Protecting the Thoroughbred

Hello and welcome to the Practice Builders Podcast. My name is Dr. Vince Leone. Dr. Pankinen has the week off this week and good for him. So, but we have a special treat for you all this week. We're pulling back the membership curtain on a micro training we did called Protecting the Thoroughbred. We just did this in the last few weeks in preparation for 2026. And I think you're going to get a tremendous amount of value out of this. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in. Please implement And we'll see you on the inside. So, the Micro-training is called Protecting the Thoroughbred: Energy Recovery and the Business of Longevity. Okay? And so, I've used this analogy before of viewing yourself as a thoroughbred racehorse, right? So, if you think about a thoroughbred racehorse, it's treated differently than the average animal. Okay? So, it's fed intentionally. In other words, it gets high-quality nutrition. It is trained strategically so that we— it avoids injuries. Is this also in our— Dr. Mark was asking, is this also in our documents or information in our program? Yeah. So this will— every time we do a micro-training, it is uploaded to the Uh, the training platform in week 12, and then there will be— um, good morning, Dr. Patel— and there will be a, um, worksheet that goes along with it. So, um, so I'd say for today you can just follow along and then, um, and then download the worksheet later, and you can— it's very self-explanatory on the worksheet. So you can watch the replay training again, or you can just fill out the worksheet. Good question. So it's trained strategically, obviously, so that it can, you know, perform and have the endurance, etc., but also to avoid injury. It's rested deliberately to protect its energy, and it is protected from unnecessary stress. So why is this? Because it is a 7-figure asset. If you look at these horses from You know, the Preakness, uh, the Belmont Stakes, you know, all the big, um, you know, uh, races in the thoroughbred world, um, they're million-dollar horses. And whether you're doing a million dollars a year or not, that doesn't really matter. I would view yourself as a million-dollar asset, as a 7-figure asset. And as the practice owner, you are the thoroughbred. So— Now, this also lends itself to the concept of the worst number in business is one, right? So one doctor, one staff member, you know, one source of revenue, like just chiropractic without adding a niche. It does open you up to compromise, right? In other words, if you're sick, you know, revenue essentially ceases. If you get out, go out of the office, revenue ceases. So that's what, um, that is the danger of this and why it's even more important to utilize this concept of protecting the thoroughbred. Um, so the success of your practice is not driven by systems alone or technology or staff. Um, it is driven, right? In other words, things happen because of systems, etc. But strategic growth is driven by your clarity, your energy, your judgment, your leadership. And if you think back, say you had a personal issue, whatever, it could be a relationship issue, family issue, whatever. A lot of times what happens is the practice goes down, right? It goes down in visits, new patients, and revenue. It's because your energy is directly tied to practice growth and success. So when the doctor is depleted, the practice slows, and when the doctor breaks down, um, everything downstream from that will suffer. Um, good morning, Dr. Corinne. Um, so high-performing practices protect the doctor first. Okay. Um, and I don't know that this is really talked about very much, but, um, it's just something that I've found in single doctor practices. Um, it's, it's really, really crucial when you have multiple doctors, right? Then, I mean, it frankly, it's just as important, right? Because now your decision-making, your energy, your strategic thought processes is going to influence everything downstream. Now, why is that so important? Well, because you're paying all these You know, individuals to work for you. Um, and so if they don't have the right, um, um, kind of growth track or path forward, then they can get off track. So it all starts from the top. So how do doctors accidentally run the thoroughbred into the ground? Um, well, most burnout, it doesn't— It doesn't have anything to do with weakness, right? This isn't about you being weak or not up to the test. It comes from mismanagement of you, the high-value asset. So, an example of overracing, constant pushing with no real offseason, right? Long stretches of sprinting without recovery, no intentional pullback after heavy growth periods. So if you think about the stock market, you know, it— look over the last 100 years, it goes up and to the right, but it's not a steady line, right? It goes up and it pulls back. It goes up, it pulls back. It goes up, it pulls back. So I would— what I would be thinking about this specific to the practice is, um, on a quarterly