices and we did all that in two and a half years. So. Yeah, so there was, there was, there was a lot of it building up, making sure that we had the proper systems to scale because we knew that we didn't want to duplicate problems. And so one of the things that TRP.

Dr. France, I don't know if you remember this. I mean, we were itching to expand way before we started expand. And you were the one holding us back.

And in a good way right away. Yeah, wisely. Yeah.

I mean, you're like, guys, you're not.

Lest are the meek.

You're telling us you're not ready. Guys, you're gonna duplicate all these problems and it's just gonna get worse. Like, you know, dial in the system and, and we appreciated that advice, even though we're like, oh, you know, we wanted to grow and expand. But it was great advice and we really appreciate that because we would have duplicated a lot of problems.

Yeah. And that year, one of our focus, our mission was to simplify. And so we added every system we could to simplify every system, make our business as easy as possible. The second year we're like, man, that was awesome. Now let's put in automation. So the next mission, next year focus was automation. And then the next year we're like, well, those were both so successful. Let's do the third year. Simplify and automate. And so we started building in, you know, the systems and leveraging everything like scoreboards and, and the scorecards and the KPIs and all the things that we learned through the remarkable practice and implementing them with exactness. Like not shortcut, not the half ass in it. Sorry, you told us not to cuss. But anyway, try to try to keep it as, as true as possible. And so that we had data that was flowing to us and Sherry was a huge part of that. By the way, Sherry's. She would be our coo.

So she's our operator, your office manager. We call it the CEO in the remarkable practice, which is the complement to the CEO. Right. So you make the ascension CEO. So CEO coo. That's the leadership team. Thank you. And you have a world class coo.

Yeah, she's amazing. And I'm not saying that because that's my wife.

She's literally clone her. And that should be A remarkable offering. We should be able to. We should be. I'll start the bidding at $1 million.

But I can. I can share with you. Like, when we bought our second practice, it was. His daughter was moving down to Texas, and we didn't even know we were to this point or ready to buy a second practice or how fast that was going to happen.

We.

But we were ready for. We were itching to do it. So his daughter moved down to Texas, and she was like, hey, I'd like to just go find a practice. I could just be an office manager and run their practice, because she grew up in our practice and knew all the systems and trp. And so we're like, well, instead of losing her to some other chiropractor, how about we just get a practice and she could run that practice down there? And so we. We told her, look, this is the criteria. The avatar that what we're looking for, and go to work if you can find something. Within three weeks, she comes back with this fantastic practice. Already talked to the doctor, he wants to meet with us, and she already.

Interviewed all the doctors selling their practice in Dallas, Fort Worth. It was crazy.

And so speaking of wanted to clone.

People, I'd like to clone her as well.

So she ends up finding that practice, and then within a couple months, that was our first. Our second practice that we bought. And it just happens to be over a thousand miles away, a little commute, but we had his daughter down there running it.

It's been going great, and there's lots to learn. I mean, when you expand across state borders, there's different roles and license requirements, and so you have to figure all that stuff out. But it was, you know, we're like. I wouldn't say it was that difficult. It was, you know, you're. You're in the middle of it, and you only know what you know. But after everything was said, done, we're like, man, that was easy. We could do that again. And if we could do it a thousand miles away, why don't we do it next door?

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 is 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, branches 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 and creating the business that supports your remarkable life, not competes with it.

As soon as we bought that practice in Texas, everyone kind of got the word out and we started getting phone calls. And there was one that was in Greeley and a guy called us up. He was actually going to close his doors and he was calling around to find out what are the laws to be able to legally close my doors. And they're like, you should talk to the Hughes brothers.

They're.

They're buying practices right now. That conversation happened overnight. We bought that practice, closed on it really fast and. And that was a huge success. Our retention on that practice was amazing. Best. Best ever.

Oh yeah, it was incredible retention. It was the smoothest transition by far.

Yeah.

Practice number three, also in Texas.

No, that's here. That was. Yeah. Greeley, Colorado.

Greeley, Colorado. Okay, very good. Right. So yeah, birds of a feather flock together when people, when you start buying practices, the doctors who are looking to sell their practices know each other, right? So there's like, hey, I got a buddy. Hey, will you talk to my brother in law? Hey, by the way, word got out that you bought my practice. Somebody else wants to sell their practice to you. It's amazing to see that energy happen. Right.

