115- Functional Movement with Dr. Todd Pickman

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor providing you with elegant and efficient research based content to help your practice prosper and succeed. Now get ready for a variety of dynamic communication tools designed for immediate growth courtesy of your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmead. This week we have a special interview with Dr. Todd Pickman. He runs a big practice out in Idaho. He is a cool guy and he is going to talk a lot about corrective and functional movement systems in chiropractic practice which I think is very applicable. Additionally, he's gonna talk a little bit about behind the scenes of the evidence based chiropractor as well. So Dr. Todd is founder of MoveWell University program that te chiropractors how to successfully add corrective exercise and functional movement into their practice. And he wrote a book called MoveWell Secrets and you can get a free copy at movewellsecretsbook.com Today's episode is brought to you by Rocktape. Rocktape is revolutionizing the soft tissue world again with new Rock Blades Mohawk. Featuring three tools in one, surgical stainless steel hand polish tool, two attachments silicon sleeve and an ABS comb. Rock Blades Mohawk unlock never before seen treatment protocols to reduce pain, improve mobility and address issues like like nerve glide and neuropathy. 175 bucks. And check out all of their educational courses@rocktape.com Mohawk. Without further ado, here is Dr. Todd Pickman.

You're early out where you are at so thank you for coming on and I'm pumped to talk.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

You got it. So one thing I wanted to start out with you and I met actually at a chiropractic event last year in 2017. But I would love, I travel a bunch. I know you do as well. I would love to know what is your favorite chiropractic seminar, conference or event from the last couple years.

I mean normally I'm going to technique seminars and things. That's kind of the main thing that I've been traveling and going to over the years. So as far as my favorite thing, I mean I really liked kairo sushi. I'm going to be going back to that this year. I'm actually speaking there and those types of events again I don't normally go to but I'm being exposed to.

Yeah, I love that. And let's peel it back because I want to get back to the beginning of the story a little bit. What got you interested? You Know, in chiropractic, how did you get started and how did you go down that path of really, you know, the combination of what I see in you and your practice is the corrective exercise. But, you know, linked with the chiropractic technique. But before you even got that far, how did you get started in chiropractic or interested in it?

You know what, all the time I'm doing these interviews, I'm always trying to say this is the short version of it. And then I look down at the clock and then 10 minutes later I finished the story. So I'm going to see if I can actually do this short. Short is went to school, was hardcore into Gonstead and adjusting. Only seven and a half years later, was looking for more. Found out about chiropractic biophysics, curve correction, posture correction. Thought that'd be a cool thing to complement with Gonstead, learn that, mastered that. Got my advanced certification and ended up moving me out to Idaho to work with that group. Branched off from there, opened up my own practice, me and my wife. And then about a year into it, had an opportunity to expand our own practice that we were currently doing Gonstead and CBP together. So we had this segmental and postural approach and we had a chance to get more space. And then I realized at that point, perfect opportunity to add in this much needed thing that I didn't really know a ton about. I knew enough about to make me dangerous, but didn't know enough. And that was movement. Then I dove in, started learning all these different movement protocols and trying to figure out how to add movement into the mix and ended up building my own system because the system did not exist out there for chiropractors. And then fast forward past that, ended up writing a book called Move well Secrets. And we have a chapter, Segment Posture Movement, and that's our model, Segment Posture Movement. Ended up doing this in practice, loving it. Seeing great results with patients. Having chiropractors contact us all over the world asking us, how are you doing this? That's how I've always wanted to practice. And then I ended up building a system called MoveWell University. And now we teach other chiropractors how to do it. We built a system that's turnkey that they can basically get all of our gold that we've worked so hard to build. And it's cloned. It's cloned, it's reproducible. And we now have over 70 chiropractic clinics around the world that, that have access to our systems. That are using them in some way, shape or form. And that's where I'm at today. And now I've met people like you who are also helping out within the chiropractic community. I've always wanted to do something for chiropractors and help be this bigger voice instead of tucked away at this little clinic in the middle of nowhere. And so now it's cool because this has been a vehicle for me to be able to get in front of chiropractors and help. And that's been the most rewarding thing in practice so far, is not just being able to do what we do in our clinic and help our community and our patients, but now help other chiropractors, help their communities take their clinical excellence to the next level, take their procedures to the next level. That's really what this system is. And that's kind of my background really is. You know, something that I'm constantly saying is there's a lot of people out there that know much more about exercise than I do. Like, I think I know plenty. But there's, there's people that know better than me. But my really strength is the systems, is putting the systems together. The systems, the patient communication, the forms, just making it all turnkey. That's how my brain works. And so that's what I've put together in this whole university program.