basis, um, it's okay to pull back, right? It's okay that the practice may dip a week or 2 or even a month. It's, it's totally natural. But in those times, you want to make sure that you can use the extra time to devote to yourself. And even better, and we'll talk about this, is, um, you know, marking off time for yourself. So, um, a thoroughbred that never rests, it doesn't win more races, it does get injured. Okay, so now, um, so that's over-racing, and you can think of a you know, in F1, IndyCar, whatever the heck they're called, they have to pit stop, right? They got to change the tires, um, and, uh, and then they go back out. Otherwise they'll, um, just, you know, run itself ragged. So poor fuel is another, um, way to, uh, run the thoroughbred into the ground. So for us, that would be inconsistent sleep. And there's been a ton of research lately on the value and, uh, um, Power of proper sleep. I got—I'm not wearing it right now. Well, this is it right here. I don't know if you guys have heard of this. It's called the Aura Ring. This would—if you guys haven't—if you haven't like kind of done any type of deep dive or or done any intentional work on improving your sleep, this would be a really good place to start. So it's Aura O U R A. I think they're like $300 and there's an app that goes along with it and it will give you your sleep score. It'll give you your— it gives you a ton of stuff, right? But the high-level things is your readiness level and your sleep score. But that would be a great, great start, right? Is if you're in terms of optimizing your sleep, there's a lot of other things. There's a thing called Eight Sleep, which is basically a cooling cover for your mattress. Yeah. Again, there's a lot of information if you dig into it of how to optimize your sleep, cooling the room down to 65 to 67 degrees, having a regular time that you go to bed, eating all your meals before, say, 7 o'clock. You want to eat your meals 3 to 4 hours before you actually go to bed because essentially when you eat late, Then, um, your, your body's continuing to digest, right? So that, uh, or you have alcohol late, then your body's continuing to process those things into the night and it doesn't allow you to get into your REM and then your deep sleep. So, um, so optimizing your sleep, uh, would be a great approach here. But anyways, poor fuels, inconsistent sleep, skipped meals, or low-quality nutrition. Um, You know, there's this recent, obviously, trend on intermittent fasting. I see some value in it. I also, you know, I think you also need to see what works for yourself. In other words, like, if you do better with having breakfast, because usually intermittent fasting, you have an 8-hour window where you, quote unquote, feed, right? So, 12 to 8. So, you would be skipping breakfast. Well, that's more stress on your body. Yeah. So, you need to find out, well, what works for you, not necessarily what the trending topic on social media is. So, now, is it a way to lose weight? Yeah, 100%. Is it a way to— but if you're already at the weight that you want and the BMI, et cetera, does that make sense? Because if you don't have the energy, especially in the morning, because you don't have any fuel in your body, you're not going to be able to do it. You know, that doesn't seem like a great situation just from a logical standpoint. A lot of times, you know, there's all these podcasts, Huberman, all this type of stuff. They put out all this research. I get it, right? These people are very smart, but we also have to figure out, well, what works for us, right? What gives us the best, um, um, opportunity to succeed that day? Um, relying on caffeine instead of recovery. Um, look, I love my coffee too, so I get this. But, I guess it's just we don't want it as a crutch, right? We want to have our sleep restoring our energy levels versus just propping it up. I don't think there's anything wrong with caffeine. That's not what I'm saying here. It's just when it's used only as a crutch versus optimizing nutrition and sleep, Then that can be an issue. Okay, other ways, other ways to accidentally run the thoroughbred into the ground is doing the wrong work. If you get stuck doing low-level tasks, and we talked about this in, um, uh, Dr. Mark has a link here for the vagus NN reset. Finds put That I find puts me in deep sleep. Yeah, cool. Sorry, nerve. Vagus nerve reset. Oh, vagus nerve reset. Yeah, I noticed a difference with it. I don't completely know the science behind it, but— Yeah, well, there's a link there if anyone wants to check that out on YouTube. Very cool. I appreciate that. So doing the wrong work. So high-level doctors stuck in low-level tasks. We talked about this when on one of the micro trainings recently about You know, creating your not-to-do list, essentially optimizing your work. When you're doing low-level tasks, right, stuff that, you know, essentially $20 an hour or below, this will drain your energy and it will make you frustrated, and it is