Implementing A Better Way: Working To Improve And Change Lives With Dr. Scot Gray

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest. Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast. We go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so today we're going to be talking about the why of better way. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find your yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems. While operating under the motto I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means taking things from one area or business and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. And so today I've got a great guest for you. His name is Dr. Scott Gray. Now, Dr. Scott is the father of two wonderful girls and husband to his beautiful bride, Jen. Dr. Scott is a serial entrepreneur and author. He has been featured on abc, NBC, Lifetime Network, and other television shows. He built and sold a successful chiropractic practice, the Ohio Neck and Back Pain Relief Centers in Marion, Ohio. Dr. Gray now owns several medical offices in Ohio and Florida, a physician referral network called Connect Relief, and has helped many doctors start clinics in multiple states. Dr. Scott focuses on building teams of people smarter than him to run and deliver services in These businesses in order to change millions of lives of patients and doctors. Dr. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Gary. Great to be on here with you, man. Good to see you.

This is going to be a lot of fun because there is a lot more to you than that really short bio. And so you know, you and I are in a mastermind group together. So I have gotten to know you there. But I am anxious for the rest of our audience to get to know you. So take us back to even just like where were you born? Where did you grow up? How the heck did you get into chiropractic?

Yeah, definitely. So originally from Columbus, Ohio. So born and raised right in the middle of the state there and Buckeye fan, just like all most folks there in Columbus. But honestly, the chiropractic thing was interesting. So I knew from a young age I always wanted to help people. I wanted to get into some type of medicine or be a doctor in some way. Didn't know anything about chiropractic for years. And then in high school I started talking with one of my family friends, one of the friends that my parents went to high school with that were was a chiropractor and started talking to him. And actually I got in a car accident of all things. I was going to school one morning and I was on the highway and I got rear ended at about 55 miles an hour and I was just sitting at a dead stop and so it basically destroyed my, my neck and my back. And where did I go? My mom told me to go to a chiropractor, literally had never been before. And so Dr. Glenn Izor there in Dublin, Ohio was another big influence on me saying, you know, Scott, the way a chiropractor does things is a little bit different in the sense that we're really looking at the cause. We don't like to cover things up with medicine or that kind of thing. Look at the person holistically, everything that's going on and look at how we can help that person improve. I just really love that model better. That really spoke to me. It really connected with me. You know, I am a big believer that, you know, the power that made the body is the power that heals the body. And it just, I mean, when I started learning about it, it just connected. And off, off to the races I went. And that's really how it got into chiropractic.

So chiropractic school building your chiropractic practice was not an easy thing for you, is that right? It wasn't like everything Was paid for. Everything was simple. You just fell right into a beautiful practice, and it was all, you know, roses from there. I think your story was a little different.

Yeah, it was a little rockier than that, I would say so. You know, I was that typical kid coming out of school with a lot of loans, a lot of debt, nothing to my name. You know, my parents didn't have money to open a practice or even help us through school and that type of thing, so I had to figure out how to do it on my own. And I actually went school, through school with my brother. My brother is also a chiropractor. We did it literally. We were together for years. I mean, literally every single day. Luckily, we get along pretty good, so that. That worked out good. But what happened was we. After chiropractic school, I went to a program where I, you know, kind of like you called an apprenticeship. Right. A preceptorship where I worked with another doctor, and he showed me the ropes of how to run a business and how to see patients and all that stuff that you don't learn in school. In school, you get all the clinical stuff. You know, how to diagnose, you know how to treat, you know how to do all that. But running the business and, like, how to get your name out there and share what you do with the world, you don't learn any of that. So I went with this group, and what he decided to do is he said, look, Scott, we'll do this program, and then when you're ready to go, we will find a spot and I'll help, you know, pay for your way to do the, you know, open your practice, right? So I go through all this. We go through the program, getting ready to get my own place, Literally have a contract in hand of the new place. We're going to sign on this thing, and we're going to open this practice, and he's going to help me, and then I would pay him back, you know, over time. What happened, though, was his business actually went bankrupt and all their investors pulled out. Everything disappeared literally overnight. It went from. I had a, you know, weekly paycheck. I was, you know, going to open a practice to Scott, there's no money, so you literally have no income, and you got to figure out how to do it from here. And so, like I said, my brother and I went through school together, but we had decided, look, we'll open our practices separate. Let's not mix, you know, business and family. But when this happened, he was also in that program, so he Was in the same boat as myself. And so we decided, look, let's figure out how to do this together. I think it's the only way. We both have a lot of debt and we didn't want to go work for somebody we knew. We wanted to have our own place. So we're bound and determined to figure this thing out. And this was February of 2004 is when we were dropped from this program. And so we just went from bank to bank, seeing who would give, you know, a couple. I was 24 at the time and my brother was 26, 27. And so, you know, couple 20 year old kids going in and asking for a bunch of money with a ton of debt. Most banks just kind of laughed us out of the. Left us out of the establishment. But we just kept going and kept going and you know, trying to find out how to do it. I mean, it is crazy. We did everything from, you know, I would watch his kids while they would go and work nights just so we could pay the bills. We lived together. It was my brother, his wife, his two girls, two dogs and myself in a two bedroom apartment. That is how we started. And so we did that for probably at least a year where I would watch the girls at night and on the weekends they would go work. We would do other things just to make money on the side so that we could get this thing going and profitable. But what happened was we ended up finding a chiropractor that wanted to move and start a practice, do something somewhere else, and were able to come in and secure a loan with, with a company for a small local bank for $50,000, enough to get us started, pay payroll for the first few months. And that was about. That was in June of 2004 that we got that started. So from February through June we were really scared. We had no income again. We were doing side jobs. And then even after we started the practice, we still did those side jobs because the practice did not pay us enough to get the thing going. And so it was a struggle. We had our ups and downs. By 2008, my brother decided to go off and do something else where he actually wanted to do like nerve conduction test, emg, ncv, these different tests where more like neurology related things. So he went and got more education and went to do that. Actually still does some of that stuff to this day. But I ended up buying him out of the practice and kind of took it from there and kind of went a different direction.