Yeah, I think that's really cool. And I'm going to touch on one aspect of what you brought up. I don't know if I would define your practice as a little practice. So, I mean, you definitely are, as we were talking pre. You have associate doctors, you have staff. I mean, there is. You got. You guys have quite an enterprise out there. And I would imagine that really the systems and processes lend itself. Like it'd be impossible to run if you didn't keep tight systems and processes around that. And this is kind of a new direction that as you brought it up, I thought of. But for a doc out there, let's say that is, you know, in a one, it's just them, maybe with one, you know, front desk staff or one assistant. What was the biggest challenge or struggle that you encountered as you grew and grew into what you guys do today with multiple docs, multiple providers, multiple service offerings? What was a big pain point or struggle point for you and how did you overcome it?

And you know, hands down was knowing that better systems would exist for a certain problem. And I didn't have the system in place yet, knowing that there was things that needed to be Done. I hadn't done them. We were already in flight and we're still building parts of the plane. And at that point it's like, man, tomorrow we have another busy day. We got 80 patients coming in. And then in my mind just going, man, that's another 80 visits that I know are not going to be done to this perfection that I see it in my mind, and then it's going to bury me further behind. I don't have to go play catch up to get everything to be where I want it to be. And so that was motivating, yet frustrating. And so now I'm at the point where everyone walks in. I know it's being handled, like, perfectly, or at least as perfectly as can be. I think more perfectly than any practice model I've ever seen in my life. So I can sit back and I can like, catch my breath and be like, okay, cool, I've arrived now. But then once I've arrived, then I go, what's the next project? What's the next thing? Yeah. And so it's just this. It's this constant thing where, you know, it's not that I'm gonna never be happy because I am happy. It's that I enjoy the process of creation. And so it's just constantly creating new stuff. That was a pain point. Second pain point is just finding the right team, finding right people. I mean, we. We had to kiss a lot of frogs. That's.

That gets to another pain point. I think, with a lot of docs is staffing, right? You know, hiring, finding people, growth. Just from a practical, pragmatic standpoint of getting new people in the office. What would be one, like, one tip that you would say for effective staffing or effective hiring, something that we just.

Started doing, and I can't even say that we're doing this like, to the T, but something we're starting doing is looking at personality profiles and really asking these questions that are not just easily answered by someone telling you exactly what they know they're supposed to say, but kind of like getting to know who they are, what their strong suits are going to be. So using a disc, profile, disc. That's a helpful thing. Two is something that we've adopted a while back is when someone comes in to train with us and potentially join our team, we start them in a working interview. And so it's a working interview for sometimes a week or two weeks. And so it's like they're not hired yet. I mean, they're coming in, they're getting paid for this. But they're not hired until we as the team vote yes, we're going to bring that person into our family.

I absolutely love that. I've heard of technology companies and other companies doing things like that, almost like a working interview, mini apprenticeship, come in, actually do the work, get paid for it, but there's no promises. That gives the opportunity for them to see what you're about, consequently for you to really start to see what they're about. And I think that is, that's an awesome, awesome tip and kind of moving right into there with you guys have big plans obviously for 2018 here and beyond. And I know we were talking a little bit about as you continue to grow, there's really two big marketing pushes that you're going through in your practice and with the clinic growth. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about those two marketing avenues or verticals that you guys are utilizing, getting success with and just touch on them.

Absolutely. And one of those involves yours truly, you, because we've been using your systems as far as how to build MD relationships, how to reach out to healthcare providers, how to speak the language and get more referrals from MDs. I mean, some of our main influxes of new patients come from medical providers. There is a nurse practitioner who I know quite well that literally sends us anywhere between two to five new patients every week.

That's nice.