not a way to optimize the thoroughbred. The owner's energy is spent on operations instead of leadership. Now admittedly, this is tough, right? Because even if you have an office manager, you will need manage them, and you will have a hand in operations. Um, we're just kind of pointing out what are the things that kind of lead to burnout, right? Um, confusing being busy with being effective. This is a huge one. I read this, uh, I've always liked Brian Tracy. I don't know if— I'm sure you have heard of Brian Tracy. I mean, he's, you know, a well-known, um, leader in the personal development space. I've felt that he has very tactical and powerful strategies to kind of optimize personal development, etc. And he has a great book on productivity called Eat the Frog. So, if you've never read that, it's a classic, right? It's a classic book. But he talks about this a lot, right? Confusing being busy with being effective. And he has the strategy of the ABCDE method where you prioritize your work So that you can, you know, move the ball down the field, right? I know that we're confusing metaphors here, but essentially, sometimes if we have our task list and we don't prioritize it, we will tend to do the things that are easiest, right, versus the things that are most important. And that's what that is saying here— confusing being busy with being effective. So a million-dollar asset should not be doing $25 an hour. Work. Um, and again, even if you're not doing a million dollars a year, that's not the point. Um, what I would like you to start thinking of yourself is, um, becoming that, right? That, that is the goal, right? That you are going to work towards that, um, uh, being that million-dollar asset. Um, and then finally, on what are things that lead to burnout, right? So we have over-racing, poor fuel, doing the wrong work, and then no recovery protocol. So Um, this I think is, uh, very endemic to chiropractors. Uh, there's no recovery protocol. In other words, sometimes doctors don't ever take a vacation. You know, they may take a couple days off, but there's no real, um, downtime, right? Uh, if you do take a vacation, you're doing some remote work. I'm, I'm, uh, guilty of this as well. Um, I even took a picture of myself in— on Maui You know, with my laptop open checking, you know, team messages on Slack. So, you know, it's a— I think it's a skill set that actually needs to be developed in terms of being able to separate yourself when you're on vacation from work. But if you're not even taking vacation, then that is the first step. And I would recommend You know, a goal. This doesn't have to happen next year, but I think the goal should be at least 2 weeks off a year, right? So there's always a slow period in the summer, right? June, July, August, usually July. There's always a slow period during the winter, um, around Christmas, right? So, um, you know, if you can't take both of those weeks off, start with one. Right. Just plan on, hey, in 2026, I'm taking one year off— or sorry, one week off. Or in 2026, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do a summer break and then a winter break. By the way, that doesn't mean you need to go spend a bunch of money, um, and, uh, you know, you know, go to some exotic location. That's not the point. The point is getting out of the office, um, and giving yourself time away. Um, no mental white space. Um, this is just from my perspective, mental white space is just where you can not have things that you're having to do, right? That you can read, you know, um, a non— or a fiction book. You can go for a walk. You can, um, exercise. It's just like just time where you can have a break. And no true separation from the business. So, you know, recovery for performance, it's not an optional thing, right? You really actually, it's part of the performance cycle. So what does protecting the thoroughbred actually look like? So what do we want to do to improve our performance? It's not necessarily about doing less. It's more about doing the right things at the right intensity with the proper recovery built in. So, starting with energy management, um, and time management matters, but energy management is the next level. Um, high-performing doctors will first identify what drains their energy and what restores it. So, we went into this at a deeper level on the, you know, creating your not-to-do list, where we did a time audit of our days, right? And then next to it, we put a happy face or an unhappy face. Um, and the happy face is gives you energy, you know, you enjoy doing it, it moves the needle in the practice. Um, and the unhappy face is the stuff that drains your energy. You don't like doing it, needs to get done, but it's not a high-value task. So that is key, is identifying what is draining your energy and then what is giving you energy. Structuring weeks around high-leverage activities. What, what are high-leverage activities? Marketing, education, in terms of like your clinical skill sets, office