All right, so for the people that can't see you and even those that can. How tall is your brother?

So Seth is 6. 4. 6. 4.

And how tall are you?

6. 6.

So he had a 6. 4. A 6. 6. A wife, two little girls, and two dogs?

Yeah. Oh, man, it was crazy. It was a wild place, man. But you got to do what you got to do, right? We wanted to make it work. And rather than go get a comfy job where we knew we could pay the bills, we wanted to, you know, we kind of take that risk to be able to, you know, have a bigger ceiling and opportunity to help people and, you know, create change.

So, okay, so now you own this practice by yourself. What was it like when you bought it and then how long did you own it and then kind of what happened? Take us on that journey with you.

Yeah, so actually, it was kind of a. It was an interesting time when I bought the practice in 2008, May of 2008, because I was just getting over an injury. I had. I had a really bad cough for several months and ended up when I adjusted someone, I actually pulled a rib away from my sternum. So I couldn't adjust for about eight or nine months. And basically what happened is, so the patient visits started going down, the business was suffering, so I ended up buying it for my brother. And we're seeing about 100, 110 patients a week. And then I just went nuts. I started to realize, like, I got to get out there, and I got to meet people. I got to go out and share what we're doing. And so I was totally focused in the practice, really focused with my team on growing this thing. And we tripled the size of the practice within about 12 weeks after I bought the practice. So I think a lot of that is when it's painful and you're scared and worried, you go out and you do everything you possibly can. And that's what I was doing. And we did that and created a successful practice. And then I started hiring associate doctors to work with me so I could grow it even more and start focusing on really running the practice the way that it should be. Because there's so much as, you know, running a practice takes a lot of time in and of itself on top of the time you're spending with patients. So that allowed me to focus more on that. And eventually, you know, we got two associates in there. I was really out of the practice, and, you know, they. They were doing all the adjusting, and I was just working on growing it and, you know, doing everything we could to help more People.

How long did that take you to go from buying it to then just running it?

Yeah, so 2000. So May 2008 is when I bought it. And then I remember. So I had this epiphany, and I've got a mentor, guy named Vinnie Fisher. He said something to me in October of 2015. So this is seven years later. He said, scott, you're never going to grow your business and affect the amount of people you want to affect if you keep adjusting patients. So I realized that, wow, if I want to help more people, I actually have to stop seeing patients. It was like this weird, you know, idea that didn't make any sense to me at first, and then I'm like, yeah, that's it. So I went back from that meeting that I had with Vinny, and I told my staff that I'm done seeing patients and that I'm going to work on growing the practice and helping more people. So it took me a little bit of time, a couple months. December.

