Best Books for Personal and Professional Growth

Welcome to the Practice Builders Podcast hosted by Dr.

Vince Leone and Dr.

Kyle Pankinen, your source for building cash services.

Let's dive in. Welcome everybody to the Practice Builders Podcast. My name is Dr. Vince Leone.

And I'm Dr. Kyle Pankinen, and we're pretty excited about this topic we have today. We think it's gonna resonate with a lot of you. Dr. Leone, Why don't you introduce this topic and then we'll dig in?

I love it. We're going right to it. No messing around on this topic today. By the way, please share this episode and any other episodes that you enjoy and get value out of with a colleague. As you know, we've been talking to other doctors that have listened and they've got a lot of value out of it. So, the only way this is going to grow is if we have our listeners share. So, if you would like and share, we would be super grateful and so would your colleague, I think. Today's title is Best Books for Personal and Professional Growth. And I know Dr. Kyle is an avid reader. I'm certainly an avid reader. And, you know, there's so much knowledge in books that are just readily available to all of us. I feel like, honestly, that in recent times, The books' quality have decreased in in really the knowledge base because a lot of times books these days are are written to sell some type of coaching program or something. So I found that the older books are actually of higher quality because it's usually men or women that have had great success and they want to share what you know how they did it, you know, and and the lessons that they learned so that they can you know help. the following generation. So most of our books will be kind of probably older in nature, but let's go ahead and dive in. We got a great mix of clinical, professional, personal, all that good stuff. And so we hope that this will give you great value and you can load up your Amazon cart and start reading away. So Dr. Pankinen has 4, I got 3. So we're going to start first with Dr. Pankinen's first recommended book.

Yeah, so when I was in chiropractic college, I went to, I think it was my 8th or 9th semester, I got to go to a seminar in Lombard, Illinois through National University of Health Sciences. And I went to a seminar that my friend told me about on Cox Technique by Dr. James Cox. And that was my first introduction to him. And I learned more in that one weekend about spine pain, Disc stenosis, spondylolisthesis, transitional segments, all those different conditions than I did in my entire training of chiropractic college. I'm not kidding.

Really?

It was, it was a life-changing event. And so he had a textbook at that time that he wrote called Low Back Pain Mechanism, Diagnosis, and Treatment, and it was on its 5th edition. It was like 500 and some pages just on that topic. Can you imagine that? of low back pain. And so when I got home from that seminar, of course I was close to the end of my chiropractic training. I had a little— I was doing some clinical stuff, few classes yet, so I had a little more free time. The intensity of the study wasn't quite so tremendous as you get towards the end of chiropractic college. And I devoured that book. I read it from COVID to cover, highlighted it. I even got it autographed by Dr. Cox at some seminar later on.

Wow.

And that book changed my world. And that set the foundation for me in treating the more complex and challenging cases of spine pain. The 5 or 10% that represent 90 to 95% of the cost, which are disc herniations, spinal stenosis, post-surgical continued pain syndrome. And so when I got into chiropractic college, I built my practice Cox Technique. And now I have the 7th edition. Actually, it sits right on my desk and I read about— try to read 2 or 3 pages from it every day that I come into the office. So I've studied from Dr. Cox my entire career through books, online training, in-person training. And actually, we just lost Dr. Cox about 2 or 3 months ago, age 84. But he was my— He was the one in our profession that I most looked up to. But the bottom line is this, he has that book, he has one called Neck, Shoulder, and Arm Pain Mechanism, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Now it's 3rd edition or 4th edition. If you want to learn how to be the best in spine care, conservative, non-surgical treatment, and you're a chiropractor listening to this, I can't recommend enough to read the work of Dr. Cox.

What was the name of that? The lumbar one?

Just Low Back Pain Mechanism, Diagnosis, and Treatment, now in its 7th edition. And great book. And it is the— it's the textbook for our profession, in my opinion, which is what's our bread and butter? It's back pain. That's what the public recognizes for. If you want to be the expert at back pain, You want this book in your library, not just sitting there, but read it actively. And it'll change your— it'll change your career, guaranteed.

