#5: Dr. Mark Mouw, CEO of Mouw Family Chiropractic - The keys to scale your business for longevity, the importance of continuous learning, and how to focus your efforts for maximum impact

My team is in my practice, let's just say 40 hours a week.

Right.

They're probably spending time with their kids. 10 hours a week, 15, 20 hours a week. So they're usually in my practice more than they're with their families a lot of times. What I want to do is I want to make sure that when they leave at the end of the day that they felt they had success and an impact as they walk out the door. Right. If that's not a part of what they feel like during the day, then it just becomes a job for them. When I think it really becomes a career for them is when they work out feeling that they had just as much impact as the doctor did in the office for their patients.

On today's episode, we have Dr. Mark Mao, the CEO of Mao Family Chiropractic. Boy, this episode was chock full of business learning. I mean, it was just a gold mine for business, whether it's how to build a long lasting business, how to put people in the right seat on the bus so that they not only succeed, but they thrive and they love it. There's no turnover to transitioning your business after you're exiting how you transition to somebody else. I mean, it doesn't matter where you are in your business life. You're gonna get something out of this.

And what I also loved about it is that he talked about how bringing his son into the business and the expectations and what are some of the challenges of doing that and. And how he alleviated that by sending his son to another mentor.

Yeah, and he said it best. He really is an entrepreneur who happens to be a chiropractor. It's not the other way around. And you pick up on that in this episode because, you know, he built a formula for how to succeed in business and now he's teaching others how to succeed and how to really live a life that is worth living.

From this episode, no matter what business you're in, Mark. Dr. Mark has some great nuggets and teachable moments that can transcend all industries, especially for the real estate business. What a great episode.

Yeah. All right, let's head west. Stay tuned as we discuss the keys to scale your business for longevity, the importance of continuous learning, and how to focus your efforts for maximum impact. With our guest, Dr. Mark Mao. This episode is brought to you by Skyline Point Capital. If you're anything like me, you're always considering where to invest your money. Stocks, bonds, crypto and rental home. The list is literally endless. As we've all seen over the past year, the stock market is unstable, the housing market is just weird, and inflation is on the rise. In times like these, the clear place to invest my money is in multifamily real estate, AKA apartment complexes. Here's why. Returns on real estate investments have little to no correlation with the stock market. There's lower volatility, stable income streams, and the tax benefits are insane. And let's not forget that the apartments will typically appreciate in value over time, which means you can walk away with a pretty nice return when the complex is sold in three to five years. Best of all, multifamily investing is passive, so you get all the benefits without the hassle and headache of your typical rental home investment. Getting started has never been easier. Head to skylinepointcapital.com to learn how you can start investing today. That library back there looks incredible.

Is that for show or a thousand books back there? I've started 50 pages of a meat because I'm an activator. So I love to start stuff, but I don't want to finish. I need people in my life to finish. So I'm a starter and not a finisher.

Mark, what's. What's behind you? I see a shiny ball.

It's just a really cool globe thing that my wife put in here because she thought I needed it.

Looks like you stole like an NBA title or something. The Lombardi Trophy.

Yeah, it just needs the post on. Right. So, yeah, you don't want to see what's below my desk because it's full of files and folders and journals and that kind of stuff. So it's what I work out of every day when I'm in my office.

The reason for saying that in our conference room, I bought one of those disco balls, one of those shiny disco balls and we put it in the corner of the room as a reminder when we had our executive meetings. Is this thing a must project or etc. Or are we chasing shiny balls? And it. I'll tell you, I give those to people that are starting off in their business because they think I got to do five things, 10 things, 20 things. And you're going like this. Focus on the one and two things. So I send them shiny balls when I'm kind of mentoring and paying it forward and they put the shiny ball in their conference room. So. And I. So just pass it on. I saw that one. That's a shiny ball.

So what's now I'm going to do from now on, my coaching clients is I'm going to bring that off of There, show them my big shiny ball and then tell them not to chase Chinese balls.

Yeah. Because we all do it as business owners. We all do that.

We're.

Let's do this and we can do this and do this, and you're chasing things. And that's all that was just a shiny ball. And we wasted all that time of money and resources.

All good.

And Mark, you're. You're actually an expert at that, at. At not chasing the shiny ball. Because, you know, from all the things you're involved in, they all always point back to chiropractor like, you know, you. You're involved in a lot, but they all have a very central focal point of, of one or two things. Was that intention? Well, one kind of give us the lay the land of what all you're involved in. But is that an intentional decision that, okay, we're gonna do a lot because I like being active, but it's all gonna have a focal point of chiropracting, coaching, things like that. Like kind of walk us through that?

Yeah. So, I mean, chiropractic is my purpose. I mean, helping people get well is my purpose. So when I became a chiropractor, you come out of chiropractic school. I met my awesome wife in chiropractic school. She's a chiropractor as well, but hasn't practiced for 15 years after my daughter was born. So she's the COO of our practice. You know her well and see her in the practice, but she hasn't adjusted a patient for 15 years, except for me and my daughter at times. And we have three doctors that work in our practice. But, you know, we, we come out of school and what I express as a chiropractic coach and consultant now is, you know, the joke is, you know, chiropractors go to school for eight years, nine years. And, you know, I always kid on stage. I did a couple weeks ago at a Dallas event, and I said, docs in the room. How awesome were your marketing classes when you were in chiropractic school? And everybody kind of laughs, right? And we're room full of CAs as well, because there are none. I mean, you go to chiropractic school to get a degree, to be a doctor, to be able to pass national boards and so forth. But then we walk out of school and we become business owners that happen to be chiropractors. And it's. It's a scary world out there when you haven't had business courses. Right. So I knew I was going to Be a chiropractor in high school. So I already started to take business classes in high school. I got a minor in business major in biology and undergrad. So I knew I was going to be a business owner someday because that's the background I come from are business owners as farmers. So the intent was to have success at a mom and pop shop. My wife and I just crushing it and doing that for 40 years because that's what success was in my life as a chiropractor from the role models that I had. But I think what was really cool is I started to surround myself with people that were doing more and being more and doing bigger things. And we grew very quickly and we brought our first associate in and 13 associates later and two offices later and sold a practice and then into coaching and consulting and owning part owners and recruiting business for chiropractors. Everything really morphs around the purpose of Now I can adjust one person in two minutes. But now, because I have the far reaching that I'm in front of 5, 6, 7,000 chiropractors, imagine the number of lives we're able to affect by helping them be better business owners. And I think you guys got to meet Steven a few weeks ago. It's his coaching business. Alan's one of my partners. He wasn't on a call that day, but he got the, he got the message from you guys. But they're my business partners in, in the recruiting business. So everything focuses back on, you know, not chasing the shiny ball. Right. It's actually focusing on. Yes, we've opened multiple businesses, but it's all to really have one impact. And that's bringing chiropractic more into the forefront of making sure people are healthy the natural way.