17Th of 2015 was the last time I saw a patient in the chiropractic office. So it took me seven and a half years to get there. So it worked out. My associate was with me for six years already, so I had a great guy working with me. He actually still runs the Ohio offices that we have. He's just an awesome guy that I love to be a partner with, a business partner with, and just does a great job. But anyway, you know, I worked really hard to, you know, train him and get him to where he could just run it on the. On his own. And then the beautiful thing that that did is when I was able to move on to the next phase of my life and sell the practice. You know, that was in 2017. So this was about a year and a half later. And one of the things that the. The bank really loved about it is that I had not seen a patient for a year and a half, so nothing was going to change. Right? So, Gary, you know that with the mastermind that we're in, one of the things that they always talk about is like, you need to make yourself redundant in your business so that you're not needed. Right? And that was one of the biggest things that helped me there, to be able to do that and move that along to him. And then also, it's better for the practice because nothing changes and it's just smooth sailing. So, yeah, it was.

That seven years. It's funny, I never even.

I had thought about it, but I never really thought I would get there. I didn't know how I would get there, but it was just certain things like that with Benny, you know, speaking that to me. And then it was our mentor, Randy. I had a really bad day, a stressful day at the office. And, you know, he actually asked me, said, scott, you know, are you really happy right now? Do you want to keep the office or should you move on to what you really want to do? And that was kind of that word to me of, yeah, I need to. I need to really focus on what I love, what I want to do to be able to help more people. And it's created an amazing amount of freedom in my life.

Okay, so if I'm. Because I went through this same thing. And so if. If I'm a doctor or a lawyer or a chiropractor, listening to this right now, and I want to do the same thing. How did you do it? I understand the concept, I understand what you're saying, but what the heck did you do to go from being the producer to being the promoter, from being the one who does everything to one that builds everything? How did you change that?

So I started to phase myself out. So. Well, the first thing you have to do is get good people and train them, spend the time with them, right? So I would train my team at least an hour a week, and then, you know, different little things every single day. And, I mean, I went through so much stuff with Dr. Dave, who took over my practice. I mean, I would read books with them and we would go through, like, different mindset things. We would, you know, talk about case studies with patients. I mean, we spent a lot of time. I put a lot of time into my team, into training, into how you do something, right? You're. I was always training on, how could you do this better than me, right? Because that's what you always want to find. You know, I actually interviewed one of the founders of Pixar, and that's what they said the secret to their success was, was just hiring the smartest people that were smarter than them. Even when it was, like, you know, scary that they might take their job or, you know, be better. That was the key. And so find people that are better, can do things better than you and train them up, and you'll see them actually surpass you. And so what I did is, you know, I started with, you know, one of the things with chiropractic especially, maybe the same in dentistry, I don't know, is that when someone sees you, maybe you're the first person to treat them, adjust them, meet Them, they get used to you, right? So what I wanted to do as fast as possible is have that first encounter to be with Dr. Dave and not me, so that they liked being with Dr. Dave and not with me, right? And then that was one of the biggest shifts. So when I was able to get to where he would see all the new patients and start with everyone, I'm the odd guy out coming in to, you know, if he's out of town or whatever. And, you know, it used to be, oh, I want to see Dr. Scott. Now it's, oh, I want to see Dr. Dave. And so, you know, I would deal with that, but that was one of the biggest things, and it's the expectations, too, that you have, because a lot of doctors, what. I would get this question a lot. They would say, scott, how do you get your doctors who work for you to do so much? And it blew my mind that I don't understand how you don't have them do a lot. You've hired them, you should be training them and getting them the most experience you can. And one of the things I did with Dr. Dave, and that is.

A lot of docs will do this. They'll say, hey, you're with me for two years or three years in this contract. You better not go out and try to, you know, start a practice and take my patients. And, you know, they try to put the handcuffs on them. And I did the complete opposite. I said, I'm going to teach you how to have a great practice. I'm going to teach you everything you need to know. And if you want to go open up a practice somewhere and have your own practice, awesome. Go do it, right? And so my thought process was, if he wants to leave, he's going to leave right there. And why would I want to keep somebody there that doesn't want to be there? I mean, that's. That's a toxic thing, right? So I just said, hey, if you want to take this out and do it on your own, you know, go ahead and do it. So I think the biggest thing was training, right? Letting them have freedom to want to learn, want to do good, almost, you know, planning to have their own practice, right? Because if they don't plan for that, they're not going to try to achieve it, right? So I say, look, if you want to achieve it, you're going to have to work your butt off just like any of us who own a practice. And then, you know, having the faith to hand that person off to them and trust that they're going to do a great job with them because that's the hardest thing. Vinny told me. He said, you know, one of the things you have to be okay with is that sometimes you have to be okay with a 70% version of yourself, because no one's going to treat your business the same way you do. It's always going to be your baby, and you're going to have to be okay with. Maybe they don't do quite as good, but what I found is that if you train right now, the right people in there, a lot of times they can do better.