Big, bold claim there from Dr. Pankinen. I love it, but I absolutely believe it. And, you know, Dr. Pankinen is our clinical director here at Specialized Practice. And so, we rely on him for that expertise. And he also teaches our doctors our world-class exam for neck and back. So that sounds like a fantastic book. Okay, we'll move on to my first one, and this is probably one that a lot of doctors may have already read. And if you haven't, I would recommend ordering it, you know, sooner rather than later. If you have read it and have it, I'd recommend rereading it. It's on my reread list right now. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Now, this is a seminal book. My dad gave this to me when I was like 7 years old or something like that. I don't think I read it until I was like 12. But the point being is, you know, when it comes to creating something that's uncommonly good, a practice, a life, wealth, whatever it may be, It starts typically in the mind, right? So if you don't, if you can't envision what you want to achieve or where you want to go and you want it to look like, it's unlikely to happen or it won't happen really the way that you want it. So Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, it's just not some hidden gem. I think everyone's definitely probably heard of it, but the principles in there are still just as relevant today as they were back in the '20s or whenever he wrote it. And so I think this is a fantastic book to either have in your library and reread or add to your library so that you can learn from one of the pioneers of Not necessarily positive thinking, but conceptual thinking about how you want your life to unfold. So, that's my first one. How about yours? By the way, Doc, have you read that book?

I have read that book. It's been several years. It's probably— I probably have it around somewhere in my library. I'd have to dust it off, but it is a good book. And the big thing is, I think about that is, I think it's just teaching us to think Bigger. Most of us think too small, whether it's our businesses, whether it's things in our personal life, whatever. In our prayer life, I just preached about this this last Sunday actually, and we don't think big enough. So in the area of finances, we're all guilty of that too. And so the power of the thought, the mind, and to create things that we never dreamt possible. It's all within our grasp.

Yeah. And it's a very high level. I would say, I don't know how tactical it is. My next book is a little more tactical, but it's very high level. I think it's very inspiring. So, that's my first one. Hey, Doc, really quick. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. If you have found value in this, please consider sharing it with a friend or colleague. We want to reach and help as many doctors as possible. Thank you in advance, and back to the show. Doc, what's your second book?

So the second best all-around textbook for the day-to-day chiropractor in the trenches like I am is called Differential Diagnosis and Management for the Chiropractor: Protocols and Algorithms by Dr. Thomas Souza.

Hmm.

And so that book is beyond just spine with Dr. Cox's, but this will cover all the common extremity musc— neuromusculoskeletal conditions that most doctors of chiropractic are gonna see in day-to-day practice. But what's beautiful about the book is it'll give you the most practical exams, the practical orthopedic tests, How to work up each area of the body. And then it will give you algorithms how to arrive at a correct diagnosis. And then it will also go into protocols of what are the— what does the research show about the best treatment, non-drug, non-surgical treatment options for X, Y, and Z conditions. And so it is a tremendous reference text. It has shoulders on— shoulders— has chapters on every area of the body, shoulder, elbows, and knee, and all those things. And I have literally read that book cover to cover as well and have many things highlighted throughout it. And sometimes I will pull that out because, oh, how does that test go again? What does the research say on this particular condition? It is a great reference text. that I think all chiropractors should have in their library because you're going to learn things about every, every condition that, you know, walks through your door in a typical chiropractic office. It's pretty well covered in there. And so probably the best all-around reference text for any chiropractor to have in their office.

I love it. I love it. And I just want to circle back really quickly. I, you had talked about, we talked Sometimes don't think big enough. Uh, I remember, so when, when my dad gave me that book, he, he was like, you know, life will give you whatever you want and work for. Um, but this analogy said, you know, life is like the ocean, and you can go to the ocean with a thimble and ask for a thimble of water, or you can go to the ocean with a dump truck and ask for a dump truck of water. It doesn't matter. The ocean— Will be unchanged. So that's kind of how life operates is you know you can ask for a little and you'll get a little, or you can ask for a lot and you can get a lot. It's really up to you.