That's incredible. Yeah. And you have this com. This exponential effect on people as you talked about. Yeah. You can, you can adjust one person. You're going to impact their life and it's going to be meaningful. But through your coaching, through your, through your coaching of either the chiropractor or the whole team, now you're changing that group of people who are now affecting all the people that they impact. And you have this exponential effect on people in your, in your atmosphere.

Hey, Mark, how do you get business owners or chiropractors to think like business owners? Like you said, you come out of school, you've got all this, this medical knowledge and now you have to turn into a business owner. Tell me about that. Challenges with that.

Yeah. I think what happens is they come into our world, number one in the recruiting business, they come into our world because they've been semi successful and they're going like I need another doctor in my practice to help me continue to grow because I'm outgrowing myself. So they were, they had enough business knowledge that enough help. Maybe they had another coaching client or they're one of our coaching clients that say, yeah, you know what, I'm running a fairly good business, I want to be able to run it better. How can I do that? By bringing on an associate and I help coach them on how to do that. As a doctor leading other doctors, I would say, Steve, the other one is the school of hard knocks. I think what happens is they just, they lack success. They're working their butt off. They're a doctor, they're doctoring, they're taking care of patients. But they don't know how to run marketing. They don't know how. Which we call attraction. They don't know how to explain chiropractic to patients very well. There are great doctors and they're adjusting and making great changes with patients lives. They just don't get to see enough of them because they don't know how to brand themselves, they don't know how to market themselves, they don't know how to get on the digital medias that are out there to explain what they do. And we just had a seminar with marketing and we call our convert, our attraction immersion and we're in front of 400 doctors helping them understand how to brand themselves. Have a, you know, what is your mission statement? Who is your muse? Who's your ideal patient? What are your core values? And when you understand those, you can bring it into a brand that then you can communicate to your community of who you are. The problem is, is that if you spoke to most people in their communities and said what do chiropractors do? They say, well, they're neck and back doctors. Well that's because we've done a bad job branding ourselves. And it's the community that's actually telling you what their brand is. So we help doctors actually start to communicate who they are, what their niches are, what their brand is. So they start to express to the community what their brand is and then the community can start to repeat their brand to them. I think Jake, you've probably seen that our office, as people come into our practice, we're always educating, we're giving, we have TVs up, educating people on health and vitality and weight loss and exercise and you know, when you, when you bring the right message out there and as you asked Steve is like, how do you bring there? I would say a lot of times school of hard knocks, they either learn it and they come into a coaching organization and learn the business aspect or what happens is they unfortunately just don't succeed and you see them very unhappy in practices.

How do they make the shift from being a chiropractor that sells their time? There's only so much time in the day. At some point you're going to be maxed out and you're going to try to work harder, harder and harder. How do you get them to be like a business owner, to now use what they've built to make it scalable and go to the next level? And do some chiropractors not want to do that, just want to be there? They're happy. I put my hours in and then do whatever that, that they enjoy not being a chiropractor. But can you get dress both those guys?

Yeah. So what's great is in the recruiting business I get to work on the front end of that. I lead sales. So I get on intro calls and literally just got off of one. That's why I was a few minutes late with you. So I was working with a gal, she's out in Portland, Maine and she just contacted me for the first time. She's been in practice for 16 years. Solo practitioner, sees, you know, 100 visits a week, has, has had an awesome impact in her community. But a really small practice to be honest, and the size of practices. And I was going through our recruiting business and how we make sure we get it's called chiro matchmakers and how we actually match up the right type of chiropractor to the right job. And there's really three types of chiropractors. And it's all done through a, it's a behavioral assessment, a licensed behavioral assessment, it's EEOC compliant. But they can take this 5 minute 38 question assessment and gives us 23 pages of information. And what we know in chiropractic is there are only three types of chiropractors. There are entrepreneurs, there are business builders and there are caregivers. Only 10% of our chiropractic profession is made up entrepreneurs. What I mean by that is they are a business person that just happens to be a chiropractor. Large practices, multiple businesses, multiple, you know, they're doing multiple things. They happen to be a DC but are a business person. So really the two types of associates are business builders and caregivers. Business builders. More Extroverted. They can bring people in, build a practice, going out into the community. But gradually they do get traction and they understand how to build a business because they work for somebody and they kind of teach them how to do it. And sooner or later they usually go off and do their own practice. Then there's the caregiver, more now than ever in our society, which I think we've seen, that is they want to work with somebody forever. 65% of chiropractors are now caregivers. Really, just like medical doctors. If you take a look, we're talking about the same type of profession that would go to medical school. They just happen to be going to chiropractic school. How many medical doctors do, you know, own their own facility?

Very, very few.

Yeah, they all work for a hospital. Who runs the hospital? People with MBAs, they run the business. What do the doctors do? They doctor. That's how they've been so successful chiropractors for 100 years. To be successful, we said we got to go open our own practice, put her own shingle on the door and run her own business. I'm a chiropractor and I kind of suck at business. Let me just give my heart to help people out because that's what's really got us along, is like we love patients, we love seeing them getting well. We have this great resource of chiropractic and neurological health. The problem is, is that they don't realize they're built that way. So Steve, to answer your question, I know a little bit about you. I know what you've done. You've been CEO, you've sold businesses, multiple million dollar businesses. Not everybody can do what you can do because they're not built that way. A lot of chiropractors aren't built that way either. And they're very happy. I've got three awesome associates in my practice. One of them is my son. He will own our practice someday. He's a high end business builder, entrepreneur. And the only reason he works for me is because he knows there's the, you know, the legacy play when we're at the end. But I have two awesome docs in my office who've been with me for 12 years and 6 years making really good money, helping get people really, really well, get great results. And they'll never own their own business because they know that they're not built to be that way because I put them in the right position to be successful, what success looks like for them.