Yeah, it seems like most of us kind of bypass that training part. Well, both of them, you know, both of them. The training and the freedom.

Yeah, everyone. Everyone says they're too busy to train them, but it's like the problem is you'll always be busy if you don't train them. That's the reality.

Now, how was that on your ego? Because you went from the guy everybody wants to see you to now they want to see Dr. Dave. And how did you handle that? Hey, I went to school. This is my place. This is my thing. And now it's more, hey, I want to see Dr. Dave. Was that tough on you, or was that just an easy transition?

It was an easy transition. I don't really have a. I need to be the guy. Honestly. It's funny because, you know, I promoted the practice that way. You know, did a lot of videos. I mean, you could YouTube me and see, like, I've done a lot of videos. I've done a lot of TV stuff, I've written books. And it was always about, you know, Dr. Scott comes to Dr. Scott. And honestly, to get out of the limelight was awesome to me. I'm more of an introvert. I. I forget if it's Randy who says the situational extrovert, right? I'm that situational extrovert where when I need to be, I can be extroverted. But honestly, like, most times, if you were to leave me to my own devices, I'll just sit over in the corner and be quiet, and I'll be completely happy and content. And you, I mean, you know that in our group, I'm not the most talkative guy. Like, I'm more. Way more of an introvert than most people. So the ego thing was nothing. I. I'm always focused on results. I want to have the best practice. I want to have, you know, the best team. I want to have the best results. So whatever that looks like, that's what I want to do. And I don't think that I have to be in the center of that for that to happen. Honestly, I feel like my. My superpower is more of having vision of where we can go and creating a better way. I mean, that's what I'm always thinking of, like, how can we simplify this? How can we make this better? How can it be a better experience for the patient? How can it be a better outcome for the patient? I'm always trying to think of that stuff. Now when I've got all the providers treating the patients, I can be back doing what I'm best at, what I just love and have a fun time doing. Like, today, I was going through pain management literature just to see if there's something that we could add or tweak that would be beneficial to our patients, like, how can we make it more simple? How can we make it better and more effective? Now I'm thinking we're working on the system that we have to connect people with doctors across the country to get pain relief and other relief that they need. I'm kind of that guy. And so I'm totally happy being behind the scenes doing that stuff. And I just like to see the results that patients get. And honestly, the, you know, jobs we can provide, all that kind of stuff, I mean, that's. That's the more fulfilling part for me.

So you went now from. So now you've got one practice, or you had one practice, you were running that instead of being the doctor in it. And then how did you grow from there? What all take us on your journey through that to where you are today.

Yeah. So the funny thing is, is this was not planned at all. So what happened was I sold my practice, my chiropractic practice in 2017, and I had another practice that was doing regenerative medicine in Ohio. But again, I was just behind the scenes Vision had a great operating team, great medical doctor, great nurse practitioners. They were running the whole show. I didn't even have to show up. Right. I was just doing the things in the background that I needed to do so that we had a great, you know, great company and, you know, things were moving along well. And so, Scott, for those that don't.

Know, what is regenerative medicine?

So regenerative medicine, it kind of like got big when people started talking about stem cell therapy. Right. So now with the way the FDA has changed things, we don't do stem cell therapy in the US Anymore. You know, there's great people that we can connect you with. In other countries like in Mexico that do stem cell therapy, you know, this is actually using stem cells from. Sometimes they use them from your own body, sometimes they use them from an umbilical cord. So a mother will donate the umbilical cord because basically there's two things they're going to do with it. Either they can donate it or it's going to go in the trash, basically is what's going to happen. So they can donate it. And it obviously goes through all kinds of testing, sterility, to make sure it's clean and good and usable. And after all that, they can take those stem cells, those day zero cells that are just amazing and what they can do for the body, they can basically release all these cytokines and growth factors and things that help regenerate tissue in the body. So there's this amazing regenerative.

Function in the body and people just see amazing results. So when we first started doing it, stem cells in the US was kind of like becoming a bigger thing. And we were kind of part of that movement. But with the changes now we can use tissue allographs to where we can help people. We can use tissue that has stem cell in it. But we're not doing stem cell therapy in America, in the US anymore. Our offices are really based more on insurance based things now like hyaluronic acid and PT and different things like that. But there still is a regenerative medicine aspect that we can do. But it's not the old stem cell therapy that, you know, we love so much. But we still send people down to folks in, in Mexico that have great programs. But regenerative medicine has just been great. You know, I'm kind of skipping around here a little bit because I got to be careful. I don't want to make claims and things and act like it does more than what it does. Right. We want to be careful with how we talk about it. You can look up studies, look up studies from all around the world and what it does and how it helps people. But in other countries they're treating things like, you know, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer's, lupus, they treat all kinds of crazy stuff down there because they can do things different than we do in the US Here we focus really on helping people with joint pain, back pain, knee pain, those types of things. But regenerative medicine is an amazing thing. I wish we could do more of it in the US but things have changed a little bit.