So and so just going back to that think and grow rich, and I think that is the other thing I would say about that is I mean when I preached this last Sunday, like I said, my the title of my prayer is Great Christians Pray Great Prayers, and what I emphasized to the congregation was. Most of the time in our prayer life, we pray, "Oh, oh Lord, help my health or help such and such." But we we think way too small in terms of how we should pray to God because there's many scriptures that say God is able to do above and beyond what we can ever even think or imagine. So sometimes we got to get creative and think beyond our little boxes in life. And think about bigger impact and bigger things. And I just— God wants us to pray bigger prayers. If you're into faith, that would be my take-home from that and thinking along the lines of the thinking that Dr. Leone is talking about. Great concepts.

Yeah. And a lot of people think it's only about money and Think and Grow Rich, but really it's not. Money is certainly a part of it, but when they talk about being rich or wealthy, it's in all facets of life. It's not just in the bank account. So I think that that's important. Okay, my second book is Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. So this is a really great book. It's on its like second or third edition. There's— it was the whole Are the rights to the book was bought by this guy Matt Fury, who was a you know a big big time student of Maxwell Maltz. But Maxwell Maltz was a a surgeon in in like the 50s, and he would you know correct like disfigurements, and he would do nose jobs, and and and you know he was. Excellent in his field. But what he found was people say they had a disfigured like lip, like cleft lip or something. They even though they had the surgery and it was perfect in their mind, they still saw themselves as disfigured. And so that really intrigued him about digging into the power of the mind and how to change it. And so when I was talking about with Think and Grow Rich, where it's more high level, with Psycho-Cybernetics, it's, it's, it's very tactical about how to change your thinking. And he talks about, you know, you've probably heard the saying, you know, what you think about, you bring about. And so I don't know, you know, there's the law of attraction, whether, you know, maybe that's real, maybe it's not, who knows. It's a little woo-woo for me. But what I liked about Psycho-Cybernetics was, you know, it came from a surgeon's perspective that realized the power of the mind and the ability for it to create, bring about reality. And so he went down that road in a really, you know, deep manner. So if you're— I've recommended this book to so many doctors. If you feel like you have done, like you have all the tools, you know, you have the team, you know, you feel like you've trained yourself up, but you're still, you know, not really able to achieve your goals. A lot of times there's something between the ears that it has not been sorted out, figured out, or developed enough that will then, once it is, will allow you to break through and go to that next level in your life. You know, the person you are today, or the doctor you are today, say you're doing $50,000 a month, is not the doctor that's going to allow you to achieve $100,000 a month or $200,000 a month. You'll need to upgrade, you know, your systems, right? So you're going to need to be you 2.0. So you'll need to upgrade your skill sets clinically. You'll need to upgrade your management skills, your business skills, your thinking skills, your strategic skills, your marketing skills, like all those things are going to need to be upgraded to get to that next level in practice. And this book really gives you the blueprint on how to do that.

Very insightful. I actually have that book in my library too. That's one I have not read. So, that's going to go towards the top of the stack.

Yeah. If you look at my copy, it's It has highlights all over the place, underlines. I read it probably 3 times. It's gonna go back into the reread pile at this point. Like I was saying before, it's like most of the modern books are just not that great. And so what I found is focusing less energy there and more on some of the classics. And that's one of them. And honestly, not really well known.

Well, there we go. It's a hidden gem then.

I would put that in the hidden gem category. Okay. Back to you, Doc. Book number 3.