And that's, I think that Says a lot for you, Mark, that you've built that environment, that culture that allows them to be successful in that environment, and that's not easy. How do you do that? I mean, how do you keep that culture going that attracts and keeps somebody around for 12 years?

Yeah. So it's making sure that you put them in positions to be successful. Right. I mean, there are areas that we're strong at, I would say. And Jake, you and I have had conversations about strengths finders. My wife and I are both Strengths Finders coaches as well. So her and I have another business called Align Teams, and we help teams align through Strengths Finders. And we speak very highly of that. And, you know, we have. We have talents that become strengths, and then we also have blind spots that we're not going to be good at, that we're not going to be talented at. So when we know how a person's built to behave, we know their strengths finders, and we understand what makes this person's day look successful. Right. You know, patients. I'm sorry, my team is in my practice, let's just say 40 hours a week. Right. They're probably spending time with their kids, 10 hours a week, 15, 20 hours a week. So they're usually in my practice more than they're with their families a lot of times. What I want to do is I want to make sure that when they leave at the end of the day, that they felt they had success and an impact as they walk out the door. Right. If that's not a part of what they feel like during the day, then it just becomes a job for them. When I think it really becomes a career for them is when they work out feeling that they had just as much impact as the doctor did in the office for their patients. So we've really done is we've created an atmosphere where each doctor, each team member is successful, of how they're built to be successful. And we've given them the tools, the resources, the training to be able to be successful in what they are actually good at, which then hopefully helps with turnover number one, and hopefully helps number two. The clients that come into the practice so they don't see new faces all the time, because there's nothing more than when you walk into your healthcare professional, it's a new doctor, it's a new staff member. You're like, oh, geez, you know, they don't know anything about me. So that consistent face that those consistent hands that are there, the consistency of the person on the phone answering calls, they know Them by name, which is really important in our office. Jake, as you know, everybody knows your name. It's kind of like cheers, except without the alcohol. So if you walk into our office, it's crazy, it's energizing, music's on, people are getting well, it's open, adjusting, but everybody's going to know your name. And the reason why is because that's the importance to us. Because everybody, I believe, is happy about where they're at and what they're doing.

That's awesome.

It's true, too. I mean, I've been there, I've been going for almost six years. And the doctors have all been the same. You know, you've added a few along the way, but I, I, there's not been a single doctor that I've seen leave. The turnover's got to be super low for your group, but it's a testament to how you set it up.

It's.

What are people driven by? What's important to them? What does success look like for them? And then putting them in the position to succeed, you know, it's, it's not only the right person on the bus, it's the right seat on the bus as well. And I mean, I, I never thought about that way, but yeah, that makes sense that everybody in your office is in the right place and is thriving because they're exactly where they need to be.

And I'd add on to just the backside of that. It's being compensated correctly. So traction was a big point of book. Traction right here behind my shoulder was really a key point. When I read that, I was like, oh, okay. Instead of, hey, we have this compensation model and this is how you're going to be compensated. Well, let's compensate you based on your scorecard and your KPIs so that you can have a direct impact on your income. Right? So, I mean, we compensate well to a nice hourly rate, but there's always a bonus structure in place that when they hit their KPIs each quarter each, you know, each year, that they're being compensated towards that model. And I would say in health care, I mean, we, we probably pay a lot better than a lot of other health care facilities do, just because we're set up on a success model based on them individually. But we always say in our practice is, everybody's responsible, but you're accountable for this, this position, right? So everybody's responsible to tell the story, do marketing, convert, connect with patients in one way or the other, but you're accountable at the front Desk to do this, you're accountable in the back office to do this, you're accountable as a floor CA to do this. So they know what they're accountable for, but they all know they're responsible inside of that practice for what the core mission and values are of the practice.

Mark, when you said traction, are you talking like traction tools of the book? Traction tools.

I don't know if it is attraction tools. I know the action called just trying to pull it.

Yeah, Gina.

EOS traction by eos. Yeah, exactly right.

And it's. We've used it in our company too. So when I hear you talk about this, it's fun listening from a business owner, entrepreneur, who I am, but hearing about the chiropractic business, that field, it is a business. It is to be successful, no matter what you do, you have to run a business and what you're doing. And I see how you melding the chiropractic in the business mindset and skills to make people successful in the course of the time in your coaching. What have you learned through the years of coaching that use what you first thought coming out as a new chiropractor to now for people that are in there that are starting a new business and you've been in it, you've got some, probably some battle scars. We all have battle scars. What have you learned?

