Episode 41: The Hidden Cost Of Scaling w/ Dr. Elise Rigney

What's up guys, welcome back to The Arena by Making Moves, a podcast for chiropractors looking to grow both personally and professionally, where we're bringing you real-life strategies and tactics from the trenches with some of chiropractic's GOATs and some really successful entrepreneurs so that you can learn, grow, and evolve today. Our ultimate goal is to help you make more money, reach more people, and change more lives. It'd also be really cool if you helped us reach more chiropractors. So if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend or post it to your Instagram story. We'll reshare it and shout you out for being supportive of the movement. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce— introduce today's guest, who is an incredible leader, mentor, and pioneer within the chiropractic industry, who I'm also lucky to call a friend. She's a chiropractor, owner of 4 practices, real estate investor, angel investor, and a huge advocate for leaving a lasting legacy. Dr. Elise Rigney, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be back.

Yeah, me too. Gosh, that was like— was it 3 years ago?

2 years ago? Yeah, I think so.

It was a few years ago we did our first podcast episode, so I'm going to spare you the option of going into your lengthy who are you introduction story. And if they want to go back and they want to listen to that episode 1, I know I kind of took you all the way through what led you to chiropractic, all the way through growing your first Impact location.

Yeah.

And for this episode, I want to work backwards a little bit and I want you to tell me about where Impact Chiropractic is now, because I know you've started working with some incredible mentors outside of the chiropractic space that I know have helped you scale. At least you've, you've gone to them seeking some help in scaling Impact. And making those practices replicatable and being able to leave a huge impact on not only the local communities where those practices serve, but also the profession at large. So let's talk about Impact Chiropractic.

Sure. Okay. Well, I will just pre-frame when you were talking about this and say where Impact is at right now was not in my vision. So I never had the plan to scale. When I opened in 2012, it was like I was very much in the mindset of serving at a high level. Like, I was in the group of like, I'm going to see 1,000 patients a week myself. And so, back then, it was like not in my vision to have multiple doctors, multiple practices, anything like that. And even, we really didn't— we didn't open the second location until 2021. And so, that was 9 years in business. And that happened honestly by, you know, following the pings is what I say, or like the things were showing up. I was coaching in chiro-intensive. One of my chiro-intensive docs was like, "Hey, do you want to buy my practice?" So, I had maybe 5 doctors at the time in my first location and I was like, "Let's go check out this practice that was, I don't know, 30 minutes away from us or something like that." And so, we all went and checked it out. And then, my doctor had been there the longest, Dr. Laura, who's the owner of the second location now. She was not interested originally. She was always like, I mean, I always stay at Impact. She was senior associate doctor. She trained every doctor. She ran that place. She really did our Fort Collins location. And then we're looking at this other practice and we start talking to one of the other doctors. Well, would you want this? Like, would this make sense for even where you live? And yeah, this town seems to be fitting to like the values of your family. And, and that's a lot of like when we're looking at locations too. Um, even some of the docs that I have right now, I will likely be opening other locations with, and it's It's not— of course you need to be smart with the demographics of where you're opening and all of that. But like, for example, Boulder, where you are, what would you say the climate of like the culture is in Boulder compared to Fort Collins where I am, or compared to, we'll say, Weld County?