Book number 3 is called Are You the Doctor? Doctor, written by Dr. Fred. Dr. Fred Barge. Dr. Fred Barge was a chiropractor. He, uh, he was very into chiropractic philosophy. I remember when I was a student at Northwestern Health Sciences University, he came in as a guest lecturer a couple times, and we, the whole student body, got, you know, into the auditorium, big auditorium, and we listened to him for an hour or two. And, uh, he was pretty inspiring. He actually knew, I believe he knew BJ Palmer. He was old when I— he was speaking at our chiropractic college. This would have been back in the late 1990s. And, uh, but the— he had a whole series of books that he wrote, uh, Torticollis, Tortipelvis. He— but he had, he had a couple books, 2 or 3, that were on how to be a better doctor, uh, how to relate to patients, things like that. But the one about, are you the doctor, doctor? The thing that stuck most with me about that was you play the part of the doctor, not just in the office, but when you're in public as well.

Mm-hmm.

In other words, you don't act like a goofball, a clown, whatever you want to say when you're out of the office. When you're in your community, you still act the part of the doctor. In other words, you, you display professionalism at all times and your conduct and your character and all those so that nobody can point at you and say, huh, look at that guy. He's not— he acts like he's a doctor in the office, but when he's out of the office, he's just a screw-up and a goofball, basically. Yeah. And so that was some of the things he— so maintaining the image of the doctor. He also talks, and Dr. Leone has actually taught me some of this too, is there in a doctor-patient relationship, there has to be an alpha and a beta. And you never give up the role as the doctor of the alpha and let the patient dictate and control basically how things are going to go. So that was a big thing. There was a whole bunch of other Documentation, things, day-to-day things in the office that every chiropractor needs to be aware of and understand and know just to, just to run their office well and smoothly. And it's an older book, but there's just timeless wisdom in it. And I think every doctor that reads it is just going to be like, oh, I need to do this better in my office and relating to my patients. And And you're going to come away with some great tips.