I call it coaching from scar tissue. I tell my doctors all the time that I coach and I'm like, I'm telling you this because I did that. Don't do it or try not to do it. I think it's neat to be out in the profession now for 20 years. And it's changed a lot in 20 years. You know, unfortunately, fortunately, chiropractic in the 80s were able to get insurance, you know, backing. So when chiropractic was first established, you know, 1895, for the next 75 years, chiropractic was about keeping people, hell, healthy. They took care of crazy things and I mean, got people well through, you know, natural means. And then chiropractic were they've gotten in the 80s, they received insurance. So as soon as we started to get insurance backing, insurance companies had to have diagnosis, diagnosis codes. So diagnosis codes are put into place that we became neck and back specialists. So for 20 years, people like, oh, chiropractors and neck and back specialists, which, yes, the reason why we take care of neck and back is because the spine sets in there. But I mean, we have people that come in with headaches and, you know, acid reflux and digestional issues and colicky babies, and we're able to help with those. Why? Because it all lines up to the neurological part of it. And what happened because of insurance, to be honest, for 20 years, chiropractors got fat and happy and lazy and we really lost our true identity of what this profession's about. So when I came out was on the back end of that 20 years where there was happy cats and fat cats that were making a lot of money off of reimbursement through insurance companies that then insurance companies started to pull back. And a lot of these doctors who've been out for 20 years had no idea how to run a business. So I came out and we didn't rely on insurance. You know, 80% of our clinic is a cash practice. Right. So. And the reason why is because, you know, insurance only covers acute care. Most of our patients that will come in on a daily basis aren't there for acute care. They're there for wellness care, they're there for maintenance care. They're coming in like Jake does, making sure that they can operate at 100 or as close to 100%, making sure that they can adapt to the stresses in their life because neurologically their nerve system's healthy. Right. So the scar tissue, I think, that's in our profession is that we relied on insurance for too long. And I think the doctors now I'm coaching doctors in their 50s and early 60s that are on the back end of their career. And it's scary because they don't have the ability that they should be on the back end of their career. And they may die over their table because they can't afford not to retire because they didn't save money, they didn't invest money, they didn't invest in real estate, they didn't invest in property. And literally they're. They're living, you know, month to month, paycheck to paycheck. Unfortunately, because they've had that mentality, they never been able to get out of it. So I think just helping doctors realize the paradigm shift that they need to make that we're not an acute care type of profession. There's enough of those. There's urgent cares and emergency rooms down the road everywhere. What we are is if you really want to brand yourself correctly, you need to brand yourself. It's a wellness based clinic that accepts acute care, but then helps to educate people on how they want wellness care, how they should want wellness care, how they would want to bring their families to make sure their nerve systems are healthy and happy.

Marcus, I think too.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

I just. And I think too is that there are a couple coaching business and I'm involved with. One of them is that we have a large number of chiropractors now learning. Well, we have, we have a CEO program where we're teaching doctors that they just don't have to be. If they're not built that way, they're just, they don't have to be the doctor who's bent over the table adjusting caregivers. They'll love it, they'll do it forever. But there's a group of doctors who are business builders and entrepreneurs that we're able to put the right tools in their hands now and teach them how to have organizational charts and accountability charts and scoreboards and scorecards and KPIs and learn how to run their businesses like CEOs of businesses do. They just don't have any knowledge and understanding of that. Steve and Jake, unfortunately, because we learn how to be a doctor and that's the scar tissue they're walking away with is they feel less than the business owner. But they have to be a business owner. They're a small business owner and they're at the forefront of making this country go around and they have to stay open to have more impact because we have enough pills, drugs and medication. We don't have enough people still teaching what true health is about.

Mark, you were, you were Talking about the 50 and 60 year old or doctors, and I'm in that age group, but it sounds like from what you're saying, it's a never ending learning process. When you start out, Even when you're 50 to 60, when you're at that age, you got to keep learning your profession and how to run the business. Do you see kind of some guys in the 50s and 60s say you can't teach a new dog or an old dog a new trick.

Yeah. And I think too, there's enough of them now at that age that they're selling their practices, they're moving on. I mean, they did save up some of that money back in the day. They're ready to exit. And chiropractics, I mean, if you're doing chiropractic like I do chiropractic, it's an aggressive, I mean, you're beating up your body. You're doing manual adjusting. You're, you know, you're adjusting people that are £300, £400 on a daily basis. You know, so you're busy beating your body up. So by the time if you haven't taken care of yourself really well by the time you're 50, 60, 70 years old, a lot of these doctors unfortunately are falling apart. They haven't taken care of themselves because they weren't doing the active lifestyle. You know, they, it was like my dad, my dad, my dad's a farmer, grew up a farmer and so forth. And working on the farm was working out. To him, that doesn't count. I mean like working on the farm is a good workout. You should probably still go to a gym because that's really what working out is. And so I think that mentality of the chiropractor, 50, 60, 70 years old was people weren't working out at that time. I know, Steve, you look super fit. I know Jake has, I know he works out because I work on him after he works out. So I know what he does and I work out five days a week even though I'm in my practice. Right. And the reason why is because what's been, what we've been given this amazing body, it needs to continue to have love and function to it. And that's what I think that we missed out a lot of times on. These 50, 60, 70 year olds is they didn't see that. And then what happens is they've been successful, but they don't really know what success looks like. And there's a lot of them that have been successful. Don't get me wrong, I just feel bad for the ones that have.

So there's, obviously we've talked about a couple things that doctors should be doing in order to succeed at their practice. Not only physically, like, hey, stay fit. You're gonna be doing this for a while. You've got to stay fit. If you're encouraging other people to stay fit, but you've been in business for 18 years now, roughly, most businesses, I think across the board barely make it by five to seven years. That's usually when most, most of them die. What have you seen and what are you coaching your chiropractic clients on about? The tenants of building a long lasting business, like, what are those things that you're teaching them? Hey, I've done this for 18 years, I've done it successfully. These are the things that I've learned that you can put into practice that'll keep you successful for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