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Well, and also the values of, you know, like during COVID it was like, why do I feel like we're going to get like filtered? And it's like, I'm so used to the algorithm where you use the word vaccine on like an Instagram post and all of a sudden like your Instagrams aren't going to anyone anymore. I like, it's weird. All of a sudden I felt filtered on this podcast. Like I couldn't say the word. Um, but like, yeah, you, during the pandemic, your life where you— your business was in the same state as mine, an hour away from each other maybe, um, especially where I live in Weld County, completely different. Like, I would actually be embarrassed if I would have worn a mask certain places where I live. Fort Collins is like probably a good in-between of Boulder and Windsor where I live. So anyways, when we're looking at practices too, and the doctor who's going to be in there, especially if they're going to own it, we need to make sure like the, the school districts are good for where you're raising your kids, and like just alignment of this makes sense where you want to live here for a long period of time. So anyways, we're going through all of that with another doctor, not Dr. Laura. And like shortly thereafter, she was kind of like, F this. Like, I trained that other doctor from like school, that doctor that came to us like right after her internship. And she's like, if she can own one, I can own one. And yeah, it was like, it was just awesome because she's like, okay, let's step up and let's do it. So then we did a partnership together on that one with a 3-year buyout. So we've already executed the buyout. So I actually don't technically own 3 offices right now. That office is a licensed Impact Chiropractic. So she is 100% owner on it now. And so that was really cool because we had a very successful, like our plan was executed exactly how we set it out to be. We knew what the buyout was when we signed the paperwork to be partners in the beginning. And so there was no like surprises for anyone. And that, so that was one, one of the ways I opened in a partnership buyout. It wasn't a strategy on purpose, right? It was just like we both have been in each other's lives for a long time. I had married her and her husband. So like we just had a totally different level of relationship personally and professionally. So it worked out smooth. And then, um, from there on, it's been opening in different ways. So my Cherry Hills location, which is down in Denver, that is a unique situation. So if Cherry Hills— my zip code, at least where the practice is, I believe is the highest income earning in our entire state in Colorado. So people who are listening, like, we're right next to— is that Peyton Manning's house? Does Peyton Manning have a Some football player's house we're right next to. I don't know. I don't know my football players, but someone's house is right there. When we were going to do mailers for the zip code, the research, the person who sent us like the demographics of who would be sent to was like, did you know that average income here is half a million a year? And so like the average household income in our zip code. So one would think this could be a great place to open up a business, right? Especially if you're a higher dollar office visit average, care plans that are higher, um, more luxury type elevated services that it would do really well here. Well, I'm not saying it doesn't, but there's other issues that we, we arise upon, like, oh, my husband's getting transferred from the Broncos to the Detroit Lions, like, we're all moving, this whole family of 6, you know, just things I'm like, oh, people who just don't live here full time, you know, so they can't complete a care plan. So it's just different issues in different areas. And So we'll talk a little bit about like the scaling of the systems and how to have like the brand, uh, consistency when you're not all seeing each other too. But that one came into my lap from, I think I saw, I don't know if the practice was for sale that was in there before, but it was already a chiropractic practice, different than ours. Um, more like sports P— not PT, but like, um, cupping and dry needling and that sort of stuff in there. And there wasn't really a patient base to purchase or anything like that. So I came in. And essentially took over the lease, um, for the doctor who was there before. And so that, I, I kind of always thought, okay, when you open a next practice, so this, let me start Fort Collins OG practice, multiple doctors at, I think the largest time we had 6 doctors practicing there at once. Um, and then I went and bought a building for that one, which was a very good business move from a tax strategy standpoint. Um, and that space became very big. So I, the building is 9,800 square feet, but Impact Chiropractic is in 6,800 of it. So I have tenants in the other part. Impact is in 6,800, but still my, at the end of the day, when you look at like what I'm paying essentially monthly on it, it still saved me from the rent I was paying on 40, what was I before? 4,800 square feet. So I had a pretty big practice before square footage-wise too. So anyways, that had a shift and that practice, Fort Collins, the OG, is not one that I would replicate, right? That's not what I'm going to stamp. I'm not going to stamp a 4 to 6 doctor location all over the place. Like, that's just not— so it was like the product, we'll say, well, if we're just talking business, the product I developed wasn't something that was franchisable. And I'm not even franchising it. But when we think of franchise, like we want the replication, we think of Starbucks, you want your drink to taste the same wherever you go. That's very hard in the service industry as chiropractors, just from an adjustment standpoint, when you're bringing an associate into your office to replicate the art, right? So now we want to replicate the art plus the communication plus the SOPs, um, among these offices that don't even see each other. So there's been a lot of unique challenges along the way, I would say. Um, and then also a lot of learning, like I thought With the second location, Dr. Laura's clinic, she had over 220 patients transfer with her from Fort Collins. So whether it was that they loved her— she'd been, I mean, she's now been with Impact 9 years, 10 years, 9 years. Um, she's incredible, an incredible doctor. Um, so whether they wanted to stay with her or it was more convenient because of her location, but it's only like a 15-20 minute drive from from us.

So pretty close.

