Is Your Self Image Holding You Back?

Okay, welcome, welcome everybody to the show. This is DC United's live conference for November 27th, 2018. I hope you guys all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I would certainly like to just say thank you so much for being clients and being a part of this program. This is— growing this program is one of my primary goals in 2019. I just, you know, as I'm on social media, because I do a lot of stuff on social media, seeing the, you know, all the ads that come at us on a regular basis from all the different marketing agencies, typically Facebook marketing agencies, which 80% of them are crap. Growing this group, helping, you know, Young doctors on the business side of things, on the marketing side of things, whether that includes Facebook or not include Facebook. This is one of my really primary goals is growing this group so that we can help other doctors. You know, one doctor I talked to recently, he just had his biggest day ever. Another doctor had doubled his practice in the last six months. So. When we get down to fundamentals and apply them to a chiropractic practice, massive things can happen. In fact, I'm reading a book right now called Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson. Michael Masterson, that's actually a pen name for Mark Ford, and this guy is just a business genius. Like, there's no other way to put it. He's just, he's a genius when it comes to building businesses. And so, one of my other primary goals in 2019 is really have a concentrated focus on learning not only proven business fundamentals that work in other industries, but innovative techniques and strategies that are working in other industries because There's just so many businesses that are absolutely blowing up, industries that are absolutely blowing up.

And if you look at the chiropractic profession, it just stays the same.

It just stays the same. We treat the same number of people in the, uh, you know, throughout the world and primarily in the US. Um, you know, what do you call it, 7% or 5% or 10%? It's somewhere in that number. It's never changed. And it's because we don't ever do anything radically different. And so, um, that's another one of my big goals is to basically go on the warpath of learning because I know how to build a chiropractic practice, but there are so many people out there that are a million times smarter than me building businesses that are unique and innovative, and we just need to do something a little bit different to take chiropractic to the next level.

And so, you hear me talk about, hey, this is my big goal.

One, grow DC United into stratospheric levels. 2, take a real focused learning approach to learning not only proven but innovative business building strategies in other industries and then using those practices and apply them to a chiropractic practice. That's my second. And then my third really, really big goal of 2019 is launching my Client Elevation Group. And this is my high-level consulting. This is for doctors that are already highly successful and they want to just take it and just kind of blow the lid off. So, that's my third big goal in 2019 is to launch and blow that program up because that, one, that's playing at a really high level, which is where I was at in practice. It's a lot of fun to play there. There's, you know, but there's a lot at stake as well. So it's not for everybody, but it's the, the, the opportunity is there and very few doctors take advantage of it. I've seen the path, I've built the path, and I want to show others the path so that they can do that for their practice and go from $50,000 a month to $150,000 or $250,000 a month. Through some, you know, again, proven and innovative marketing and sales strategies. So, so that's kind of what's going on. But we are here, we are live. This is the conference. Let's dig in with mindset. And we had covered mindset and this particular approach previously, and I just thought it was so important to— so I thought it was important enough to revisit it because the self-image and this book Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz is literally groundbreaking.

And you'll see that, I mean, you know, if you guys know me, I mean, I'm, I'm always reading.

I'm always reading.

I have so many books that I've ordered.

I, I mean, that I haven't even read because when I'm, you know, when I am either listening to a podcast, reading an article, reading a book at a seminar, at a conference, and someone recommends a book, or I hear about the, you know, some great book, I just buy it because, you know, it's what, $12 or $18 or maybe $24? I mean, it's like you know, I buy it and I, and I set it aside and I have a stack of books by my desk at home of, you know, my to-read pile. And, um, you know, this particular book, Psycho-Cybernetics. So I'll tell you a little bit about this.

So Maxwell Maltz, he was a medical doctor. He was a facial surgeon. And what is really interesting about that is he realized some of his patients 'Cause he really focused not so much on cosmetic facials, like in other words, like facelifts and like basically beautifying stuff.

He more focused on fixing people's faces that had damage to it for whatever reason, you know, cleft lip or maybe they had scars or whatever it was, you know, noses, like basically he would change these people and beautify them. And he just noticed that some of them had, you know, an incredible experience afterward and had, you know, tons of confidence and all this type of stuff.

And some didn't.

Some basically saw themselves exactly how they were before the surgery and said, doctor, you didn't do anything. I mean, it's just bizarre. And so he really started to dig into this and this psychology behind The self-image. And anyways, it's a fascinating book.

Highly recommend you read it.

I think it's $9 or something on Amazon.

But the point being is, um, it— he talks about the self-image right in the beginning because he, you know, just believes that it literally dictates our life.

So anyways, let's dive in here.