I think a lot of people get into careers for money, right? And if you get into chiropractic for money, it's the wrong way to get into chiropractic. If you don't truly understand and have a purpose and a true love for getting people better naturally and have true understanding of how to help heal a person through the adjustment and nutrition and exercise and so forth. It's going to be a hard existence for you in this profession because being a chiropractor is not easy. Right? So, Jake, you know, my son's a chiropractor. He's been in our practice for four years and he was coming out of high school, he was going, he's played, he played college baseball. And he was getting to the point that he needed to decide what he was going to do. And I pushed him away from chiropractic. I said, don't be a chiropractor, do something else. The reason why I did that is he only saw what successful chiropractic looked like. He looked at our office. He worked, you know, in the summers in our practice for a couple summers. And what I said to him is, don't become a chiropractor because you think it's easy. I really pushed him away from it. He really had. I wanted him to, I wanted to push him away. And if he stayed away and did become a chiropractor, I was going to be okay with it. But if he wanted to be a chiropractor, I wanted him to come hard and I wanted to know the reason why he wanted to. If you don't have a true love and purpose and want to take care of patients and you've been adjusted by my son. He's awesome. He's. I want to, I don't want him to listen to this, but he's, he's going to be a better chiropractor than I am someday. The reason why is he's a true chiropractor. I'm an entrepreneur. I love chiropractic. I think I'm the best adjuster in the world. I get people well. But he's truly in it to be a chiropractor forever, right? He'll own the practice. He's a great business builder. But I think what happens though is that it's that purpose part of it. There needs to be an in ground purpose if you're going to be a chiropractor in any business. Right. If you're going to buy property and have tenants, what is your purpose? What's your mission statement? What are your core values? Why would you ever do that? I think you have to have that in any business. So, number one, purpose and vision. Number two, I'm going to say Team, right? You better be good at a business owner and you better be good at having team. Because I know both of you have been around enough businesses that when you have team turnover, it hurts. Right. When you have to say, well, me myself and I, we run this place kind of sucks, right? When you're bringing out the garbage in the morning and then adjusting the patients and then closing out the light and flushing the toilet and plunging it. Right. I mean, that's a heavy lift. That's no fun for most people. So I think you have to learn how to develop teams. And then I think on the back end of that is I think you really need to learn, you know, how to attract, how to market yourself, how to sell your brand and things like that. And once again, that's not what we're taught. We're not taught how to do that. And there's a lot of marketing companies out there that are just willing to take chiropractors money because we don't know what it is. You have to be careful of the marketers out there not wasting your money. I hear horror stories all the time of these marketers coming in. You pay this much and they get nothing out of it. The reason why is they're just looking for help. I'm just looking for help. I don't know who to go to. So inside of the recruiting business, the remarkable practice that Stephen owns, and I'm a coach inside of that business, what we do is we have success partners. So we link them in with businesses that are from the outside world that can help them grow. But we're sending them to those partnerships that we have because we know they're good people.

And you vetted, you vetted them, correct?

Yeah. Giving a trustworthy insulation around them to help them pick the right people because their number one job is to adjust their patients. That's how they stay open. Right. They don't have time a lot of times to do all the extras.

So you've talked about Dr. Jordan being your practice, your son. I'd love to hear how do you balance that dynamic of being a business owner, running a, running a practice, but also being a father in the office. I'd love to hear kind of how that dynamic works, how you balance that. But also you've talked about Dr. Jordan is going to take over the business. Everything goes to plan, he'll be taking over the business down the road. What are you doing to prepare him for that transition of business down the road?

That's great. So you know how my office is set up so we, I, my, myself and one of our associates adjust on one side. We've been adjusting next to each other, Dr. Amber and I for 12 years. And then you look across to the other side, it's a big open adjusting area with an active therapy department. My son and Dr. Andrew adjust literally 30ft from me, 40ft from me. So it's really cool, especially when we first came on. To see my son gives me the chills. Talking about to see my son adjusting patients. And what's even cooler is he, I think he's gonna, he is, he's a better caring chiropractor than I am. He's so awesome with the kids in the practice. He has three of his own, his awesome wife that he met, you know, they're high school sweethearts. So I'm a GPA, so no grandpa here. But gpots, I'm a GPA already. I have almost a six, a six of four and an almost two year old grandkids and they're just awesome. They live 10 minutes from me, so, so that's what's cool. But I think, you know, that respect factor is we couldn't work together if he didn't respect the success that I've had and want to learn from that. Right. We see the families that butt heads and having families together. And I had the pleasure of meeting your son Steve and I saw the respect you two have for each other. It reminded me of my son and I because there's a respect factor that I'll say, oh, you know what? So we've put Dr. Jordan, that's my son here, he's in charge of our marketing this year. The reason why is because I've been work with him for the last couple years. I had to teach him how to be a doctor first, how to take care of patients, how to adjust patients, how to put care plans together, how to treat patients and so forth for the last few years. Now the next iteration is you need to learn how to market, you need to learn how to attract. Because if you can't attract patients, you can't keep in business. So now he's our marketing. So he handles all the marketing and then I meet with him once a month at our house on Tuesdays and we do a two hour leadership meeting with him. My wife and I talk about the business, where things are at, look through P and LS and things like that. But what we also have done is we put a leadership team together at the office. So it's all five doctors, including my wife. And then we Have a COO of the practice and training, taking over some of the responsibilities for my wife. Because when I go, my wife's gonna go someday, right? And she's our coo. So we have a COO in training so that they can link up with Jordan. So there's a success path and legacy play that's in that practice. So it's not like, okay, Jordan, here's the practice. Good luck, man. Awesome. Here we go.

Here's the keys.

That, yeah, that would be really easy if he wasn't my son. Right? I mean, if it wasn't my son in my practice, I'd probably sell two, three, four years down the road, walk away with nice cash. I've been doing well otherwise, and I'd go, you know, continue to coach and do recruiting. But it's my son, so that means a lot more to me in that practice because it's my son. Right. So I need to leave it ready to be flowing. I don't want it to crash. I mean, he's flying a 757 or a 747. I don't know much about Jeff, but a big plane right now, it's a big office, so he needs to be trained in how to run that.

That's great.

And what, what I say, talk about scar tissue, is when you open a practice from scratch and Steve opening a business from scratch and not having anything, you learn how to be little and you go through the whole evolution of the business, he's not going to have that. He's not going to have any of that struggle at the beginning. He's going to be like, I'm cruising at altitude already. Let's just make sure we keep this plane 30,000ft.

And those. Those take two different skill sets, too.

Yeah.

So much.

And if you don't identify it, which you have, it could be a big mistake.

Yeah. And. And I think too, is I'm not teaching him everything. I have my. So next year. So we have a CEO program in the remarkable practice. So we have CEO masterminds. We're teaching traction. It's a whole year period of time every other week, one hour. Masterminds, we teach them what's called the chiropractic cts, Chiropractic Transformation System. It's six months of teaching them the mindset of a business owner. And then we go into cos, which is the chiropractic operating system, which we teach them the operating tools, organizational charts, accountability charts, scoreboard, scorecards, KPIs, and so forth. I'm putting my son into one of those CEO groups next year, but not with me. I'm going to put him in with one of our other coaches, Dr. Pete, and I want Dr. Pete to teach him that part of it. Because my son hears from me all the time and he needs to hear from somebody else. And when it's coming from somebody else, not that he wouldn't do it already because he's just awesome and he would do it, but he's going to do it better when he's hearing it from somebody else. I think that's going to be that next iteration that he's going to need for the leadership inside of our practice.