Still matters. Yeah. Yeah, pretty close where a lot of people transfer. So that's something to always be aware of too if you're scaling, right? How much of your current practice will you be losing? The benefit for me was I was owner on both of them at the time, right? And it was a huge benefit because she started with people on the books, like profitable right away, you know, who are already on wellness plans. Like the payments were already there. We just transferred them from one business to the other business. And so I didn't really have, with the second location, an awakening of like, oh, we need a launch plan when you open up another business. We need a strategy behind it. Like, I think of the people who opened like, um, I think Amped. It's— I was never in Amped, but it seemed like Amped did such a good job with the startup model for doctors. And they were like at every chamber and screening and doing all these things for like 6 to 12 weeks out, a soft opening, all of that. And I was like, Hindsight, I probably should have done something like that, right? But it was quote unquote easy with the second location because the people were there. Then the third location, Cherry Hills, I just basically signed over a lease. I think maybe in the matter of 6 weeks I got new flooring and like just, you know, jazzed it up a little bit to be more on brand with our locations and then hired a new doctor. And with that, it was not only training a doctor who doesn't live hasn't practiced in like our OG practice, doesn't know our brand, doesn't know— and we are— our doctors are highly, highly trained. Like, we've all gone through ICPA, most of us are CACCP. That is heavy to do, just that in and of itself. I won't let anyone adjust a pregnant person until they're Webster certified. Like, there's— I kind of— I think of us as like big leagues. Like, we're not, you know, JV. Like, it is— it is definitely a lot to learn to be a doctor, but that's— I'm taking on doctors who like take pride in knowing how to care for each individual in the office to the best of their ability. So it's just a big gradient to step into when you haven't even been exposed to it. So that was a learning, learning experience for me. But then also I'm in this place now where I'm like, some of the mentoring I get outside of chiropractic, they're like, okay, well, why don't you make Fort Collins the training grounds, right? And I was like, well, Fort Collins is the Fort Collins is the mama bear. Like, this is the one that has people who have been with us for over a decade and is highly profitable. And I can't then bring in, let's just say, people coming straight out of school and have them practice, quote unquote, on the patients who know our quality of care. Like, I just don't see, I'm not going to start to like, you know, kill the mama. In this scenario. Like, I need to keep seasoned doctors in there. So that's even right now, that is a challenge if I want to hire another seasoned doctor in family chiropractic in Fort Collins. And so it's finding now, like, with the recruitment process, it's— I have a list of people who are straight out of school or like 1 to 2 years in practice who want to work with us. But I'm like, now how do you get to the seasoned doctors and the people who have experience to get them into practices that are really mature practices, right? So that's a challenge. And then I didn't have a launch plan because that doctor in Cherry Hills, it was pretty much starting with— it was starting with zero patients and then creating what a launch plan would be while we were essentially open. So with like the drop-offs and the community connections and the perks partners and developing all of that happened in real time of opening. And the positive I would say is like, I have, I have the finances now where when you first start your first clinic, you're just like, Oh my gosh, like, bootstrapping it instantly, you know, like, I don't know how this is going to happen. And so like, that is the biggest relief, is I have been able to make some mistakes, let's say, learning, learning experiences, fail forward, whatever, in this process that really suck financially, I will say. Um, but I've got the cushion because of the choices I've made in development of wealth development to be able to be like, okay, that's, I learned from it. So each of these locations has been such a learning experience, but that one was a straight up startup, we'll say. And then the fourth location, so that happened in May of 2024, Cherry Hills. And then August 1st, 2024, the same year, I purchased a practice in Golden, Colorado. And that one I kept, I got to keep one CA and then I brought in a doctor. Who is highly experienced and seasoned in pediatric chiropractic, like definitely high-level skillset, um, into that practice. And just had a lot of learning on my end, I would say, as the purchaser of when you're purchasing, like what to have in your purchase agreement and tax strategies with that too. So if you have a full purchase price, if you have more of that on furniture and fixings, you can do full bonus depreciation on your taxes. So there's huge benefits to purchasing practices if you have things structured accurately too, because in that one I was purchasing also like an X-ray machine, 3 hydraulic tables, and all these other assets that I could then bonus depreciate at the end of the year too. So there was some great benefits with that, but a lot of learning with purchasing a practice. So it's different models, startup, partnership. And, and a buyout. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's been my story as well. It's like I, I didn't really have any of this in my vision and the opportunities just presented themselves and it was built on relationships. You know, I just had the right people in the right place at the right time and opportunities presented and we took advantage of those opportunities and, you know, now it's been very fruitful and it's paid off. But a lot of learning.

And yeah, each of those instances, you guys merging too, I feel like that was— I remember, I don't remember if it was you or Mike texting me saying like, who do you know who's merged who we can connect with or whatever? And I was like, geez, I don't know that many people.

Like, I know, I know we didn't talk to anybody. We didn't talk to anybody who supported the decision. Everybody was like, dude, partnerships, they're terrible. You're You guys, you know, it's not, it's not going to end well.

And it's not just a partnership you did. Like, it, you know, a lot of partnerships, I was a CA for a partnership of 3 chiros who were owners, 3 of them owners for over now a decade or 2 decades. Um, but so I knew what it was like being a CA with 3 bosses. That was insane. Yeah. You know, um, but I feel like you see partnerships from the beginning, but you guys took 2 practices and merged them together with your associate doctors too. So I, I remember being like, this is So cool. Like, how cool to have two Fountainhead Chiropractic clinics in one city join together. I think that's amazing for like your actual community and making an impact within chiropractic. But I'm like, whoa, that's a whole new beast in and of itself is a merge too from the business backside standpoint of it all.

Well, and it made, it made sense from a business backside standpoint just simply because Mike and I both had other ventures that we were working on. And so realistically, like, you know, we've all heard it, right? Beat into our head, especially if you have the same algorithm that I have, um, from people way smarter than us, which is like, don't succumb to the lady in the red dress. Like, don't split your attention, because where your attention goes, your energy flows. And like, you can't have your energy and attention on two things at one time, uh, one of your businesses will suffer. And so because, you know, Ryan Desanti and I had this— I mean, really, like, we just kind of talked about it, an opportunistic venture that we built through the Making Moves and now the Chiro Ads Academy, which has taken off and grown exponentially over the past year. I knew that in order for me to have my hands in both pots, like I was going to need an operator, I was going to need somebody who I could split CEO and COO duties with and make sure that like the clinic was getting 100% focus. And if I was only going to be able to allot 50 to 75% of that focus, then I needed somebody else who could allot the same amount. And Mike being so involved in Softwave and also having another venture, it just made sense for both of us. And both of us have families, you know, and so we were able to come together and like our strengths were very synergistic and we both have strengths where the other has weaknesses. And so we were able to, to kind of come together in this really great and balanced marriage almost. And so I don't think, um, it's an opportunity that everyone should look into, but it's certainly been a great opportunity for us and our family and our communities.

Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. I think when I think of chiropractors I've coached too, they, um, I don't know if you have, like you and Mike both, you said had other, you have other ventures. Um, but if your whole life is your clinic, I could see that being challenging to share with someone you don't know that well, right?

For sure.