planning. You know, like, do you have the first quarter mapped out? You know, are we— are you going to do an open house? Do you have your email marketing set up? Do you have some physicians that you have mapped out that you want to reach out to? You know, those are, those are high-leverage activities to plan for. You don't have to plan your entire 2026, you know, but I would most definitely plan first quarter, right? That would be high-leverage activity. First, you map it out and then you communicate that to your team. Hey there, it's Dr. Vince. And if you're getting value from this episode, please make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you know another doc who's ready to grow their practice, share this with them. It might be exactly what they need right now. Thank you in advance. And now back to the show. Eliminating or delegating tasks that consistently deplete you. Okay. Again, comes down to first identifying what the tasks are, the energy-draining tasks are, and then Can they be delegated or can they be eliminated altogether? Guys, sometimes we get in this habit of things that we do on a daily basis, and sometimes we can just eliminate them altogether. But delegation for sure. One of the biggest, quote unquote, life hacks that I implemented, oh gosh, 4 years ago, I think it was, Was hiring, uh, basically a personal assistant. Um, and she wears a lot of hats. Her name is Stacy, and she, she doesn't work a ton, you know, she's 3 days a week, but she will, um, organize the house, she'll do laundry, she will pick up the kids, she will make lunches, she will make dinners, um, she will go pick up stuff, drop off laundry, dry cleaning, like all that type of stuff. At the time, I didn't know that I could afford to do it, but I was a little overwhelmed. And, you know, a mentor of mine said, hey, well, you should consider this, right? It's like some people call them a house assistant. But these are this kind of role. You could kind of call it a nanny. It doesn't matter what you call it. The point being is they're, they're your personal assistant, essentially. But this was a huge You know, a huge hack for me, and it's like you know I think maybe it's two thousand a month something like that for for this individual. Man, does she make my life easier? Sometimes she frustrates me too because she has her own family, right? So she has priorities there too, and I have to respect those boundaries. But man, is what what a a real Uh, wonderful asset that she has been. Um, probably, I probably don't tell her that enough, but, um, uh, that has been very helpful in terms of me delegating tasks around the home, um, so that I can work on, you know, being in the business more. Um, now I am a single father, right? So that it was even more imperative, right? Because I don't have another set of, you know, I don't have someone else that is, you know, helping with all that stuff. So it's even more important for me to, to have that role filled. Um, but, you know, everyone has their own challenges. Um, so your energy really determines the ceiling of the practice. That's, that's what it comes down to. Um, and when I— a lot of times when I talk about marketing, I talk about energy, I talk about inputs. Like, what are you putting into the marketplace? You can't just run Facebook ads, right, and grow a million-dollar practice. It's just not going to work. You know, that can be— that can and typically is one component, but You know, when I think of marketing, for instance, it's just, it's, it's energy that you are putting into the marketplace. Like, it's, it's, um, if you're doing like an email marketing, or you're doing outreach, or you're doing reactivation calls, or you're doing little workshops, or you're, you know, designing a sign for the decompression or the laser, like all of those, that's just, that's energy that you are putting out into the marketplace, um, that You know, just because of a principle of life, what you put out is what you get back. The less you put in, the less you get back, right? So the more you put into marketing and the practice, the more you'll get back. But if you don't have the energy, then that's going to determine the ceiling, right? So, um, in terms of proper fuel and physical care, um, you know, you again, you can't work or outwork poor recovery. What will happen is if we don't do some of the That's when you crash and burn, right? That's when you get sick, right? You, you know, you get the flu or some something of that nature. And it's basically your body is telling— I mean, look, I'm not telling you guys anything you don't know, but this is just your body speaking to you. Hey, I need a break, right? So what we want to do is be preventative, um, through, um, proper fuel and physical care. So sleep, we already talked about that. Consistent. And by the way, um, I would view sleep as, you know, a strategic advantage that you can lean into, right? If you're not getting proper sleep, like, in other words, if you don't wake