And so they come in, they're this greatly educated referral, they're all about us before they've ever even seen our clinic. And then they go through a tour, see our 5300 square foot clinic, meet our 1415 staff. They're blown away. They're already on board before we even walk into the consultation room. So that's huge. And that's using your systems, your protocols. That's what we have our community outreach director. So we have a marketing person that is, that is out in the community. She like, basically her schedule is one day she does working with medical doctors. So she does drop ins, she does follow up, she tries to set up things for us to go in, in person. And then also we try to bring them to our clinic. So certain clinics, what we try to do is invite them and their team to come in with us on an early Friday evening for like a fully catered dinner in our clin. And it's an event that we call Spine and Wine. And so they come in, we wine and dine them and take them through a tour, get to know them, show them some cases, learn more about what they do. That's a great way to build a relationship and really seal the deal after we've used your tips and things to get in the front door. Right. So that's about half of what we do marketing wise. The other half is a program that we just finished, we just launched called Move well in the Workplace. Okay. And that's something that right before you and I got on this, on this interview, I was showing you that overview sales video of it. Yep. And that's, I mean that's again a multifaceted approach of teaching workplace injury prevention, proper movement, doing it in a full member area site that we build for the employer. We give them access to it and then they have this kind of long game, you know, drip process of content coming into them where they always know who we are in case they need us. So like today, actually this morning, later this morning, I'm going to go talk to a mortgage company. And so I'm going to go into a mortgage company. We have probably about 10 employees there and I'm going to talk to them about Move well in the workplace. I'm going to get them excited about the concept and then I'm going to leave them with, hey, here's a soft offer of you can come into the clinic if you want to get checked out. Or more importantly, we're giving you access to this so you can get X, Y and Z. You can learn more about how to prevent injury. There's a certification built in so that you can really prove and show your employer that you understand this stuff. So you have higher energy, higher productivity and a decreased chance of workplace injury. That's what we want to do for you. And so all in all, it's comfortable, it's a huge win win for them. And then they may come into us later because they're going to be engaged through a membership site they have access to and a email automation that goes for a month. So following them being signed into it, they're going to be getting emails like, hey, check out this section, check out this section. And they have a big old button inside there that says schedule an appointment. And they can click on that and they can get in with us for a VIP appointment. So that's kind of like our two main things that we're doing out here in the community.

I love it and I love what you've been up to because a lot of it puts the education of what we do as chiropractors, as healthcare providers, it really places that first and provides the value to those individuals to those companies, to the people in those companies. And then exactly as you said, hey, there's, you know, that not only positions you, in my opinion as the local leader, but then when you have those kind of soft tickles, it's just, it's, it's just a much better process in my opinion, I think. And it's a lot cleaner and it's a lot more in terms of, it's just less cheesy for lack of a, you know what I mean? It's just as nice, solid processes. And for any docs that, you know, and for, and for myself as well, I got the sneak peek behind the scenes. But where, you know, where can we learn more about that? Where's the best place to start learning more about, you know, MoveWell University? MoveWell in the workplace. The whole what you're up to, where can we check it out?

So pretty much the best place to learn more about MoveWell in the workplace because it's a fresh product that we built for us here locally. We're going to eventually branch out, help other doctors do this in their community. Primarily, I would jump into our closed group Facebook page which is called MoveWell inner circle. And so first off you go to MoveWell community and then you can request access that way or you can go straight. MoveWell inner circle, request access. We see that you're a chiropractor. We're going to give you access to it. This is for chiropractors only. We talk about the stuff inside of there. That's kind of where all the up and coming stuff. But you can go to movewelluniversity.com that's where there's a lot of stuff. There's a big hub there. And then I would suggest grab this really awesome book. I know the author really well. It's actually me and it's movewellsecretsbook.com so movewellsecretsbook.com you get a free book, you just pay shipping. That's one of the best ways to kind of get into this whole thing that we've built is check out the book. It's a quick read. You read it, you get an idea of why we're doing all this stuff from a bird's eye view. And every single week, what's so cool, I get emails from doctors saying, hey, I got your book. I stayed up late reading it. It's awesome. This is exactly the same vision I've always wanted. You've just done it, you know. And so it's so inspirational to hear these doctors all over the world, in different countries, even sending these emails. You know, thank you for writing this. Thank you for putting this message out there, building this system. So it's definitely been a trip. It's been a lot of fun. I've never written a book before, but now I wrote one. I got to start working on book number two, I guess.

Yeah, you and me both. We'll save book writing for us every episode. That could go a couple hours, but I'll put all the links in the show notes. Definitely check out what Dr. Todd has going on and definitely join that Facebook group. That's a great opportunity to interact with other docs, get information and really be up to date on everything that's going on in the Movewell universe, as I will call it. So, Dr. Todd Pickman, thanks for coming on. Truly appreciate the time and I'm sure we'll be chatting soon.

Awesome. Thanks, Doc.

We appreciate you joining us for this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. Learn more tips for explosive practice development at the Evidence Based Chirop. You can also join the Premier MD Monthly membership, enabling you to use what you just heard to maximize results in your office. We look forward to providing you with more dynamic communication tools for immediate growth right here on the Evidence Based Chiropractor.