Um, as a merge. But it's like, if you otherwise, like you said, if you would have just stayed the full owner and then you open up Chiro Ads Academy and all of this, like, from my experience with Chiro Intensive, if I had to hire in those people into leadership and hire in the operators and hire in the training doctors and all of that, because it was like, I someone's going to suffer. Like, one of these businesses is going to suffer, and that doesn't align with who I am. Like, what was the point of opening up something if you're not going all in on it and delivering full results, whether that's results within your practice or results within your consulting businesses or whatever other side businesses you would have? And so I think there's definitely a lot of, uh, you know, like the algorithm touting of like having multiple streams of income and all of that. And I would be a hypocrite to say that that's not a, you know, to say otherwise because I have so many. But for me, it's like, what percentage of focus goes to each of my focus? You know, like my real estate stuff, that doesn't require me like at all, really. Um, not much at all. And especially when I have like an executive assistant who can handle a lot of the, the, the things that would maybe come on my plate. So it's like, okay, I have these other streams, but I don't have to show up for half of them. Or even the majority of them, you know, they, they might require my vision work, but then they have integrators who can then take it from there and close the loops on everything. So it's like you, you brought that on in a partnership. And so that's one way, or you can hire it on in different ways too, if you're not able to have to be full in, in every hat that you have to wear as a business owner too.

Yeah. I mean, it's almost impossible. It's so overwhelming, so overwhelming now, especially with all of the things that you do have to juggle. In order to truly thrive in this marketplace. Like, it, it, I mean, it takes, it takes a village, you know, like you need to have people that specialize in different facets of business growth in order to actually achieve those rungs of success that can lead to, you know, financial freedom and time freedom for you down the line. I just know so many chiropractors, like, it's just like, whenever I think most of the population thinks of chiropractic, they think old white man, you know, that's like been practicing for 50 years, you know, and like, that's, that's what I thought about. Most of the chiropractors that I knew before actually going to chiropractic school had been in practice for like 35 or 40 years, and they were chained to their business. So whenever I got out of chiropractic school, I was like, well, I know what I don't want to end up as. Their bodies are broken down. They haven't scaled their systems to a place where there's any real market value. So there's not really an exit strategy there, and they're not really making much money, and they haven't got to spend much time with their family over the years. And so now they're in this like place of regret, and they love the profession and they love to serve, but it just hasn't served them super well. And so I, I had that vision from the start. It's like, how can I break the mold? How can I do something different? You know, how can I have a different experience inside of my office, but also get a different experience outside of my office? Yeah, in my own personal life. And so that's what we've really been prioritizing, and especially with our associates now. And, you know, the merge and working with Mike and working with a big team, like, we just, we have, we have a lot of, a lot of targets that we want to hit for our associates and for our staff members so that we can make sure that they're taken care for, taken care of better than, you know, most of the profession. And I have a list here. I have some things I want to go through later on. I want to ask you—

That's important though. I just to piggyback on that, I feel like that's important as we are growing our practices. It's not about scaling for us selfishly. Like for me at least, impact has not been about me. So from the very beginning, like I did not, even though I didn't think I was going to have multiple locations, I didn't, I wanted it to be about chiropractic. I wanted it to be about them getting the principle of their body heals itself with once we remove the interference, you know, like I just wanted that to be— it didn't need to be me adjusting, even though I thought I could be Superwoman and adjust 1,000 a week while pregnant. And then what, just baby wear and continue to adjust that volume? No, like my body told me otherwise, but I did think that that was possible. So I don't know. I think just going back to like we have now that we've gone with multiple doctors in our offices, For me, at least, from a leadership standpoint, I want to create opportunity for the doctors in our offices that they are going to make more than if they went and opened up their own practice anyways.

Exactly.

You can't—

less responsibility.

You can never guarantee that, you know, because maybe some would go and like crush it in different ways and who knows. Like there's, there's so many different ways to practice, but the likelihood is that in our office, I want you to be able to be able to fully focus on patients too. So, What I just had happen in my OG office, so Fort Collins, Dr. Maddie, who was one of my lead docs in that office, she, she was leadership from an operations standpoint. So she would train doctors on, we'll just say, like the scripting and like the training checklist. And she's so much more high detail than me. I'm a 0 out of 10 on details on Culture Index. So she has been working in our practice and then her husband got an opportunity to open up a dairy farm in Arkansas. And, it was an opportunity they could not pass up. And, I get that. I would never want someone to pass up an opportunity and it worked out in the best, in such a beautiful synergistic way for me because then she moved into being an operations doctor fully and not seeing patients anymore. So now, I've got a lead ops doc—

Oh, wow.