I know you're dancing around it and I don't know If I can ask you this question or not, but why has it changed so much? Because I know a few years back it was okay to do, quote, unquote, stem cell therapy, and now suddenly it's not okay to say that you do stem cell therapy or do stem cell therapy. Why the change? Is that something you can talk about?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I feel like a lot of it is abuse by doctors that go out there and said this thing was a silver, like magic bullet that was going to heal everything in your body. There's some crazy people out there doing crazy stuff with it, saying stupid things. And so the FDA has to come in and regulate it and say, like, look, we got to talk about what we can and can't say here. And even when people say stem cell therapy, there's way more to this than just stem cells. So they're basically saying, like, you guys are talking about it wrong. You're not, you know, you're making claims that aren't true. We don't have the double blind studies. So the FDA basically gave a window, said, look, we can test this out, see how it works. But then at the end of that, we're going to have to come in and set up regulations around this as to how we can use it, what's being said, what products you can use. And so they came out in May 31st of 2021 and change things up so that, you know, they said, look, this is what you can say, this is what you can't say. This is what you can do is what you can't do. And no one was talking about the risks involved in it, right? No one's talking about just like anything, anytime you get a surgery, anytime you get, you know, any kind of procedure, any kind of injection, there's a consent form, right? And we did that all along. But again, there are bad players out there and there's always going to be players like that in the market where FDA kind of had to come in and say something and do something. And unfortunately, it hurts a lot of other people that were doing it right and really had good processes down. But, you know, one interesting thing about that though, is that what we did here, we couldn't manipulate the cells. And what we mean by that is you may have been able to get like 10 million, 20 million stem cells here in Mexico. They can actually expand those out to 100 million, 200 million cells. So honestly, what you're able to do in those other countries is really even better than what we were able to do here. So it May not even be a bad thing. We just love being able to do it. We love, you know, helping people. But again, you know, we were not. We never made claims. We always told people, this is experimental. You know, this is something that there's no double blind studies and there are risks involved with it. We went through on the consent form and we did those things. But, you know, like anything, there's always going to be people that, you know, blow it up to say it's stuff, but it's not, and it creates a problem, and then regulation has to come in.

Okay, so you went from one chiropractic office to multiple chiropractic offices and then to multiple regenerative practices. Is that kind of the path?

We actually. So I had the chiro office and then I had the regenerative office at the same time. So I just. Those two. Then I sold the chiropractic practice and just had the regenerative practice. And then at that point, it was basically running on its own. I didn't have to be there all the time. I had the opportunity where I could just come back and be there every once in a while, you know, do stuff on Zoom and all that. Kind of. Before, everything was real big on Zoom and all that. But my wife and I decided we wanted to move to Florida, and so we moved to Florida on a whim. We said, hey, our girls are young enough. Let's do it before school and let's see if we really love it, because we've been talking about moving to Florida for three to five years. We just love it down here. That's where I am now.

But I said, you know what? I could do some regenerative medicine down here and let's see who I could team up with and build a team down here. Because I didn't want to just sit around and not do anything. I obviously was working with the team in Ohio, but I was like, shoot, I could do it here at the same time. So I met with a doctor down here and said, hey, could I rent space from you and we could do something together. And long story short, we ended up partnering together and we ended up with, we have six offices down here now. And building that out. And obviously started as regenerative medicine is something totally different now. It has really changed through the changes that we had to make, but that came out of nowhere. I wasn't even planning it, but it was a great opportunity to work together, help more people bring my system down here and, you know, do what we do so well. And then Once we got that going, then in Ohio, they said, hey, let's do some more offices here. And so we ended up, you know, we've got. We're opening our fourth office right now in Ohio. So that's kind of how it happened. We just. We have great teams that love to do this. They love what we're doing. They love the mission. And, you know, we just keep, you know, expanding and working to help more and more people.

So one of your specialties that I know of is marketing. You have learned from some of the best, and you've implemented many of the things they share with you. You've taught me a lot of stuff. How did you become so proficient in marketing?