You know, one thing I'll share. I think one of the big struggles to get over mentally for a lot of chiropractors that are looking to acquire other practices, I think the first big step, at least for us, was getting our first associate doctor.

That can be scary because it's a.

Big investment and that's to help leverage that time for you and to be able to free up the time so you can focus on other activities. So I think that was a, that was a big milestone for us. And then of course that comes down into finding the right people. And that's why we love the pdps and you know, and the behavior testing to be able to find out how are these people actually hardwired and see if they're going to be a great fit for the team. So that's something we're super big on as well to make sure that we can find the right people. But you know, when you, when your first clinic is a thousand miles away, if you've got a bad doctor, that's not good. And so finding the right people is so key to, to be able to do that. And I think anytime when you're, you know, it's, it's, it's real easy to think, oh, I'm just going to buy this clinic and this clinic and this clinic and I have got all these clinics, man, when you got people, you got problems. And so if you don't have the right people, that is a nightmare. If you don't have the right people.

And the tools to be able to, to monitor what's happening, right? So we've, we've got the vital signs and TRP to be able to have all those metrics and now they're work better than ever. When we used to have just, you know, spreadsheets, you know, and now they wind up flowing all the way through those spreadsheets and creating leadership graphs that can show us, you know, exactly what is going on. So now we have total transparency into all of the practices like never before, which allows us for leadership management accountability to be on Another level.

So you might be able to muscle your way through, you know, one practice where you're in the practice using brute force and your instincts, right, to, to run a business. You can literally cannot do that if you have a remote practice, never mind five remote practices, never mind if they're a thousand miles apart. Because what an ultimate stress test that you guys put on it, right? So putting it a thousand miles, I'm not an advocate of that, but I know why you did it and I think it's working beautifully. As much as it. That would, that just added a whole nother factor, didn't it? The physics of something being a thousand miles away, that's just, you know, we love regions. You know, if you're regional like you guys are, you now have two regions, right? You have a Texas region and now a Colorado region. So you can obviously train together, you can market together and take over a territory. You can centralize your functions a lot easier. You can cross populate your clinics with different employees, move cas around and doctors around and coverage and all that sort of thing. So when they're a thousand miles apart, especially if it's your first acquisition, second practice, you guys really stress test a few things. And can I just recap because you guys have been laying down some real fundamental just gold. So first let's go back to where we started. It was slow down to speed up, right? So it's like you guys made the commitment, you put the system in place, right? So recognize there's a proven system that you can follow that this, it's just the law of ones and threes, right? Your business needed to get the new set of systems and a new team to be able to take it to the next level, right? So you, you guys recognize that and you had the commitment to put that in place, right? So that was like a slow down to speed up, get the foundation laid, right? So and then to be able to have the team built around that you had extraordinary team, made an investment in your people. Because if you don't have the right people, 95% of your problems are people problems. You're going to spend all of your resources, meaning basically your time, focus and energy, not to mention your money, just playing problem whack a mole with people and then, and then the last thing you want to do is multiply that, right? So and then you guys created durability by bringing in an associate doctor and associate doctors, right? So durability means that it frees up your time, right? So the durability creates optionality and you guys had the option of how to best invest your time, so now you have the option to jump on a plane and go down to Texas. Right. So it just freed up your time. Right. So I just want to just point out to everybody, it's like they have followed this process, this system, and it's a system, and if you tweak in it, you weaken it. Right. The more you're tweaking it, the more you weaken it. You. I love to, I love to hear this story, and I know that you guys are very methodical when it comes to your buying criteria. Right. You're not just taking any opportunity. You could look at something and say, this is a great opportunity. It's just not our great opportunity. Right. So you have to have the discipline to, to be able to say no, right, to most opportunities. Like, if you're not saying no to most opportunities, you are saying yes to too many opportunities. That's. That's just the law. That's the law of the jungle. Right. So God wants us to say no to most of our opportunities so we can say yes to all of our appointments. Right. So. And just recognize, like, each one of those practice met some criteria for you guys. Do you mind just like high level talking about buying criteria and being able to recognize what is not just a great opportunity, but your great opportunity?