—doctor and who's fully focused on people. So, she's doing Every single week she's on one-on-ones with every single doctor. She's able to train. She flew in. Yes, but she flew in to train. We had a new doctor come in from Austin, Texas, join our team. So Dr. Maddie flew out and did like the max capacity that week together and trained and met new practitioners in the area and all of that, like just went through the whole process. And so that's not me having to do that anymore where I would have had to be the one in the new locations to go there. And because I can't pull someone from Fort Collins to go down. I can have the doctors go and train— the new doctors go and train in Fort Collins and observe and learn how to adjust and practice hands-on and, you know, turn in videos of like their day one, their day two, and all that sort of stuff. But like the, the real work comes like now. We, we game tape every single doctor too. So every single doctor's report, a lot of patient interaction is, um, on video. And patients know everything, everything's properly done for this, just so you know. Cameras are in very obvious appropriate places facing the doctor and not the patient. Um, but with that, we have everything on game tape, just like sports. So Dr. Maddie can watch all the game tape, and we have scorecards for it. And then she will show like the highlights, the best reels, in our doctor's training weekly, so she can highlight amazing things the doctors did. And then the areas that need course correct, she's privately doing one-on-ones with these doctors to course correct. And we're catching a lot of soft skills, a lot of non-verbal communication in these videos, because before we were like, well, why is close rate like this and this person's close rate like this. And, but they nail it every time we role play. And now it's like, oh, this is so helpful to have videos of real interactions and be able to support them. But I will tell you one thing, my visionary heart does not want to watch game tape. I don't, I couldn't even when I was practicing, I didn't even want to hear what my CAs were saying on the phone. Like I just, that's just not the detail. I don't have that detailed bone in my body. And it actually like sounds like I can't even watch movies on Netflix, quite frankly. Like, I can't sit still for that long. And so having someone in that place and then I have another operator for the CAs who's more of like district manager, I would say too. And now my meetings are with my leadership team. So it's like you can— that's part of like the scaling process for me has been the org chart of hiring the right people and then having Culture Index in place to really tell me they are the right people and that it's not just people I like. Because in the past when I had 6 doctors in the one location, like, I thought I loved all these doctors. They were all a little different from each other, but like, we were all like, so mostly social profiles. And that's not super helpful to have, like, when you're hiring, to have your whole office as a profile similar to yours. Because if they're similar to me, that means loops aren't being closed, details are being missed, things aren't getting fully executed on if no one in there is really truly like an integrator, we'll say. Yeah. So that's been a learning process with scaling. Yeah.

I mean, that, that, that right there, like, just goes to show, like, the amount of structure that has now been created over the past 10+ years that is part of the reason why the failure rate is so high for entrepreneurs in chiropractic. Like, I just, this, this, I have staggering, some staggering statistics here, but like, one of them is that Nearly 90% of chiropractic offices don't make it through the first 5 years of being open. 90%. And like, that's deflating for a lot of people. But I also just want to— I just want to like shoot it straight and be realistic. Like, most people don't have the tenacity that it takes and the creativity and the resourcefulness to actually build a business that can survive in this current economy. Yeah, like it's really, really, really challenging. And even if you do, the likelihood of you actually making a good and sufficient income, particularly if you are like the primary earner for your family, is also low. Like, I have this stat here. This comes from Chiropractic Economics. The average owner-operator take-home is $110,000 to $140,000 a year. Hmm. For an owner-operator, think about how much mental real estate it takes to actually own and operate a business. You're never not working. You're, you know, like you're working 80+ hours a week. Like you're never off. In order to earn $110,000 to $140,000 a year, like that to me is insane.

Especially if you can— I'm curious about that stat. I will be honest because I see a lot of numbers behind the scenes on 7-figure practices and I see a lot of 7-figure owners not even paying themselves that. Yeah, well, I'm like, they're saying themselves that I think sometimes it might just be the, the solo doc in an insurance-based office without a CA, like really tight margins even, because I— yeah, I'm just curious of what I've seen. And obviously that's not— but I feel like I see very successful practices by the top line revenue, you know.

You know, this is, this is, this is take-home, so I'm wondering if this is combining W-2 with distributions.

Yeah, like an adjusted gross. Yeah, something there. Because then if they're qualifying for their pass-through too, this is again things we're talking about right now. Like a lot of owners, a lot of people don't think about, like, you have to know all these numbers of like what's— it didn't even maybe hit their bank account sometimes. It could be exactly their business if they're structured as an S corp, that that was their profit that then they paid taxes on. So, right. And that's—

yeah, we're trying to paint the same picture here. I think we just have like so many associate doctors and like young students or that come out and they're just like, they just have so much like passion and their gusto and they just want to like go out and build the practice because like that's the noble thing to do. And then like you're seeing all of these people that are portraying what they want to portray on social media, but they're making $110,000 a year to work 80 hours a week when you can go be an associate doctor in some of these offices. And I have the average associate, uh, national average for associate salaries right here is $65,000 to $85,000 a year. Like, interesting, you know, if you can make $85,000 a year as an associate versus $110,000 a year as an owner-operator, and you have so much more free time, and really you have more financial security, um, I don't—

it just, to me, it's just like the gap might sound large to someone who's at the associate pay being like, well, I'm the one doing all the work and blah, blah, blah. But like you go into, you look at a Fortune 500 company, look at what the CEO is making compared, or you can look at like the, that we just did one, like that was a 40% difference you said there maybe. And it's like, there is a multiple of like 10 to 30 on some of these of like the people who are doing the work versus the ones at the top. So who don't even necessarily own the practice. Or the business. But yeah, so it's actually not that big of a gap.