Setting up for success. I mean, and I love that you touched on that.

You're.

You're not teaching him everything. You're not telling him everything, because he does have to learn on his own and he's got to go through trial and error. And you rather have a controlled environment for those sorts of things than not you, you had talked about. So we've. You started your practice 18 years ago, and I know that you eventually bought the office that you're in now, and so you started getting into real estate. Is that, is that normal for a chiropractor to, to own the building they're in? I mean, are they usually buying it, leasing it, or are you one of those, those guys who, as an entrepreneur, you're looking for ways to, to continue moving forward and dabbling in other areas?

It's interesting. Chiropractic, professional. I mean, like I would tell you, 20, 25% of chiropractors, a lot of. They'll own their spaces. You know, there's a lot of chiropractors that build their own buildings and they're ready to roll. So they're chiropractors that'll buy, you know, a part of the strip mall that they're in and they'll possess and sometimes they'll buy larger parts. I would say it's not common. It's, it's, it's fairly regularly, though. So, yes, we purchased our. Was eight. 18,000 square feet, two buildings, 9,000 square foot in each. I'm on the in cap of one of them in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and I had partners or have partners in those right now. But we're gradually in the process that we're going to buy them out, and we're in the talks of doing that here towards the end of the year, just due to the simple fact of who doesn't want some depreciation inside of a commercial building? Inside of the world that we live in right now, the way the taxes are 100%.

I mean, we talk about that a lot with our doctor clients or doctor investors is man, especially for, for doctors who are generally higher, higher incomes that the depreciation and the tax benefits they get are incredible. I mean, it's such a smart way to utilize your, your, your money in order to drop down that income tax. So.

Yeah.

Is that something you coach your other, your other doctors on as well as how to utilize real estate in their practices?

A little bit. I wouldn't say it's a huge niche of ours inside. I mean, we will help them somewhat. You know, there's, there's really four. I call. We call it the four seasons of a chiropractor's career. We call it launch, build, scale and exit Launches first zero to two years. Opening up your own practice build is like you start to build your team around you scale as you start to bring other doctors. So you, so you lose the, you know, a part of an individual solo practitioner is there's, there's scalability issues because it's all on you. That's the only way it's going to grow. There's durability issues. And the durability part is, man, you get hurt, you blow an acl, you hurt in a shoulder or you go on a vacation, right? I mean, like all of a sudden you don't have another doctor in your practice coverage doctors, there's not many of those out there. So I know people who have lost their businesses because they've gotten hurt. Blue and Achilles blew in a, you know, an acl. They can't practice for four months. They're the only ones in their practice. I mean, they're gone. When they come back, it disappears. Right? Patients are going to go somewhere. You're not there. They're going to go somewhere, right. They love you, but they're going to want to get adjusted. Right. Wow. And then that and inside of that. So scalability, durability and then transferability. There's no one better to transfer than someone who's in your practice already working for you with, you know, my son right now. But then the last one is the exit. So it's launch, build, scale and exit. And a lot of doctors we're working with right now in the exit plan. And what's really cool is we are seeing quite a few doctors that are purchasing their buildings and being successful in doing that and becoming landlord once again. Another part of complication inside of the business world. You better Have a stable practice before you go and buy a building. Because I've heard horror stories on the backside. They get themselves over leverage as well as they're like, I got this awesome business and I'm making money and I'm going to get some depreciation. It's going to be great. They buy a building, they have three or four tenants. This is awesome. Two tenants move out, all of a sudden they can't meet the mortgage and then they're, you know, they're over a barrel again too. So I mean there better be some stability and some guidance from some professionals which I think is also helpful. Inside of that is there's people like you guys out there that can help people in those situations that might be able to come in and partner with them and not so much hold it on their own because we start to see a lot of times in chiropractic officers you, as they grow, they need more space. So that's what's been nice for us is we used, we were 1500 square feet then we went to 3000, now we're 3, 500 now we're looking at grabbing another thousand square feet which then my partner said you are taking up a third of the space. Why don't you buy the buildings? And I was like I'm going to come to you next year and do that. And they're like why don't we do it this year? So we're working on that project now. Yeah, for sure.

You know Mark, we've talked earlier about what we're seeing with our clients at Skyline Point Capital. Just like what you're talking about. A lot of the doctors and some of our clients are hiding it. Net worth individuals and they're love, they love the practice. The good thing about being good business owners, they're making, they're throwing off a lot of cash and trying to figure out how to, how to, how to deploy that capital and different things. I remember a phrase and I've even used this that I wish somebody would have told me 20 years ago how I could start getting involved with real estate and earn the passive income and not actually own and operate and be a landlord. But I can then put my capital to use from that side. And it's interesting to hear doctors, even in the 50s to 60s year olds say I wish somebody would have told me 20 years ago I could have put this into real estate. And passively. And you hear there are stories, you hear about doctors that now with passive income is almost or if not above what they're Making currently in their practice, they built passive income to the point that now they can practice on their own time and throttle down their, their activity and just with their passive income off the real estate. So the phrase is, is that you, you take that, your income off your practice, put that into real estate, and then live off the passive income and you've got this nest egg with depreciation and capital from that side, from that passive income. You said that's, that's a low percentage that you see in the chiropractic world that, that are people actually doing that?