So Talks about all your actions, feelings, behaviors, you know, even your abilities are always consistent with your self-image. So think about that. If you have a poor self-image, that, that is then influencing everything you do, everything you feel, you know, the behaviors, your ability to fulfill On every aspect of your life, it's all influenced and typically restrained by your self-image. I mean, like, let that sink in for a second.

If your, if your self-image is not great, and then you kind of, you're kind of wondering why you struggle in maybe your personal life or your business life, I mean, it's The writing is on the wall here.

The research is done. I mean, this book has been around for years and years.

I mean, I think it was written in the '70s maybe, the original edition.

And so then, okay, now let's step, put ourselves aside for a second and then look at some of the people that achieve the highest levels of success. Like take Elon Musk, right?

Yeah.

Steve Jobs, you know, well-known. Jim Cameron, the director. These people are well known for having massive egos, right? Massive self-confidence. You know, their self-image is off the charts, and they are— their activities and their achievements are off the charts, right? And then, and then you can look at the same on the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone maybe that was raised in, you know, poor income housing, never had a good influence in his or her life. All say they were raised in the ghetto and all they saw was drug dealing, people joining gangs. Well, why in the world would you think that if that is their only influence and that is basically dictating their self-image, Why in the world would they ever be any different? They're not. That's why it's a self-perpetuating cycle. The only way people get out of those situations is when they have a very strong, you know, either father figure or mother figure that basically, you know, tells them, hey, there is another path, and then gives them the tools to get there, right? So it's so Let's bring this back to chiropractic. First of all, chiropractic in the healthcare spectrum is a second-class citizen, whether we like to say— whether we want to believe it or not. It just is what it is. I mean, and the only reason— and it's not that we need to let that affect us from a self-image. It's just that is— people don't understand chiropractic. They still don't understand chiropractic.

Right.

There, I still— when I was in practice, I still had patients in their 70s and 80s that say, you know, I don't believe that you guys are quacks. Oh, really? Thank you so much. I dedicated my life to that. You know, it's like, thank you. Yeah, no, we're not quacks. But, but they still think that, you know what I'm saying? There's people in their 40s that have never been to a chiropractor and never will go to a chiropractor because They have always been it. So, whether you think that we're a second-class citizen in the healthcare spectrum, the majority of the people in the United States don't view chiropractors in a very good light. And so, as you go into practice further and further, you start to kind of realize that. And I mean, I remember the first time I was at a cocktail party, and I had just graduated fairly recently.

Yeah.

And I said, they said, hey, what do you do? I'm a chiropractor. And I saw this look on their face that was like, oh, really? It wasn't like, you know, like when you're in chiropractic school, like you're in this bubble, right? Like you're going to save the world. You know, chiropractic is the best thing in the world. We're going to turn on the light and blah, blah, blah. And, but when you get in the real world, I mean, if you talk to 10 people and tell them you're a chiropractor, I mean, I bet 7 give you kind of an odd look, and then 3 like, oh cool, I love my chiropractor. That's what you get usually with 2 or 3 people. Oh cool, I love my chiropractor. And then 5 to 7, oh interesting, um, I need a cocktail. They're gone. You know what I'm saying? So the point with all this is that All of these things influence our self-image. And so we're trying, and then so we wonder, well, why are 80, you know, okay, clearly 50 to 70% of chiropractors struggle. Now, to some degree, this is just business, right?

Because most of the chiropractors, you know, most chiropractors are small business owners, right?