Yeah. Let me just share something real quick. A lot of that comes from our experience of, like, you just talked about, like, you know, if you've ever hired a front desk and you're like, oh, this is an A plus player. And then when you actually recruit somebody else who's at a higher level, like, oh, well, that's an A plus player. This is not an A plus player. Right. So now you're, you're starting to realize that there is actually higher level of people. I think the same thing applies when you're acquiring practices and especially when you're new at it. You're like, oh, this is like the perfect practice. And then you buy another practice. Like, no, that's the perfect practice. You know, And I think it comes with the learning experience with every single practice that we gave that we ended up getting.

I would say that when it comes to acquiring practices, what the avatar would look like is, you know, for us, it's a cash practice. Cash family wellness practice. And because we are, I mean, we're like 95% cash. So if, if we're going to be spending that much time on cash and we're looking to somebody like, I, I turned down four practices in the last four weeks, the last one I just talked to was an integrated practice. And I go, it's just not our thing. And so, you know, nope. Hard. No matter.

Indifference. Great opportunity for somebody, just not for us. Like that doesn't meet our buying criteria.

Yeah, didn't meet it at all. And so we wind up, you know, quickly saying no to that opportunity. But one of the things that we did realize, and I'll just say this is I feel like a nugget that we could share with other people that might be doing this is reports don't always tell you everything. And so one of the things that we are asking for with all future acquisitions is that we want a 30 day handwritten. I don't care if it's typed up or handwritten, but I want to know every patient that came in, what is the relationship and how much money did you get off of that visit? Because you know the reports, you know, you can ask for all these reports and you're doing your due diligence. And then once you're already closed it on the deal and you're in it, then you start to realize they were running a non profit, not a for profit business.

Yes.

And you're like everybody that they brought into the practice was oh, you're in widow, oh, it's free for you. Oh, you're a pastor, it's free for you. And then you start to realize, holy crap, you know. Yeah, exactly. So we, we, we want to see a 30 day handwritten. Tell us every single person that came in through those doors and what are your relationships, what did you make off of them? Are the insurance and that is I think is way better than any report you can pull on most EHR software.

Yeah, the when you're doing an assessment on a business, we're looking at two things, right. QOB and QOE. Right. So QOB's quality of the business. Right. We're taking a look at and we're looking at their attraction systems. Are they diversified? Do they have internal, external and digital leads coming into the business? The conversion process, do they have a conversion process and what is it converting people to retention delivery processes is like what is the stick rate? What's the churn rate? Like, what's the turnover rate? Like you want to know these things about the business and then of course the team who comes with the deal, like, you know, it's like who's going to stay? Who? You know, who do we want to stay? Who do we not want to stay? Are they a players? Is there associates do we have agreements in place? Right. So that Q will be the quality of the business and then of course the soft science side of like the culture and it is a culture match for you. Like where do we land philosophically or from a technique perspective, like, like the quality of the clinical reputation in town.

Right.

So there's all kinds of QOB side of things. Then QoE quality of the earnings, right. So when we start breaking down the finances and looking at what's, what's CVA collection visit average, right? What, what is the RPE in the business? Like, what's the profit margin in the business? Like, so we start looking at the hard finances and the numbers and we try to figure out what's the, the quality of the earnings. Is there recurrent revenue model right in place? Like, there's so many things like, you guys know, we've spent so much time just. You're looking for like either that makes that business that is in place so it makes the business more valuable, or that is not in place and that's arbitrage. It's like, I know we're going to be able to bump the cost of that adjustment. $7 a visit. I know these guys have no digital footprint. I know that there's no, you know, recurring revenue model. Man, they're not educating their patients. There's lots of room for more referrals and greater retention, right? So I mean, you guys get it, right? So there's some. You're either seeing the value or you're seeing the opportunity. You should be able to see both. Right? So now, wow, there's lots of opportunity here and that we're not buying the opportunity. You know, they're not, they're selling the past performance. You're buying the opportunity versus like we see the value here and we're going to be buying revenue and profit. Because if it's a great quality business, like you said, it's an appreciating asset that cash flows, you're buying the profit. So you're, as long as you know what you're looking for. I'm going to say that it's, it's, you're, you're mitigating your risk when you walk in there, being informed. Right.

I'll say this, all of that is super important to what you just said. But you're describing TRP practices. You're, you know, most of the practices that we're talking about, most of the practices out there that are selling, they're on a downward trend. That's right. You know, they haven't been focusing on their practice. They've gotten lazy over the last three years and they're. And they wind up being fire sales and even worse than fire sales, they're not even last minute fire sales.

Shuddering.