Yeah, so I, you know, when I first started, I realized, okay, patients are not knocking down my door to come and get adjusted. As I said, it was a rocky start, right. So I just started reading. It was out of necessity, right? It was, how do I do this? I actually bought a program from this guy named Ben Altadana. He was big in helping chiropractors learn how to share the message of their office and started doing some of that, what they call direct response marketing of sending stuff out, sharing what we can do, and having people respond and find people that need us, that we can help. And honestly, I just loved it, because one of the big things when I went to Louisville, Kentucky, is where I did that program, my preceptorship, my apprenticeship. And down there, like I said, I am an introvert. And so I started reading a ton of books on communication because I. I didn't know how to start a conversation with people. I'm not like the life of the party guy to be able to just strike up a conversation with everyone. And so I got to learn how to do this. I got to learn how to talk people.

I'm trying to think around here. I still have it. I have this old program called how to Start a conversation in 90 seconds or less. It's like this little audio thing, trying to learn how to talk to people. But I started loving the whole concept of communication, which is really what I feel marketing and advertising is. It's how do I communicate with people on a super high level to help them understand what we do and how they can help them and understand them and what they're dealing with and what frustrations they have. And I just fell in love with it. And so I just. I've got hundreds of hundreds of books. I've probably spent over a million dollars just in courses and going to seminars and being in masterminds and learning from the best people in the world how to do marketing. And again, when I say marketing, I just mean I feel like it's communication with people and it's being able to create a community and, you know, get. Get the message out that helps more people.

So what is the best book you've read? If you could only if you were going to tell the audience one book they just can't miss, they got to read on marketing, what would that book be? What's had the biggest impact on you?

Wow.

So if I take it back to communication.

Honestly, probably the most profound book to me was just the old classic, how to Win Friends and influence People. That one really changed my understanding of how to talk to people. Before that, I just really didn't know what to do. But if I could cheat and give a couple more.

I would say the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes was one of the best books I ever read on. Really just how to run a business is what that is, includes marketing and advertising.

And then of course, one of the things that people said is that marketing and advertising is really just psychology and math, right? It's understanding people and then it's making the math work to where if I spend this much on marketing, I'm not going to go bankrupt, right? I'm actually going to make money on it because you can't just keep spending money if you're not getting any money back in the business. So those are the two big things. And so the reason I say that is because one of my favorite books is the. What is it? Psychology.

Man. I'm gonna forget the name of it. That's not good. It's basically, it's a book on influence. Oh, influence. Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. That book was. You talk to any marketer, it's just really understanding basic concepts of human psychology. And it's again, I was such a novice to this. Those early books were really huge to me and to some people and maybe real simple concepts, but to me it was like earth shattering.

You recommended a book to me recently that we're actually utilizing quite a bit called the Conversion Code.

Oh, yeah, awesome book. Chris Smith. Yeah.

That was really good for understanding the psychology of. You know, nowadays a lot of people are doing online advertising, right? And so this is from the guy that was probably the most successful with my understanding, he worked for Quicken Loans and he handled all the incoming or his job was handling incoming leads off of Facebook to Quicken Loans. And so he goes through what it takes to really connect with an online lead and how to handle that and understand the psychology of that, because it's different from someone that read a newsletter or saw you on an infomercial. You know, understanding where people are when they come in and, you know, raise their hand and say, hey, I'm interested in what you're doing, the way you speak with them, what you say to them, how fast you respond to them. There's a lot of things that go into it that a lot of people just don't understand. It's like simple concepts. You just got to know it, so you got to read about it, you got to learn it, but then you got to implement it, right? I could read the conversion code and say, oh, that was a great book, and then go read another book, right? I'm. I'm notorious for I outline books when I read them. So I read a book with the intention to implement everything that I read in that book. Right? That makes sense to the business. So when I write conversion code, I literally have a whole presentation that I gave to my team. This is how you use it. And one of the things I do also is I've, you know, I used to hold quarterly seminars, and I would train doctors on how to run their practice and business. So I would take these and put them into presentations and kind of transform it. You talked about better way. Take something from somewhere and puts it somewhere else. I do that all the time. I take this concept from Quicken Loans, say, how do we do that in a medical practice? Right? And anyone that ever sees anything that I've done, you'll find out quickly that I'm a huge Disney fanatic, as Gary knows. But, you know, I try to take every concept of what Disney does and what Walt Disney did and put that into our practice. And how do we give people just a better experience in the practice? So that better way thing, man, like, when you started describing that when I first met you and learned about all the why, it was like, oh, my gosh, like, that's me in a nutshell.

And that's why we connect, because I see the same world. You see, there's always gotta be a better way. But what you've really done. Well, I love that. How you outline the books and then give a presentation to your team so that you can implement everything. I can read a book and then jump to the next book, hey, what's the next one I got to read? And what's the next one I got to read? But I love the way you're, you know, implementing it's the whole thing.