Or a lot of them are. And so most small businesses struggle. And so, to some degree, that's a statistics thing. But why, when you're in one of the— you know, why, when you're in a healing profession, you have an incredible ability to help someone bounce back and change their life— why in the world are we not leading the healthcare industry in totality? You know, why do we not have 80% of chiropractors making, at a minimum, $500,000 a year. I mean, my, like, my Client Elevation Group, really the floor on that is $40,000 a month. Do you know how many chiropractors make $40,000 a month? Maybe 10%, maybe only 5%. That's, that's about a half million. That's $480,000 a year. 5 to— I mean, maybe 5, 7% make that. I mean, so if there's 60,000 chiropractors, 6,000— let's just use 10% because that's a super easy— so 6,000 chiropractors out of 60,000 in the entire United States make almost half a million a year to change lives. Give me a break. So why is that? And so you think, and these things, and this is what I'm talking about, like, how are we going to change this profession? How are we going to make— I mean, and in, and in, in the process How do we change ourselves? How do we change our practice so that we get into that 5%? That— so that, um, 10%, 5%, call it what you want. I don't know the exact number. It's somewhere in there. That's the first goal for client— for my clients, especially DC United. The first goal is to get up to $40 grand a month. Because at $40 grand a month, you have half is your overhead, right? So $20 grand, write that off. That's going to cover your taxes and all your bills. $20,000 is left, right? But then Uncle Sam comes in and he takes 30%. So you're left with somewhere between $12,000 and $14,000. So even at $40,000 a month, your take-home is only $12,000 to $14,000 a month, but you can still live in most parts of the country really nicely on that. Okay, it gives you flexibility. It gives you money. To save money, to take care of your home, money to, you know, drive a car that you're proud of, money to send your kids to a private school if that's what you choose, money to invest in yourself, to grow yourself, to become the person that can go to that next level, right? Because we'll never go to the next level unless we are that person, right? So, and then money to invest. in the marketing and the sales so that we can double our practice or triple our practice from there. So we have to get— that's the goal. $40,000 a month is the floor in terms of where I think chiropractors need to get to. That should be the goal for the vast majority of chiropractors. And it's not that difficult. It's not. It is not that difficult. But If your self-image is not there, then you can do all the marketing in the world, you can do all the sales in the world, you can treat, you know, as hard as you want all day long, but if your self-image isn't there, it's going to severely hamper your ability. So according to the book, you will never outperform your current self-image. You know, and like I said, I believe this is why doctors hit ceilings in practice, even though they may be taking tons of action, doing all kinds of marketing. I worked with this doctor, and I'm not gonna say where he's located, um, because he may know I'm talking about him. Ran a lot of marketing for him, a lot of marketing for him, and, you know, On my end of things, when I look at lead costs and cost per click and all this type of stuff, all the numbers were there, but there was no sales. There was no closes. It was always the insurance was crappy, or they had no money, or that there was always the excuse. And so it's just like, hmm. So I believe this is really this is why this is why we hit the ceilings. Every doctor's asked me why, you know, can't seem to break $20,000 a month. You know, what is $20,000 a month? So your, you know, your average cost per collection per visit, if it's $50, that's pretty average. If you do 100 a week, so that's $5,000. $5,000 a week, $20,000 a month. So you have 100 visits, right? So 20 visits a day if you're open 5 days a week, 25 visits a day if you're open 4 days a week. Can't bust through that ceiling, you know, because at $20 grand a month, think about that. $20 grand a month, overhead's $10,000, your take-home is $10,000, Uncle Sam takes 30 to 40%, so you're left with $7,000. Tough to live on, tough to raise a family on. You know, so we got to get to those higher numbers. And then, and, and when you get to those higher numbers, you start to get hungrier. You know, I remember when we, we hit $80,000 a month, we're like, okay, that's— can we hit $100,000? We hit $100,000, then $120,000, then $150,000. Then one month we hit $186,000 and we're like, whoa, cool. You know, so, um, It's tough to even, when you're making $10,000 or $20,000 a month, it's tough to really even imagine $180,000 a month because that's what some doctors are doing in an entire year. So you have to get there incrementally. And that's why it's really, really good to have a coach that's been there already because he knows it's possible and he'll convince you that it's possible, right? That's what a good coach will do. So the idea being the self-image can be changed. That's the beauty of this. That, that is why this book is so phenomenal, because it talks about how to do it. It's one of the fundamental things we have to do with our life is improve our self-image. Get a new mental picture of yourself.

How do you do it?

Well, first, got to have a clear goal. We have to think in our mind like it already exists.

I was watching the Seahawks play on Sunday against Carolina Panthers, and obviously, you know, if if you know me, you probably know I'm a pretty big Seahawks fan, and I won't bore you here.

But you know, it was late in the fourth quarter; we were down by seven points. It was fourth and three. We were on the 35. Russell Wilson throws an absolute dime to David Moore in the corner of the end zone, and boom! We tie up the game. Then we go on to win it. How many times do you think Russell Wilson has envisioned in his head throwing that pass? And I'm not talking about in practice throwing it. I'm talking about in his head. 1,000 times? 100,000 times? He talks about it all the time. Visualization. The separation is in the preparation. He said that his first couple years. The separation is in the preparation. He visualizes success. So we need to have a clear goal. We need to start thinking Of where we want to be, what we want to have and be doing. We have, we got to get a picture of that in our head. We have to know what it at least looks like. Okay. Number 2, don't worry about the how. Okay. Just focus on creating the clear goal and the outcome you desire. Okay, that is what you have to worry about. That's your job. The how comes Later. And then as you start to take action to bring about the outcome or the desire that you wish, mistakes or quote unquote failures are going to happen and they're okay. Okay. There's nothing wrong with mistakes and failures. They're, they're, they're learning. I mean, they're, they're learning mechanisms.