up feeling, you know, refreshed and restored, then you— I would highly encourage you to lean into optimizing your sleep. Um, 'Cause I mean, gosh, when you get poor sleep, like sometimes, uh, if I have a high stress situation, I will wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and I will not be able to go back to sleep. So that day is, it's not shot, but it's, it's darn close. Right. Um, and so, you know, I, I'm sure it would be the same for you. So we want to use it as a performance tool. Um, consistent nutrition beats perfection. What I'm— what I mean by this is if it's even 5 days out of 7 that you are getting proper nutrition, then you're winning. But if we're doing fast food and, um, or skipping meals or just, you know, um, snacking a ton on kind of basically just junk food, um, that's not good, right? Um, and that's another thing that I did. With Stacy, with meal prep, right? So like for, for me, for breakfast, it's usually this. It's just a protein shake. Sometimes I'll do, you know, a couple of eggs, but usually it's just a protein shake. And, you know, and it's great. And then I do a snack at like 11, which is just literally a piece of cheese and, you know, organic slice of turkey. And then I have a lunch. And usually for lunch, it's always either chicken, broccoli, and rice, or salmon, broccoli, and rice. It's always pretty much the same meal, right? Because one, I don't want to think about it. Two, I like it. Um, you know, it's— everything's all organic and wild and all that type of stuff. Um, and I— and it's something I can eat fairly quickly, right? It's, it's not— it's, you know, again, I'm, I'm not doing it, but it's, it's just a simple meal, um, that gives me The you know the proper kind of you know macronutrients and all that type of stuff, and then training. And when I when I say training, I'm talking about you know some type of physical exercise, right? I like strength training, and so I think that man, if you go into these, so my brother is in this you know. Full disclosure, he does have a mental illness, so he's in this assisted living facility. And so he can't take care of himself. That's the point. That's why he's in an assisted living facility. So we go to visit him, you know, on a regular basis. And I go there and I see these people that are like 70 years old. They can barely walk, right? They don't have the strength in their legs They need walkers, they need wheelchairs at 70 years old. Like, our body was designed to, to live beyond 70 in a fully functional capacity. My dad's 82. He's in great health, walks on a regular basis, practiced for 57 years, you know, lived the chiropractic lifestyle. Um, you know, he was relentless with walking every single day at like 5 AM. I don't know if he still does that, but he did, you know, and, and he's He's reaping the benefits of that. So, some type of— I think strength training is really important because I think muscle mass— there's a lot of studies that muscle mass, good muscle mass, leads to longevity. Your body's in good shape. So, training. So, look, no one would starve a racehorse and expect peak performance, and the same applies to us. So, Clear role definition. The doctor's role is not to do everything. The doctor's role is vision, strategy, clinical, high-level decision-making, key relationships, right? And what are key relationships? It's getting out in your community, right? Um, the execution, we want to— that's what we want to go to systems and staff. Um, so planned recovery cycles. High performers plan recovery the same way they plan growth. Right? So, um, if you are leaning into marketing, right, to grow the practice, love that. Um, but what we also want to do is plan recovery, right? How are you going to protect— this is something I really need to focus on and I'm going to work on in 2026. If you're gonna, you know, lean into, um, the growth of the practice, that's awesome. So, um, but then what you also need to do is plan your recovery. So that could be weekly protected Downtime, right? So every single week you have some time that is carved out just for yourself. And again, that could be exercise, it could be, you know, that mental white space, going, going to a coffee shop and just being able to read. Not, you know, not about business, not about, you know, it's just like just being able to read, you know, whatever you want to. I like Spy novels. Full disclosure, I'm a spy novel guy. I've been reading those darn things forever. I love kind of political intrigue and special operations. That's my way to kind of shut off the brain in terms of business and all that type of stuff. But anyway, so, but weekly protected downtime. And then zooming out quarterly, hey, on a quarterly basis, Um, we're going to plan the marketing, but also let's plan time for yourself, right? Um, and then annual breaks that fully disconnect. So that's the week-long vacation. Again, I recommend July and December. Um, uh, and again, uh, this may feel like indulgence, but