I love that. Yeah, a couple points or thoughts on that. A lot of these books, you know, even though they're old, why do the principles stand? Why is it still relevant? It's because it's based on human behavior. Human behavior doesn't change. So, that's why you could have a marketing book from the '60s that still is relevant today because it's based on human behavior. And the same thing with this. And to quickly touch on that alpha-beta relationship, that's not designed to be like you're domineering. It's not designed to be disrespectful. It's because when someone goes to a doctor or goes to any professional, they're going to them because they want to be told what to do, right? If you go to a muffler shop, And they said, well, you know, you could have this muffler or that muffler or that muffler. Which one would you want? Well, I don't know. I don't know mufflers. That's not my expertise. What do I recommend? What do you recommend? I mean, you're the expert in mufflers, right? So, same thing with dentists, same things with chiropractors, obviously any healthcare profession. So, especially in the report of findings, right? You need to be alpha. You need to be leading the relationship because That's what they're there for. If they get a sense that you're not fulfilling that role, that's when they start to try to take over, especially if they're a domineering type, right? Because then their, their natural instinct is to take over the relationship. And then all of a sudden, well, can I do this? Or I don't want to do that. Or can I come in, you know, this many times and not that many times? And then all of a sudden you're like trying to you know, essentially acquiesce to all these demands, uh, and that will be a problem patient, uh, versus you have your best recommendation, you have a protocol based on, uh, you know, data that has already worked for thousands of patients, and you're saying, this is what works for patients just like you. Follow the protocol, get the results. Don't follow the protocol, Then results are who knows, right? I had a client talking to yesterday, and you know he was offering. Well, you can do shockwave or you can do laser. It's like no, no, no, no. What is the best recommendation based on your expertise? So when patients sense a doctor doing that, they will lose confidence. So that's that's kind of what I meant by the alpha and beta. And it's really important to establish that relationship. So, okay, sounds great, like a great book. I've heard great things about Dr. Barge. My 3rd book is interestingly a more modern-day book called Built to Sell by John Warlow. Now, you notice that Dr. Pankin and I are clinical and mine are more business mindset. And that's, you know, That's kind of how we've divided the roles here at Specialized Practice. You can't do all things for everybody. But point being is Built to Sell— what I really like about this book, and it's told— I was trying to tell the doc earlier, I, I think maybe it's an allegory, but essentially it's telling the story of a frustrated businessman who has an ad agency, and he does print work, and he does websites, and he does logos, and he does You know, this, that, and the other. He's kind of a generalist. And so he's struggling. All things run through him. And that's not a sellable business. Someone that buys a business wants to buy an asset that produces independent of the owner, right? So he has, in the story in the book, has a— well, he becomes a mentor, but he's a good family friend, and he's built and sold 4 businesses. And so, he walks them through this process of designing the business so it operates independently of him. Instead of doing all those different services, they focus just on logos. They charge like $10,000. And he builds a sales team and he builds a design team and then runs everything through the team. And it's independent of himself. And so, what that does is creates, one, a well-oiled machine, one that he's not pulling his hair out or wondering if he can pay the bills at the end of the month. And then is able to sell it for like 5x EBITDA. So how does this relate to chiropractic? Well, we talked about in another episode and highly recommend to, to listen or watch it, Practice Nirvana. So Practice Nirvana is kind of, you know, built on this concept where you're creating a practice that can run without you. And so, uh, If you want to sell your practice one day for, you know, a fair price, um, and essentially not just selling a bunch of files, you will want to build it to sell. And in the process of doing that, what you're going to do is free up a tremendous amount of time, decrease stress, provide a, you know, well-run office with excellent clinical results because it's all based on systems and protocols. And it can be independent of you. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't still be doing consults and all that type of stuff, but the way you're going to build it is that so you can go out of town for a week or a month and the clinic will still run, produce revenue, and that's what buyers are looking for. So, Built to Sell by John Worrelo. There's also a podcast where he interviews both business owners that have exited their business successfully, and he also talks to buyers of businesses, PE firms, private equity firms, etc., that can— or that then kind of dives into the mind of the buyer and what they're looking for. But it's not that complicated. You want a business that's profitable, and you want some— you want to avoid what they call key man risk, which is the owner be basically every— everything running through the owner. So that's why the traditional chiropractic practice is hard to sell, because it's one doc, one or two staff, the doc's doing everything, uh, and when he leaves, so do the patients. So who wants to buy that, you know? So, um, that from a just a business standpoint, I think would be a great book to put into your library so that you can just start to think How can I start setting up my practice now? Whether you're going to retire in 5 years or 25 years doesn't really matter. Um, uh, set it up now because the sooner you do get it into this structure, the better it will run, the more profitable it will be, and most likely the happier and stress-free you will be.

That whole concept that Dr. Leone was talking about, practice nirvana there, that is, that is some of his If you never heard him teach on that, that's some of his very best work in my opinion. And this is, this is, I think he's the only one I know of in our profession that's really talking about that concept of practice nirvana. And, uh, that is worth listening to the podcast. But he's also, he's just a wealth of knowledge in that. So that's high-level thinking stuff, and, uh, it's where every chiropractor should be working towards. So Thanks for sharing that with the profession, Doc. That's a gold mine.

My pleasure. Thank you for the kind words. And you have one more book, don't you, sir?

Yeah, we'll finish with this one. This one is called Life Without Fear, also by Dr. Fred Barge. And this is, this is the, this is kind of what you would call the chiropractic lifestyle. What's the chiropractic lifestyle? Well, one, the body can heal itself, right? Healing comes from within. We don't run around as doctors afraid of germs. We don't get a shot for every little germ that comes around. We don't run to the doctor every time we get sick. All these things that we're taught in school, but unfortunately a lot of chiropractors, in my opinion, don't set a very good example for their patients and their communities by living life without fear. And, and so tremendous book to where he talks about taking care of the host, the inner self, cleaning up the host so that you're not expressing illness where the typical medical approach is, let's give you something to try to, you know, manage that disease or kill that bug or whatever when the problem lies from within.

Mm-hmm.

He's famous in that book for what he calls He gives his patients what he calls the rats in the dump lecture. And basically it's, you know, how do you get, how do, why do rats end up in the dump? Well, it's, it's a hospitable place for them, just like germs and viruses and all that. The wrong approach is to try to eradicate the rats. No.