It is, yep. And so here's the thing too is like my video library is vast. I literally have a university for my team to watch. So one of the things that a lot of people do is they'll teach that stuff, but then they have to keep teaching it over and over and over again and reiterating it, you know, over. And we do have to do that in business as the leader, as the visionary. You know, they say in the Bible, you know, when the vision is gone, the people perish. Right? There's got to be a vision, you've got to reiterate it. Most people forget about it within 30 to 45 days in your company. So if you're not doing going over your vision every month, everyone's lost and they're just doing day to day stuff and they're not really on point. But.

What I've done is document it so that everyone new coming in can see that. And you're creating like clones, right? For lack of a better term, you want, like that's what I do with Dr. Dave, my whole point wasn't just to say like, hey, Dr. Dave, look at this cool concept. It's like, no, how do I teach this and have that person do it and have it become part of their routine, right? And it becomes part of their routine, it becomes part of our system. So anyone new that comes in, that part of the system is now there, can be taught, they can take it and put it into practice. So it's how do I learn it, how do I disseminate it down and how do I get them to then do it? And now I'm hands off, right? I don't have to do that again. They can just take it and then what? What do we want them to do? We want them to train the next person so they can move up, right? So then they can train. Of course when they train, they get better at it. So there's a whole system that, you know, I focus on to take it and implement it, but really help get other people to implement it. That's really my goal is get other people to implement it. Because it's the only way you're going to get the leverage that you need. Which is a big word that we focus on, right, is leverage, right. How do you leverage your time when you see successful people that, you know, can have multiple clinics and multiple things going on? I could never do that. If I had to see every patient, if I had to manage all the staff, if I had to know it's leverage Right. How do I train this so that they're basically becoming a clone, doing these things as part of the system. Again, it's making yourself redundant in the business, and you're just leading the way.

And it's interesting because this all came from pain on your side. Right. Pain of not having the practice, of not having the ability to just go out and buy it. I got a maybe. Maybe a better word would be resourcefulness.

Yeah. Honestly, I wouldn't have been that resourceful if I had the money. Right. I had to figure it out. And then once you do that, then you start to have more confidence, like, oh, I can do this. I can start a business. I build a business. I can build another one. I train that person and sold that business. Wow. Then stuff that you never thought you could do, all of a sudden it's like you're starting to build your chops, build your confidence as you do these things. And.

That'S one of the things. Money can be a killer because it can kill your resourcefulness. Right. I mean, you look at most immigrants that come over here that become successful. We want to talk about resourcefulness. They couldn't even speak English. They didn't have a dollar to their name. Resourcefulness is the name of the game, not money.

I love that. So what's next for Dr. Scott Gray?

Yeah, I mean, for me, man.

I'm trying to help a billion people get relief from their pain and their suffering. So I'm building a network of doctors that will have approved certified treatments that we approve of. We help certify their team so that we know that people are getting great care. One of my passions is. So another thing that a lot of people don't know about me is I actually served on as president of city council for a couple years in my town, and unfortunately, in my town, we had a big opiate and heroin problem. And I became very aware of how huge an issue this was, how it was destroying families, it was destroying people's lives. It was just killing people. Ohio was. Unfortunately, we were on the national news because our state was so bad. And then our town was literally one of the worst in Ohio. So we were in the pit of this thing. People actually went around and put signs up in my town that said, heroin is our economy. I mean, it is like it was that bad. And I started to see this, and I became really passionate about pain relief. I feel like the way that we treat pain right now is like caveman days. I feel like we've done this for years and.

We'Ve been brainwashed that when there's a problem and a symptom, there's a pill to fix that problem or that symptom and just take the pill and go about your day. And that's completely inaccurate. And my goal is to educate the world, educate people to understand there is a better way. So goes back to that, right? There is a better way to fix your pain. There is a better way to get relief. There is a better way to be healthy. I think, especially in these times where health needs to be at our forefront, right? There are viruses, there are things out there that are dangerous. And people need to understand that the healthier you can be, the better your ability is going to be to fight off anything that you get too. Right. If we're on a, you know, that morning cocktail of medications, what that's doing to your immune system and your ability to fight things off. And I could get on a big soapbox here, but that's what's next for me is building this program called Kynect Relief. It starts with a K, the letter K. Connect Relief. And I am building, I want it to be kind of like the home advisor of pain relief, where we are almost like a WebMD in information, where you can get great information, but really in the new way of taking care of your body, your mind, your spirit, all those things that you need to do, but putting the medical side into it and what's available. But things that aren't dangerous, right? Things that aren't going to destroy your immune system, things that you can do quickly to get out of pain and dealing with some underlying symptoms and issues. Not symptoms, but issues that are there causing you to have pain. So that is my passion, is to be.