Yeah, they're terrible. And so, so I would say that if anyone in this audience is listening, that and you're on your way to exit and you're not in trp, that's a, that's a fantastic reason why you should be in trp. Learn how to sell and to sell that practice with as much money as you possibly can and make a graceful soft landing when you exit.

You know, I don't know of any other coaching program that has, you know, Stephen Covey always talks about begin with the end of mind. Your coaching program begins with the end of mine because you're teaching people how to exit gracefully from practice. And I don't know of any other coaching program that actually does that. But I think it's been three months.

From now or 33 years from now. Right. So this is like just begin with that end in mind. Right?

Yeah. So I think what we found in the, pretty much all of our acquisitions is it's not those, you know, super dialed in practices with all this recurring revenue. They are, they're, most of them are chiropractors that want to get out of the profession or retiring.

And they've been in practice for 30 or 40 years. And so they've got a great, you know, Rolodex of patients. They've got great patients that come to them for decades. But we know that we can step into those, put in our systems and literally make arbitrage off of that and just blow it up overnight.

That's good, boys. That's exactly right. It's 99 of these deals would be arbitrage opportunities. Right. So if you don't see the value, which will come with a price tag, you have to see the opportunity and that's the arbitrage. So awesome, guys. So as it stands right now, how many practices are we up to right now?

Five practices, brick and mortar practices. We merged in the last three years, also three others.

And so basically eight acquisitions. And how many are on the docket right now?

Oh, gosh, I know you too, I know this. We always have something in the pipeline. But I will say this, our goal is to expand five practices over the next, over the next five years. And so we want to get to, you know, you know, I love the number 33. It's a great number for chiropractic let's get to 33. And I feel like we've got, you know, we don't have the exact team that we'll have when we have 33 practices, but we have a team right now that is killer. They're amazing and they can help us move towards that goal right now. So, yeah, that's our goal. Our goal.

I love it, man. 33. Hey, it's good enough for BJ Palmer, right? It's good enough for Jesus Christ. 33 years on the earth and it's good enough for Larry Bird, right? So that's one of my favorite numbers and I'm psyched to hear that. 33. All right, so I'm going to hang your hats on that one, guys. And you know, just on behalf of chiropractic, thanks for being on the right hand side of the bell curve, pulling and inspiring everybody forward. You're doing such a great service to these chiropractors who are looking for a soft landing. Some of them just want a place where they can practice and switch out of the ownership role and come with the deal. Someone just want to make sure, you know what, somebody take care of my patients, maybe give my team a place to work, right? And making sure that we don't have, you know, all these practices that are shuttering, Right? So we shouldn't see chiropractic practices retiring with the chiropractor, Right? So you guys know what we say around here is what the world needs now is chiropractic, and what chiropractic needs right now is more successful chiropractors. Thank you for showing us the way, boys.

Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having us on.

Please stick around for more business insights.

From this week's bonus interview with our.

Remarkable six success partner, dedicated to helping.

You more successfully help more people enjoy.

So, guys, I am super pumped and excited to be having a conversation today with the fantastic Vanessa Lewis from investoris. And let me tell you why I'm excited for this conversation. After working with hundreds, I would say at this point, close to thousands of chiropractic officers. Here's what I've realized. If chiropractors follow systems process procedure, if they engage in training, if they engage in coaching, they end up building an absolutely remarkable practice. Now, along with the remarkable practice comes fantastic healthy cash flow. But here is my experience, Nessa. Most of these chiropractors also have a terrible job at managing finances, right? So they either end up spending just as much as they're earning, their lifestyle continues to increase. They're not investing wisely or sometimes they're investing poorly and so they're helping several other people. They're making great impact, they're making great income, but they don't actually manage their finances at all. So I am super excited to have this conversation today. Why don't you take us through Vanessa, exactly how do you help chiropractors when it comes to the financial side of practice? How do you help when it comes to multiplying wealth? Take us through investoris and exactly what you can do for us and how you can help us.