Yeah, it's because it's, you know, I would tell you that, you know, Jake, you've seen our office and I'm not sure what you have it to compare it to, but, you know, the average chiropractic clinic sees a little over 100 visits a week in a practice. You know, that's the solo practitioner doing it themselves. Most of our profession, Success looks like 100 people per week. We see 100 people in a morning in our practice. Right. So I mean, it's, it's totally different. Those people who are seeing 100 a week, who have a two staff members, they have their supplies, they have some advertising, they have a website they need to maintain, they're probably not walking out of there at the end of the year with much more than $100,000 in their pocket or maybe even less that they're living off of. Right. And you know, they might have a whole life or a term policy or maybe putting it into their, you know, separate, simple or trying to max that out each year. Just they're living on such a tight rope inside of the profession where doctors who are working in hospitals, a lot of times, you know, they've got contract, they don't have to run the business, right. They get to show up for work. What they do, they get, you know, they're making 125, 150, 200, $250,000 because they're a specialist in a hospital. They do no marketing, they have no expenses. Now the problem is, is they're in a higher tax range. They don't have write offs because they don't have a business. You guys understand that too. So they're, you know, they're giving money to the, you know, the tax man, but they don't have the headaches of a business. Business goes sideways, they have a bad month. Covid hits people stop coming into your practice, all of a sudden it shrinks. They're using their savings to try to stay alive. And I would tell you, you know, on average, chiropractors are very similar to the common person in the United States. I would say there's a lot of chiropractors that are out there that don't have six live off. They maybe had two, three, four months. So to say that they're into the real estate portion, unfortunately, I think through what we're trying to do, coaching and we're trying to do it Cairo matchmakers and hiring the right people and making them more successful, I'm hoping we see more of that in the next five to 10 years because I do believe that we need to have more impact. And more impact needs more money. The more money we have, the more impact we can have inside of the profession and outside of the profession. But yeah, it's sad when you have to see a person that's 60, 70, 80 years old if they didn't want to still be working because they need to make a living. Where you start talking about passive income. I mean, that's been a part on a part of my head for 20, 25 years based on what I grew up with in my family. So I mean that's a lot of it deals with already what I saw. And I was like, oh, okay, that looks good. That doesn't look good. Let me try to do that.

You've referenced your parents and your grandparents a couple times. As farmers, I take it they've had a significant impact in your life on not only who you are, but how you approach life going forward. Is that, is that fair to say?

Yeah. So it was, it was an example of what was success and what I learned wasn't success. So both my grandparents on my, my mom and my dad, they were both farmers and they were farm wives. They worked together on the farm. And as I was growing up and my dad was a farmer, so he, he, we had four houses on my dad's parents farm and that's where I grew up. And my grant, my grandmother, my dad's grandparents, my dad's. I'll just say Tom and Bernice. Okay. Tom and Bernice Mao. I saw what they were doing and they had land and we built confinements and we had hogs and they had multiple farms, but they always had like a little bit older tractors and a little bit older equipment and so forth. And then my mom's parents, they always had brand new John Deere's and they, they were on a farm and they had multiple farms that they worked on. And I was probably 9, 10, 11 years old. So I was like, man, Grandpa and Grandma Minnie, they're really successful. They always have big blue, you know, beautiful green tractors, and the yard is always really nice. And they had a few farms that they farmed and they didn't have to have livestock. And, man, they're really successful. They only need to do crops. That's awesome. They're super successful. And I looked at my grandparents and my dad, like, we had tons of livestock and we had this equipment that was never new, and it was always. Probably used stuff. And they had a few farms that we would farm as well. And I thought my mom's parents were super successful, and my dad's parents, they weren't. Well, I got to be in a college age, and I started to learn a little bit more, and it was actually the opposite. So my grandparents, my mom's parents, they retired at, say, 70 years old, right? They moved to town, bought this little house inside of Sheldon, Iowa, where I grew up. And we did a farm sale. And, you know, we're there, and I was like, okay, like, what, is Grandpa gonna rent the land? And came to find out, my grandparents rented that farm. In every farmland that they actually farmed on, they rented. They didn't own any of it, moving this little house. And for the next 20, 30 years of their life, they really did nothing other than to live in this little house. And they took a few trips here and there. My grandparents that I grew up with, right on the farm, and all their. All their tractors, all their big green John Deeres were all leased. My grandparents, everything was bought. They owned it, all, right? They owned a thousand acres of land. They owned all the buildings. They loaned all their tractors and combines and everything else. They had a place in Arizona. They traveled all over the world. They had more money than I knew what to do with. And when my grandparents, my grandpa, Grandma passed away. My Grandma just passed two years ago, 97 years old. And my grandpa, Grandma minning. My grandmother passed away four years ago. So my two grandmothers lived forever. My grandparents, my grandfathers passed away around 80, which was about 15 years, 10 to 15 years ago. The success Grandpa and Grandma Mao had was way different than Grandpa and Grandma Mary. And what I saw is they were buying stuff and they had whole life policies, and they had invested money to be put away that was passive income that they were using for rent and all that. And they were living off of those things. And it was like, I thought that was success because they had the shiny stuff, but they didn't have anything. And, you know, they didn't really probably have the retirement that they really wanted because they didn't have the income that was generated unless they continue to work, which they chose not to. And my grandpa and grandma, when they both passed away, they had millions of dollars that were there, right. That they were able to pass on. So, man, it really made a shift in my head at a very young age. I was a college age going like, ah, I had that wrong. Now I need to start to think differently. So I've always thought differently because of that life experience that I had at a young age that it was special to have at that point that all of a sudden I knew owning was better than renting. So true. Having your own was better than being somebody else's. Right. So that's why the entrepreneurial ship part of me was like, okay, I'm going to be a chiropractor. I'm going to be my own chiropractor over my own office and I'm going to start doing my own thing because my destiny is based on what I do inside of life, not based on what somebody else's.

That was a great testimony for reading Rich Dad.

Yeah, I was like, it's probably behind you, isn't it?

Yeah, it's up there. I actually had the real version of my life. So yeah, I've read the book, but I know exactly, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about was true. Exactly right. It was the same, same example just happened to be farmland and not, I think it was Hawaii. Right.

Well, Mark, as we, as we wrap up every episode, we'd like to ask, go through a speed round question. So we asked seven questions really just for everybody to get to know you a little bit better. Yeah, take your, take your drink. We'll go through this quickly.

Get ready.

Short questions, short answers. Number one, do you have any rituals that you swear by? Daily rituals.

Daily rituals. I'm up every morning, 5:30. I have two awesome. I have actually three now three awesome dogs. Get them fed, take them out for a short walk and then I, I'm a workout guy five days a week and I work out half an hour to an hour and then I do a infrared sauna. I think infrared saunas are probably one of the, one of the reasons why I stay as healthy as I do with as many people I come in contact with. I do a 20, 25 minute, 160 degree infrared sauna that I have at my house. I bought 12, 15 years ago and it's well worth the investment. And then I, you know, religiously, I read on a Regular basis. I always have a book that I'm reading. I just started a new one. I just pulled up here on audible. I know you said this is rapid.