Out there connecting people to the best practitioners, to really find out why they're having pain and to be able to get rid of it. And if not anything, reduce medications and opiates and things like that that they're on so they have a better, healthier, happier life.

So that's my mission, love, but enough. There's people out that are listening that want to follow you. Is it connectrelief.com or how do they connect with you? Follow you, see what you're doing, keep up with you?

Yeah, for sure. So it's so funny, I've done so much stuff like word of mouth. So Connect Relief. Connect Relief with a K. ConnectRelief.com is up right now. We're literally rebuilding it. The final draft is going to be out on the Website probably in 30 to 60 days. It's going to be a beautiful, amazing site to really help connect people. So you can go to connectrelief.com or you can go to drscottgray.com and I always tell people got the hardest eight letter name to spell in the world. So it's doctors of Dr. S C O T. Just one T, G R A Y. So it's D R S C O T G R A Y dot com. And you know, I should be putting all the things up there that I'm doing. And I've got a podcast as well that is going to be moving over to that page. We've interviewed, like I said, one of the founders of Pixar. We've interviewed all kinds of great people on there, the founder of the Orlando Magic, all kinds of good stuff. And we talk a lot about this kind of thing. I think Gary, you and I are just so like minded in this stuff. We love talking about it. We love figuring out how we can help the world with our information and what we do.

I love it. And so last question I got for you. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received or the best piece of advice that you've ever given?

So.

This thing that I wear right here says the time is now. And so I've lived by that since that day, October in 2015, when actually that's when I heard those words spoken for the first time. And.

That'S when Vinny said, look, if you want to have the impact you want, you got to get out of practicing. So I said, okay. I went back and I stopped practicing. I stopped seeing patients, right? And then.

When I realized I needed to sell the chiropractic practice, I made the decision and I sold the practice. When I started thinking, hey, maybe we can move to Florida. Time is now. What am I waiting for? I'm not getting any younger. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, right? I want to live in Florida. Go do it, Scott. So I did it and amazing things have happened and I just live by this. And it's one thing to hear it, but again I'm a guy that I like to hear it and then I like to do it, right? So I say the time is now. So whatever that one thing is that you have been waiting to do, that you are making all kinds of crazy excuses as to why not to do it. I am telling you, do it. And I mean I have made that decision over and over and over again and it is just been such a blessing to Myself, my family, and the people that we are helping. You know, with all the clinics, I am helping way more people than I ever could have helped before. So the time is now. Take action today.

Man, I love that. That is awesome. Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. I know we see each other every quarter at least, but there's a lot I learned today about you that I didn't know. So I'm glad we got a chance to talk. And I love that the time is now because I'm going to use that myself. So I'm stealing a lot of your better way stuff and applying it to my better way stuff.

That's how we do, man. We got to swipe and deploy. I love it.

Well, thanks so much for being here and I look forward to staying in touch as we continue on our journeys.

Thank you, Gary. Appreciate you, man.

It's time for our last segment, guess the why. And for this segment, I want to use Michael Jordan. What do you think Michael Jordan's why is? I'm going to take a stab at what I think it is. Because if you remember, he was the guy that tried out for his basketball team as a junior, didn't make it, went back and practiced and practiced and practiced and found the right way to do things. And then he made the team, became a superstar, went off to North Carolina, became a superstar there, went to the NBA, became the best of all time. But he was always that guy that was willing to have a tantrum. He was willing to go out on a limb. He was willing to do what was necessary in order to get the results that he wanted. So I'm going to say that Michael Jordan's why is to do things the right way in order to get results. Practice over and over and over, the same shot, the same layup, do the same things.

Over and over and over because they're going to get results. And so again, people with the why of right way, they follow processes and systems that work. They stick to things that work. They're willing to get in people's faces, yell at them, have a tantrum, have a fit if they're not getting things done the right way. And so I see this in Michael Jordan. What do you think Michael Jordan's why is in the comments? Let us know what you think. Michael Jordan's why is now. I want to thank you for listening. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at why institute.com you can use the code podcast 50p o d c a s t 50 and you could discover your why at half price or share that with your friends. If you love the beyond, you'd why Podcast, Please don't forget to subscribe below and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you're using or listening to so that we can bring the why to 1 billion people in the next five years. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez and I'll see you on the next episode.