Well, thanks for having me, Dr. Bobbie. I'm the financial strategist and senior mortgage broker with team at Investor US and one of our beautiful clients that the lovely Dr. Molly Way is, she put it in one of our videos when she explained, she said everybody starts this wealth creation journey on their own and the best that you can come with is doctor and you end up going down this path or this rabbit hole of what's next. So that's where we step in and we offer uniquely tailored solutions because there's, there's not one strategy that fits all. It's got to be tailored to understand what wealth means to you. And we are an organization that is value driven. So we've got to understand what you value and then layer in the relevant services that you need. But we understand that you don't have the time to go see 10 different people. You want to have a chat to one person who will then simplify that for you. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the services that we do actually offer because one of the questions that always comes up all the time is what is it that you guys do and can you even help me now with the services that we do offer? I don't like to use the word budgeting, but I'm going to start with the money coaching piece of it because it's understanding and giving every dollar a purpose so you know where your money goes. We can also help with the finance piece of it because sometimes you don't understand what you can borrow. If you would like to invest, you need to understand what your borrowing capacity is or if you need to get some equipment for the practice, you've got to understand is there affordability? So that's what we look at as well. So we look at lending options, we will look at, okay, do you have the right, are you with the right bank? Do you have the right product, the right interest rate, the right structure? Because all of that helps with savings, which sometimes people don't understand. Now, in Addition to finance and money coaching, the property piece of it is quite relevant and important because you get access to the lovely Bel, who's an absolute legend in our team, who's built this over the last 35 years of networks and relationships and connections she sourced. And I'll share a couple of real life examples as well to validate this. But she's so good at what she does with finding the right investment, ensuring the tax effectiveness is working, it's a good return on investment. Then we've got to take it to the next step to go. All right, okay, we bought the properties. Who's going to manage this? Because that's where people start to get a bit overwhelmed and go, oh, okay, do I have to manage the tenant? Who's going to look after that? It's going to be too much of hard work. But that's where we also provide the property management services. And because it's in house, it is a lot cheaper than what you would get elsewhere. So there's the value add for our clients because we look at getting the tenant in, ensuring we've got the quantity surveyors reports in place. Is there the right amount of depreciation that can be claimed? All of that gets factored. So there's the property investment and then there's the property management piece of it as well. Then we take it to the next step. And I know there's lots of services that I'm going to simplify it in a minute. But there's also the financial planning piece, the accounting piece and the super review. Because once you've acquired, you know, your investments, you might want to have a think about estate and wills planning. You want to ensure that's in play. You want, you want to ensure that you insured adequately. Do a review of your insurances. Is there enough in life income protection? All of that's got to be looked at. That's where the strategist, the one person in the middle, coordinates all of these services for you. Have a chat with just the strategist who will then determine the relevant services that you need.

That is awesome. So what I'm hearing is it's you guys are a one stop shop. Which means if I'm someone that's looking to purchase my first property, maybe I'll be working chiropractic and it's time for me to purchase my principal base of residence that I'd like to kind of live in. Definitely go and talk to you guys. Whether I'm someone that's looking to create leverage and you know, I know that I can access funds and I want to start making investments and looking after my future. You guys are the ones I should talk to. Is that right?

That we are. That we are. Now I've got to actually share a couple of real life examples, right, as to how we lay it in the property management, the property investment, the finance, the accounting, the financial planning and the money coaching to help achieve the results that we have, these real life examples. So the very first example that I'm going to share is of the with the lovely Michael and Imogen, the chiropractors in South Australia. When they met us, they had one investment property which was an underperforming investment. Now it had a return on investment that we call yield, which is the rental income versus the value of 2.9% on that particular investment. And they had $488,000 worth of bad debt. Now owner occupied debt, your home loan pretty much is bad debt. Is the interest not tax deductible. 12 months later, they now have two high performing investment properties. So they've gone from one to two. The return on investment or the yield went from 2.9% to 6.5% and the bad debt of $488,000 went down to $40,000. So they paid off $448,000 worth of bad debt. Now those are huge numbers and people struggle to believe it, but they're real life examples whereby layering in the right strategies, we've helped them achieve these results. Now I'm going to share another one that I've got here which is a simple, it was a simple refinance and a restructure. All that happened was the client came up to us and said, hey, I've got these two investment properties. Obviously it's not working. The rates are not the best. Do I have the right product? Can you do a review and let me know what you can do? Now when we started the process that, you know, they were on 7% I think across both the investment properties by simple refinance and restructure, we bought the rates down to about 6.34 and we saved them about $1200 a month across the two properties. Now we also reviewed what products they had and we save them on their product fees as well. So all up across the two properties, when we do the math, they ended up saving $15,172 a year in repayments and package fees on two loans.