No, that's between— that's what I'm trying to say. The gap is small. And the amount of stress that you're taking on and risk— risk— there's so much risk, there's so much responsibility, there's so much stress. I mean, you're having to troubleshoot and overcome challenges on a daily basis that are, you know, at the executive level versus like at the on-the-floor level, the patient care level. So, I mean, if, you know, in our, in our targets inside of our office, like we want our associates making a lot more than that. And like we're getting to the point where we're putting compensation structures in place where like, you know, our associates have the opportunity to make far more than, than the average owner-operator take-home because we get to see a lot of high-level docs as well. And like if you can find an opportunity like that where you're going to get trained and you're going to be developed in a team, just like you said, that are running like the big leagues, that are actually going to develop your soft skills and your hard skills and give you financial security and paid time off and not having to take on that much. Yeah, not having to take on that much risk and that much responsibility and that much stress. I think it's a— I think it's a great option, especially now with different investment opportunities that you don't really need a lot of capital for. And so you can start to leverage some of these strategies that I know you're a big advocate for. I know Dr. Abby's a big advocate for. I hear a lot more people talking about them now, like some of these strategies, like getting into real estate and whatnot. Like, you don't need a ton of capital to get in, right? And you can start to build your, your portfolio of cash flow generating assets that can over time start to equal or surpass your earned income. And, you know, if you can do that in like a 10 to 15 year vision, while you're working inside of financial security, like, man, that just seems like a really great route to go. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Another number that I wanted to share here, and I think this probably goes into some of the, some of the conversation that we can have about tax strategy, but average profit margin on all clinics, I guess this is probably domestic in the United States, is 12% to 18%. Hmm. 12 to 18% profit margin. So what do you have to say about that?

Yeah, a lot. I would have to dig in, um, to know, because like you and I have talked about, you, you need to keep your— you need to keep two sets of books, essentially. So if you are trying to implement a lot of tax strategies, your profit percent is not going to look great. So if they're pulling that off of numbers that people want to pay taxes on, then hopefully that number doesn't look great, but if you're looking off of your true profit percent in a chiropractic practice, like a ballin' one, like they are do— they are killing it, it'd be at 45%. If you're getting down to 20 to 25%, that's, that's where you got to figure out, okay, what expenses do I need to like go and, and, and look at, or how do I need to increase our office visit average so that our profit percentage gets back into a margin of So something healthy within like the 30, 35% is really a good average to be falling within. How do you do that?

How do you increase your office visit average if it's that important for profitability, which I completely agree, that's what we advocate for as well. What's, what's the strategy around that? Sure.

You could look at different ways. So you could do more volume, right? So if you're not willing to increase your prices or have value adds on what you're offering or other services, then it would be a volume game, right? So it's kind of like looking at what you need to tweak within within the numbers of a, we'd even say like a patient journey. If you go through your whole patient journey of your practice and you and I go into this and like ads and conversions and your ROAS, your return on ad spend from your ads is going to shift depending on if you're converting in your office or not. And then what type of plan are you converting them on? If you're going on to maybe more of like a membership model, that's going to be a lower ROAS because your fees in your office are lower, right? Or like these boost adjustments people are doing. And I'm seeing— oh, I've seen over the years a lot of practices that will see X amount of patients a week, but really their office visit average is, you know, $22. And that might work depending where you live. Like, you might live in South Dakota and that's still great profit margins and all that. So you can't totally judge those numbers. That's not working in Boulder, I'll tell you that, or Fort Collins. Like, that is not going to— you know, you have to know your cost per adjustment. I think we actually talked about a lot of this on the first interview we did of how to find these numbers. So if anyone's curious how to know these numbers, go back to mine and Travis's first interview a couple of years ago, because I remember diving into the nerdy numbers. Um, well, let's talk about increasing your office visit average. So how, so I've studied with the Hermosis a lot. I've been to acquisition with their team and done boardroom. Um, first you start out with VAM, which you went to the VAM workshop, right? I would highly suggest Anyone who wants to get more business, uh, constraint training will say, and maybe, I don't know if in BAM are they still going through like your EBITDA and like the value of your practice and like the risks and all of that. So I think that's super valuable for any business owner to go to and it's the lowest dollar you'll get in the door into anything with Hermosi. Then after that you're paying, I don't know, I'm not sure. Um, everything I've paid for is now at least double. I'll say that everything I've gotten in on, it's like I think the, the first thing I did was like $15K after the VAM, and now I think that's being sold at least at $35K. It might be more than that right now.

It was $45K. Yeah. When it was $45K.