it's, it's not. I think, I think one of the pitfalls that we fall into as doctors and business owners And, um, and motivated business owners, right? Like, everyone in this group is, is highly motivated to grow. Um, so this may feel like, oh, do I deserve that, right? It feels like an indulgence. What I want you to do is, is shift that mindset to preventative maintenance. I need this for me to perform at my best. I need to install these things. So that, um, I can function at my highest level. So power of stepping away— taking time off is not a sign of disengagement, right, or weakness or anything of that nature. It's a sign of discipline, right? So stepping away allows you to sharpen your judgment, restores perspective, right? Zooming out improves decision quality and prevents long-term burnout. Another concept I've talked about in the past, obviously I didn't make this up, but Keith Cunningham is a well-known business writer and he owns multiple businesses doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So he really knows what he's talking about. He talks about thinking time, right? So every single week he will do what's called thinking time where, you know, he just sits down for an hour, has a topic that he's trying to figure out at the top of the list. So In other words, it could be like, how do I double my practice with taking 3 weeks off a year? Or some type of topic or question or challenge in the business. How do I optimize my team so that I can step away and it doesn't all go crashing down? So now here will be an interesting thing. I'm stepping away next week. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the business. It's a little bit of a risk. But, you know, I'm doing everything I can to prep them this week so that I can disconnect and come back the following week and not be on, you know, all the emails and Slack. Um, so if a, you know, look, if a practice can't function without the doctor present for a short period of time, um, it's, it's not necessarily dedication. The issue is structure. Um, protecting the thoroughbred ensures The practice can grow without consuming the person who built it, right? This practice should work for you guys, right? It, it, you shouldn't necessarily work for it. So here's the commitment. And again, when this, this micro-training will, um, will go up in the training platform in week 12, and then under action items and resources, um, there will be a worksheet. Okay, that you can download and fill out. Okay, but here's just some high-level questions. What am I currently doing that drains the thoroughbred? Right, so that's that energy thing. What act— you usually, you can think about it. I'm not crazy about team meetings. You know, it's a lot. You know, our team meetings, like especially on Monday, they usually run for at least an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. So they're a little draining. Um, it needs to happen right now, but, uh, with the plan that, you know, as Christiana grows in the practice or in the business, that she will be able to take that over. Um, so some of these things, it still may need to be done now by you, but maybe you can have a plan to delegate into the future. Next, what will I delegate or eliminate in the next 30 days? So these are more immediate things that you just recognize that, hey, I can I can delegate these or I can just get rid of them. And then what recovery habit will I— recovery habit will I protect as seriously as revenue? Again, it could be sleep, it could be that disengagement, it could be, you know, planning time away, all that type of stuff. So I think that's really important. So protect the asset and the practice will follow. Okay, so that is our training on protecting The thoroughbred energy recovery and the business of longevity. So I hope you enjoyed that. I hope that was—I felt like this was a kind of a good time of year for it, as we head into a new year, and that we can make some strategic decisions about how we kind of manage ourselves so that we can have the best year yet. That's what I want for all of you. I want you all to have the best year yet in practice. That's the goal, and the best year yet. Yes, it's revenue, but it's also, in my opinion, you living your best life, right? You having great energy, you being happy. Like, trust me when I say this, it is not fun to grow revenue sacrificing yourself. That is not having your best year yet. So we're trying to, you know, we're trying to do it all in terms of we want practice growth, but we also want to protect ourselves. Hey, it's Dr. Vince again, and hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you're ready to grow your practice fast with high-value decompression patients, then the Decompression Accelerator could be a phenomenal option for you. This is our 90-day sprint to help you scale with proven systems, staff-driven protocols, and full marketing support, and it's all guaranteed. Spots are limited. Head to www.decompressionaccelerator.com to learn more.