Okay.

And this is from the book, the quote unquote success mechanism achieves goals through negative feedback.

It's just learning.

And when he says the success mechanism, I'm kind of thinking that, you know, he's talking about the subconscious, which is by far the subconscious. So you have 2 parts of your brain, right? The conscious is what you're thinking about all day, all those thoughts going through your head, and then the subconscious. Right.

Which is just this thing that's ongoing. This is your innate, basically.

If we want to talk chiropractic, it's your innate and it runs your body, right? So your innate doesn't just run your body, doesn't, doesn't just pump your heart, inflate and deflate your lungs, doesn't just do all that, doesn't just keep you alive, doesn't just run homeostasis. It also Essentially goes out and and accomplishes or attracts the things that you want in your life. So that this is why what you think about most is so important because that's what you're telling your subconscious that you want. That makes sense. You're what you think about the most.

What have you heard the saying?

What you think about, you bring about. See, all these clichés, yeah, they may sound trite, but they're there for a reason. Like, think— like, clichés do not stand the test of time because someone just likes to say them. They stand the test of time because they're typically true. What you think about, you bring about. What you keep in your head, in your conscious mind, on an ongoing basis, on a daily basis, All the time, that's what your subconscious is going to go work on. So your subconscious doesn't— it doesn't think. It's not— it doesn't say, this does not seem like a good goal for the body. It doesn't. It says, this is what the conscious mind is telling me to do, and I'm going to go do it. So that can be, I want you to go find me a Ferrari. Or I want you to break up my marriage. You'll go do it, or it will go do it. I want to be the most successful doctor in this town. I want to fail. It doesn't, it doesn't qualify. It doesn't say this is a good idea, this is a bad idea, this is right, this is wrong. It just does it. It's like the Terminator. It's just programmed. Go kill John Connor. That's what the Terminator, you know, right or wrong, he didn't give a darn. Go kill John Connor. That's the Terminator. That was a Terminator's program. So your subconscious— and again, this is why God designed the body. It's so smart. That's why he gave you a conscious and a subconscious, because your conscious mind, you can't think about, you know, getting the things you want 24/7. You know, and and just doing that all the time. That's why that's why you got the subconscious to run your body and to go about achieving your goals. Right? There's an energy in the universe. Okay, it taps into that. So number three, there is a negative feedback loop. So when you hit roadblocks, when you hit Doors that close in your face, or patients that don't take your recommendations, or you run a marketing campaign that doesn't work, it's just feedback. Okay, so don't look at it as a failure. Look at it as negative feedback. Oh, I don't want to do that again. It's just like a child putting their hand on a hot stove. Ouch. I don't want to do that again. I learned. I learned. Okay. But if you don't learn, that's the problem. Okay. Number 4, trial and error is inevitable, but once a successful performance has been achieved, got to forget the past errors and only focus on the successful performance so it can be replicated. So this is why I talk about creating multiple poles in the water in terms of your marketing campaigns. Right, so you're testing something. Oh, this worked awesome. I'm gonna do that again. Okay, I know it worked once. Now maybe I can't run that campaign every single month, but I know it worked. Maybe it starts to trend down in its effectiveness, so I'll put a pause on it once it gets to a certain number, right? So I get 10 new patients from it, then 8, then 6, then 3. Now I'm kind of breaking even. I'm going to stop running that. Give it a break for a few months because people have seen that and it's creating ad fatigue. Now go back to it. But it worked. Like right now, everybody's on Facebook, and that's why the ad costs are going up and the quality is going down, because everyone is doing it. You know where the smart money is going right now? The newspaper, radio, the old broadcast platforms that's worked for years and years and years. And the people that figured it out. Why do you hear the same people on the radio all the time? Because it works and they figured it out. So number 5, learn to trust the process and don't force it.

You have to keep your actions consistent, but you have to trust the process, right?

And when it says don't force it, it means don't, don't stress out. Don't—

I remember I was When I first read this, um, or when I gave this presentation the first time, um, many, many, many months ago, um, I was driving in my car and I was like trying so hard to make something happen, this one particular thing to happen. And I just, and I thought about this, I'm like, I'm just forcing it. I need to, I need to let it go.

I've done the work. I'm continuing to do the work. I'm putting in the work. I need to let go of the outcome, right?

Okay, so don't try it. Don't force it. Okay, so this is huge, guys, and I know we took a lot of time on this. We took 30 minutes on this, but gosh, mindset is so important.

I mean, that's— I mean, again, gosh, that's why I, I set these conferences up like this, because if you get this This trilogy of mindset, marketing, and systems. If you get this right, you are going to be unstoppable.