Oh lordy. Okay. So everything I would say, if you ever want to work with Hormozy's, get in now because the prices go up, they escalate fast there and they're forward about that. So anyways, I've spent a lot of time there and I think some of the— I just usually like take what they're showing and like they talk about a teeth whitening company, they talk about They love chiropractors. They'll talk about other healthcare industries. And I try to just like think, okay, if they're doing that in this dentistry practice, how could I add that in, in my chiropractic practice or something that's parallel? So we, what we've done in ours is we have tiered care plans. And so we have our standard care plan that we would normally have been giving anyways. And that's now the lowest care plan that someone would select. And then, so that was the, the one we did before where the options were either like, do you want monthly or pay in full? And you know, just a close like that where now there's opportunities for patients to uplevel their care. So in the Platinum Care Plan, that adds on 90 days of a 90-day functional medicine program that has their pre and post labs and all their supplements included in it. There's Softwave included in the Platinum and Gold. There are take-home kits in the Platinum and Gold. There are essential supplement pack and an anti-inflammatory pack that get included in there. And so Those items, there's a custom fitted pillow in those two too, I believe. And obviously, Denneroll, Denneroll's in all three of them. So anyways, a bunch of those things don't take my team more time. So functional medicine is outsourced. That's not any of my doctors who are performing the adjustments. And so that's been a way to increase our office average significantly by offering other opportunities for patients to uplevel their care. But also many of these things are going to increase the office visit average if they say yes to them, right? So there's opportunities of just like what else you could bring into your practice. I will say that doesn't always come as easy as I might make it sound. Like when I bought all the Softwaves, I was like, okay, we gotta learn like how to market Softwave, you know, like that's its own leg. And what I personally don't want to happen in my businesses is, A, I never want chiropractic. Chiropractic is is the center, right? But then I also don't want our energy, just like we were talking about with our businesses and the woman in the red dress, like, I don't want that to happen with other things you bring into your practice. Like, I feel like I've noticed this with coaching. I'm coaching these practices that then got into like neuropathy and heavy programs they, they invested a lot of money in that have heavy care plans. But then all of a sudden it's almost like they've their area's gotten saturated, they've milked the leads, their Facebook ads aren't working the same they used to, all of that where some of these practices are, their margins are backwards, absolutely backwards. And it's like, wow, don't you just wish you could go back in the day when it was just you adjusting and your one CA and you were taking home more and your profit margins were great instead of complicating things so much in your business, trying to get your revenue even higher, but then you have to think about the expenses that come along with some of those decisions too. So it's a double-edged sword, I would say. But there's ways to— then you could simply just increase prices too. Um, that would be one way to do it too.

Yeah, that's, that's really good. Yeah, I kind of talk about like the fab, the Fab Five of like chiropractic business being the, the model, the money, the marketing, the sales, and the team. And I think whenever it comes down to like OVA, What I always think about is like the model and the money. Like what is, what is your, what is your care model? What is the message around that model? And then how are you packaging those services? And then how are you selling those services? Are you able to convert on them? And so we know that like at every phase of the game, there's going to be a number and or a lever that you can pull on to increase your gross revenue as well as your OVA. And like what you were talking about. Obviously, we both enjoy marketing. We see it as a core pillar of a successful business. But whenever you are going to market and you're, you're going to market Facebook ads, let's use as an example, because we both know those pretty well. It's advertising. So you're actually investing, you're putting dollars out to buy eyeballs and attention in order to compel them by hooking their attention, identifying a problem, becoming the only viable solution to their problem, giving them a call to action, and then getting them into your office. So depending upon how much it costs you to actually get somebody through your front door versus the amount that you're actually capturing in 30-day cash and their lifetime value tells you, is it even worth you investing in Facebook ads? Yeah, yeah, doesn't make sense. And I think if you don't have the model and the money and the sales dialed, then you can, you can burn a lot of money in advertising and then you you can walk around saying that Facebook advertising doesn't work in my area. Yeah. And in most instances, what we found is that no, it just doesn't work for you because you don't have the lifetime value to actually make it worth you paying $250 per client. But if you were collecting in 30-day cash $2,500 and LTV $8,000, then it's an obvious no-brainer. And it's also an obvious no-brainer to do Google Ads. And it's obviously— it's an obvious no-brainer to do LSAs and to invest in SEO.

Yep. Yep. Right there.