That's amazing. So what I'm hearing you say with both cases is that ultimately guys End up equally more money in your pocket to do things that you're going to be doing things with. Right. Living life you want to live with. I mean, you know, you want to pay little tax as possible. You want to make sure that you pay as little dead money as possible. So I'm hearing Vanessa and tell me if I'm right or wrong here. Doesn't matter the circumstance. Right. Doesn't matter if I am. You know, someone that has already got multiple loans or maybe there's already a structure that's going on would be of better fit to actually have a chat to you guys and see is there a better way to structure this, Set it up, refinance or reorganize things so that it equals more money in my pocket. Is that right?

Absolutely. And I'm going to take this to the next step. Just with that client that we spoke about, you know, where they managed to save 15,172 a year, because I asked them the question to go, all right, what would you do with this? With this extra money? Would you go on a holiday or would you like to put that back into your home and redirect your original repayments? They actually went down the path of redirecting the old repayments. So, yes, we saved them the money, but when we refinanced, they continued to the old repayments. All that actually did that reduced the loan term. They were scheduled to pay it over 16 years. That dropped down to six because now they're paying more than what they need to pay. The math on that. I had to double check the figures twice because soon me to do that, they saved 10 years in the over the life of the loan. So instead of paying it over 16, they've paid it over 6. When your workout worked out to be $855,240 in repayments, think about what you could do with that money.

Wow, that's amazing. See, I think a lot of people, they just kind of have these loans that they set up or have this debt that ultimately accurses over time. And they put the effort in the beginning to get it all set up, but then they never really put the effort to review and say, is this still serving me to my optimal or can this be set up and structured better to benefit me? And that benefit might be that more money in my pocket, or it might mean, as you can see your cases, you described saving tens of years of the life of a loan, which means that you get to live the life that you want to live at a much, much Sooner point.

Correct, correct. 100%. It gives you that flexibility to do what you would like with your time, because you don't have to spend all that time working. You can then reconsider and reevaluate where you're at in life. Maybe you want to spend more time with your family because now you've created that wealth, you've created that cash flow to fund the lifestyle that you want to live. Yes, it does.

Yep. I love it. That's exactly what it's about. So tell me this, Vanessa. All right, what I have to do. So I'm listening to this. What I have to do, who do I have to contact at the moment? This is for primarily Australian clients, is that right? And what would be my next steps if I'm interested in having a chat?

That is correct. If you are interested in having a chat, all you've got to do is reach out to the team and book in a discovery call. It is a no obligation call. So you just have like, like I always make this joke to go have a. Have a chat to the blonde chick in the middle and she will decide what you need and what services you need and. And then tailor, make a strategy that works for you. Because we, I think, and Sue's actually brought it up the other day, who is our general manager. We did get one of our clients actually sent her a little review, which was really lovely, and I had no idea that she had done that about her experience of dealing with us and the team, which I thought would give our viewers and our listeners a bit of value add as to who we are, because everybody really panics and goes when it comes to companies that offer for financial services, or what I call. Yep, it's a wham, bam, thank you, ma', am, we've sold you a property, off we go. But what was testament to our values and what we do was that we weren't solely focused. You could tell from our interactions. And this was the client's feedback. It was not purely based on, okay, yeah, all right, we're here to sell you a property and off you go. That's it, our job's done. It was not KPI driven. It was over two and three meetings getting to understand what your values are, what was important to you before we decided what strategy you need to help you achieve your end goals. So all you've got to do, all our listeners have got to do is just come have a chat, book in that no obligation discovery call, get an understanding of who we are so that we can then determine how we can help.

I love it. Amazing, Vanessa. I love what you guys are doing. I know firsthand, I've had countless people tell me about the amazing work that you've done with them. So, guys, we're leave details below so you'll have a link to the website. And what's the best way to book a call with you? Is it through the website?

Yes, definitely. There's a QR code on the website that you quickly scan and gives you direct access to our strategist calendar to book in a time that suits you.

Wonderful. I love it. So there you go, guys. It's not a tomorrow thing, it's not a next week thing. We know that. Success baby's the action taker. So details are below. Vanessa, thank you so much. I appreciate your time and more importantly, I appreciate everything you're doing for chiropractors and for their teams all around the country. I know you guys are having fantastic results.

That's awesome. Thanks, Dr. Foggy.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Remarkable CEO podcast. Remember, what the world needs. What it 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 Sam.