Fire, but, you know, you do whatever you want.

My episode, the book is called how to Get Rich by Dennis Felix. Dennis. He is, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, how to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. He was an entrepreneur, owns 46 magazines in Europe. He's passed away since. But it's an awesome book so far, and I've been recommended multiple times. So that's the rituals that I do.

What's one item you could not live without? Family is not included. That one trips everybody up.

Okay, good ritual. Something I couldn't live without. Wow. I could probably live without pretty much anything.

Mabel, your dog, right?

Oh, yeah, my dogs for sure. Mabel and Nelly. You've seen Mabel in the office. Mabel, Nellie. I was thinking, like, all the work that I get done on my phone, I'd have a hard time not having this right now with all the work that I'm doing.

I would say phone or laptop.

So, yeah, dogs, laptop. That kind of stuff. Yeah.

What's. We've talked about real estate. We've talked about real estate a little bit. What's one piece of real estate advice that you would give others?

You should have bought a place in Florida on the beach before it got expensive.

Yeah.

So we have a place in Florida. It's not on the water. It's inland a bit in the Sarasota area. And we bought it about seven years. Five, six, seven years ago. And in the last few years, we've been looking close to the water and the prices have gone up double at this point. And I wish we had an opportunity to buy a place close to the water for about half of what it is today. And at that time, it was five, six years ago. I just didn't have the money to do it, nor could I do it because of the things that we were putting into place into our business. Now I could do it. And now they're double. They do. So now I need double more money to come in. So we need to start working on that with some passive income.

If we get an apartment on the beach in Florida.

All right. At least. At least one. That the hurricane's not going to hit.

What's one thing in life, business or real estate that you're really excited about?

You know, I'm at the point in my life, our daughters. Our daughter's a sophomore in high school. So we just have my Son and my daughter. My daughter is a sophomore in high school, and my wife and I have just been married 20 years this year. And I just. I'm really excited to see what happens in three and a half to four years from now when my daughter goes off to college. She's super sweet. She's awesome. She's a rock star. She's going to crush it. She's this awesome leader and everything that she does around dance and so forth, she's a. She's a competitive dancer. So it'll be neat to see what she does. It's gonna be really neat to see how my son steps into more of that leadership role, can take over the practice. I guess it'll be interesting to see that next step because I'm not a guy who's gonna go sit down on a beach somewhere. I mean, I'd love to be on a beach, but I want to be on the beach with my computer and my phone and making phone calls, coaching doctors, buying properties and those things. So I think what I'm excited about is I hate to wish time away, but I'm excited to see what three to four years do to that next step in my wife and I.

That's really good. Good. Last question. So we talk about heading west. Obviously, the title of the, of the podcast, Heading west, is starting from point A, let's call Omaha. You head west. It's not really about the destination. It's about the. About the process. But you learn so much over the process of life. The highs, the lows and whatnot. But so the question is, as you head west, where do you hope to end up? You kind of talked about there maybe end of on the beach coaching, but what does that look like for you? Where do you want to end up at the end of your trip? Heading west?

There's a lot of work. You know, people. People ask me, what's your hobbies? And I would say my hobby is travel. Jake, you know how much I'm gone.

I'm usually most of the time when I want to get adjusted, you're gone, I'm gone.

Yeah, well, I know. That's why I have scalability. I have three awesome jobs.

Okay.

Right. Yep. Jordan is amazing, which is great right there. So, you know, we love to travel. I. I foresee that in our future. I really think. And Stephen and I and Alan have talked about this. I think there's such a need around the world for chiropractic coaching is. I really believe what we could do is we could really do a world Tour and I kind of laid this out there and think about things as I have affirmations and I have, we have goals and I'm, I'm a goals guy that I'm not just write them out. But it's like spider web of the goals of the, the six P's in life. And what I would say is I think it would be really cool that when we're in our 50s and you know, early 60s that we're traveling the world doing two to three day chiropractic seminars based around business and recruiting and team and things like that. And we have. I've got great friends that are partners of mine and connections that I think that would be really cool. I'd love to slam down in Barcelona for a week, do a seminar, be there for a week on the front end, a week on the back and then we're roll into, you know, Brisbane, Australia which is where we've been and we've done events before and to roll into, you know, Amsterdam and do an event for the chiropractors there, I just think there's a real need for that guidance and I think it would be one. Heck, that's awesome.

What an experience.

That would be awesome, wouldn't it?

It would.

Well, Dr. Mark, where can people find you if they want to look you up, if they want to get in contact see you, where can they find you?

Yeah, yeah, it's neat. So what I'll say is if you love teams, you need some help with team coaching. We can assist with that if you're, if you're a doctor or a chiropractor and want to learn more about that part of it. If you and I just talked about chiro matchmakers in the recruiting but we also recruit physical therapists and recruit nurse practitioners and physician's assistant for integrated offices or other businesses or you can always email me at Dr. Mark. So d r m a r k4082 mail.

Love it. Well, thanks Dr. Mark for joining us. That was an amazing conversation. Really enjoyed that.

It was awesome.

Good job than having me, man. Yeah. Thank you so much, Steve. Thanks so much Jake for the invite. I look forward to working with you guys moving forward and what you're doing. If I can ever do anything for you guys, let me know.

That's great. And when you're, when you're doing your around the world, will you. Can we check in with you on Zoom and get an update what's going on?

Yeah, well, I, I know, I know. Jake just got back from Italy, not too long ago. And, Steve, you probably love to travel, too, so I do love to hear some stops along the way that I need to go to. So maybe we need to have coffee and figure out where those are.

Like, so you're saying we need a pre trip just to figure out where to go?

Okay, we need a free trip. And you know what? You guys have expertise in property. We probably need some. We probably need a half a day session on property investing. Hey, there you go. There's lots of connections to be made here. That's.

That's what.

That's what connections are about. Right?

I love it.

All right. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it.

All right. Thank you, guys.

Thanks, Mark. Take care. Have a great weekend.

Yeah. Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.