Mm-hmm.

You want to clean up the dump, which is an analogous of your body and your health. And, you know, I don't say this braggingly in any way, but my family, my 2 sons, my wife and I, we've lived the chiropractic lifestyle. My 2 sons, one is 25, one is 24. They've never had a shot. They've never taken a prescription medication in their entire life. So between the 2, that's 49 years. I didn't grow up that way in my own family. But I raised my family that way, and they they are both raising their well. My older one has kids now, and he's raising his kids in that same model. And when my kids were sick and grown up, what did I do? I adjusted them, and I gave them homeopathic remedies, natural medicines, vitamins, supplements, things like that. They never needed a doctor. Growing up, I was their doctor, and that was a lesson. But a lot of that that I learned came from Dr. Barge's book, Life Without Fear. And, uh, it's just— has taught me to live at a different plane, a different level than what the average person lives, where they literally live in fear. We just saw that, didn't we?

Mm-hmm.

4 years ago, where the whole— a large percent of the population lived in fear. And we saw the disastrous results that came about of that. So, that is what I will leave you with that book. That is a, that is right in most chiropractors' wheelhouse, Philosophy of Health.

I love it. I love it. And we will end on that. So, that is a great way to end Life Without Fear. I am going to, I am going to have to pick that up myself. I do not think I have ever read that. But that sounds like a great one to, to get. Although I'm a second-generation chiropractor, I've never had a vaccine in my life, so I've kind of been raised in that world, thankfully, by my father, so, and my mother. So grateful for that. But great way to end there. Great books, Dr. Pankinen. I love those. And any closing comments?

Well, I think the big thing, the take-home message from today is Being a lifelong learner, you know. I see, I see some chiropractors that every year they take the bare bone minimum that they need to take for their continuing education just to keep their license active, and they're the ones that are at the end of the year. They're at the final end of the year continuing education seminar in November or December to get their hours, and that's probably for many of them the only real study. They do all year, and they're basically there to get their hours done. If you want, if you're a professional, a true professional, and you want to stay at the top of your game, you need to be reading and studying and looking at research and and being being the doctor, and that means working your tail off, and that means staying on and and staying on top of where things are going in your profession and your craft and mastering it. And so, sounds like I'm preaching and I better stop. But anyway, that would be my final message.

Well, I love the concept of lifelong learner. I feel like, you know, if you're not growing, you're kind of, you know, you're either stagnating or you're dying, right? So, you know, I know you're a lifelong learner. I am as well. It kind of what— it's what lights me up. I enjoy learning. I enjoy discovering things. And I think that, you know, for doctors that are, you know, ambitious, they obviously need to hone their craft and continue to elevate that. And obviously, we help doctors do that. But also venturing out into getting a better understanding of how business actually works, right? So that you can create freedom for yourself. I mean, you don't always want to have to go in the office 5 days a week or 4 days a week. Wouldn't it be nice just to have a, a target, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that you can work towards, create a practice that, you know, is self-sustaining, self-regulating, it's growing consistently. You have team members that, like Dr. Pinkman says, views their positions as careers, not jobs. You become a pillar in the community. I mean, all those things, again, it's like who you are today is not going to create that practice. You're going to have to grow into it. You're going to have to become you 2.0. And that only comes from lifelong learning. The good news is all the information is out there. There's no shortage of information. There's a shortage of ambition. And commitment is what it really comes down to. So with that being said, we hope that you guys and gals enjoy, uh, enjoyed this episode. Hopefully you can pick up some of those books, add them to your library, put them on your reading list, and dive in. And with that, we'll say aloha. We, uh, hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, share this with a colleague, um, and, uh, Anyone that you feel can improve with this knowledge. We appreciate you doing that. So that's it for this episode of the Practice Builders Podcast, the best books for personal and professional growth. We'll see you on the next episode.