We know how we got on that topic, but I just know that that's like—

I hear it all the time. So like Dr. Maddie, who's the doctor who just moved into operations, moved out of state, she— every— almost every meeting she's like, I had no idea all of this happened behind the scenes. Like, no clue. And I think maybe when I had one doc and two CAs and I was a smaller team, You— everyone has like multiple hats they wear when you're in a small practice. And it's like your doc could run your— your associate doc also runs your social media and also writes your newsletter and some blogs. You know, like it's like everyone has these items, but then once you grow and you build out your— you build out your team to have those specialists in each area, the doctors in my offices don't— like they still, they work hard. Don't get me wrong. Like they are, they're incredible, but they get to really focus on patient care. And they don't even know. They're like, let's go HighLevel. Like they have no clue. Dr. Maddie didn't even— I should, I say this with love, didn't know passwords into some things that I would have thought she'd know passwords into. But at the same time, I'm like, that's amazing. She had a CA opening that up for her every single day for years when she came to this, to the practice. She was taken care of, you know, that she didn't need to know these passwords for the software she used every day because they were logged in for her. You know, it's like just— it's interesting because I think the leadership hierarchy is what I've been writing a framework around lately with like my weekly debrief email. And I've just— I wrote a guide that's in with a designer right now. And I think about like as a leader, as an owner, like all the inner thoughts that go on, because I think when you read the leadership books, you talk— the leadership books, at least the ones I read, are more like around how to inspire your team with your vision, your mission. Make sure everyone is representing the core values, how to build A-players, all of that sort of stuff, like how to have challenging conversations and how to hold people accountable. And, you know, just like the outward stuff of a leader, I would say. And I haven't read much about like the inward stuff that a leader goes through. And that's something that I just keep reflecting on now that I'm in like a calmer phase in, I would say, like my day-to-day career. And it's just been something where I've thought about like those phases of when you have a smaller team and then when you have a bigger team and then when it was just you on your own and, and even the thoughts that go on in your head of like the times maybe you're paying your team more than you're paying yourself or, and you can't say that out loud or resentment can build because that could be happening or especially when people set themselves up on certain profit sharing models. I've seen doctors get themselves like get, have a lot of resentment built up because of how they've set that up. So, that's what I feel like I spent years in Cairo Intensive reworking people's like models for their associates because they would end up just firing really good doctors because they couldn't afford them anymore. So, I'm like, that's not the model we want to be working on in our businesses, right? But I think there's a lot in your head that happens and a lot of inner work that needs to happen where you can see like your reactivity showing up as a leader, but it really goes back to like something that happened in your— a wound from your childhood. Quite frankly. So there's so much, it's like the iceberg when you think of like the conscious, subconscious, all of that. That's how I feel like the leadership books are like the part that's showing outside the water. And I don't think it's talked about everything that's happening internally. And so that's something that I just am kind of like keep reflecting on, thinking on, making notes on, like all these different phases and even the phases when you're like really thriving in business and like you might, your ego might think you need to show it in a certain way. Right? Whether that's with like material items or like what you say or showing receipts of things you've done and all of that. And it's like once you get past that into like ego death and like wealth really whispering and all of that, but then there's this part where you're like, oh well, if people don't know that I, I don't have the receipts, I don't have the proof, if I don't show it, they won't know and then they won't trust. And it's like this whole mind game where your head can go like even for you in your Cairo, in Cairo Ads business, it's like You probably want to show the proof of what you've done in your own business to say, look at how I've spent this money. Look at when I made mistakes here because I didn't have my copy in this place, you know, whatever, show examples. But then also you're like, wow, I could really brag on what I'm doing in business too, which would probably benefit you because then people will become clients because they see, you know, what you're doing and they've seen your ROAS and how you do outperform marketing agencies. And so it's this like mental game of going back and forth all over the place. When you are an owner of like what to share, what not to share, how to hold it, and how not to like get to the point too. If your goal is to sell your business at some point, like you can totally lose your identity once your business— or even when you're— if you— my goal has always been a team-managed business, and so it hasn't necessarily been like my focus is on an exit per se, but it's always been on like the focus being about chiropractic and the doctors in there, not about a specific doctor, including not being about me. Same with ChiroIntensive. I didn't want it to be about me. That's why I wasn't the coach and the last couple of years. And so, yeah, this whole leadership mental game of all of it as we shift around in our businesses is really, I don't know, just I think interesting to be thinking about and then knowing what resources you need at different times too. And it's even shifting up, like honestly, your exercise routine for different times. If you're in sympathetic overdrive, like, and you're still going to go CrossFit, I gained weight when I was doing that, I'll tell you that much. My body was like, what the heck are you doing to me? You know, barely sleeping. Still doing this. And then if you're a woman with— if you have female hormones and you're cold plunging on top of that, it's like there's just like— there's not a one-size-fits-all. And when it comes to leadership, I think there's so much more internally happening too, whether you're an owner or not, just stepping into leadership.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. This— I know you got a jet here pretty soon, but this Monday actually in the practice, I just like was feeling a type of way and I don't know how to explain it any further than that. But honestly, like, I just was just having like self-deprecating thoughts, you know, not like anything major, not like anything concerning, but definitely like some little whispers creeping in, you know? And I know we've talked about like imposter syndrome in the past, and I guess I would probably, if I had to summarize it in one word or two words, that's probably what I would summarize it as. Uh, but I just felt weird. And in our team meeting, um, you know, they were like, well, how are you guys feeling? And I was like, honestly, really overwhelmed right now. And they were like, you want to talk about it? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I can. I don't know if I can even like put it into language right now, but it's exactly what you said. You know, there's just like so much going on internally inside of me because of the amount of bandwidth that it takes. To actually manage every person in our business's expectations while also managing all of the facets of business to ensure that we continue to operate and grow at the level at which we know we should be. And also realizing and recognizing in myself that because we are growing so quickly and we're getting to these like new rungs and unlocking these new levels, now I'm accessing challenges that I've never experienced before. Mm-hmm. And so I'm facing problems that I've never solved before, and that's hard. It's hard for somebody who has been self-reliant and self-dependent in this pursuit of excellence that has been able to solve all the problems up until now to get us to where we are. Know that, like, I don't know if I have those skills in order to get us to the next level. And everybody here is depending upon me to do that, and they're looking to me for direction. But like, I'm also pretty transparent in how I assess myself personally. And I realize and recognize, like, I don't have that within me. So like, I'm either going to have to put on this mask and this front and act like I do and try to just like drag us forward, or I'm going to have to be resourceful and go out and find the answers and find the people that have those answers. And regardless of which direction we choose to move in, it's, it's a challenging direction to move in. And so you're right. It's just that's— I've been ruminating on this too. So I'm glad to know that that's what's been going on in your brain and you're several, several years ahead, you know, maybe that internal conflict doesn't stop. There's—

I don't think it does. I think we need to normalize it. And that's why I'm like trying to talk about it too, because I think at least for me, for at least a decade, I mean, I've been in chiropractic since '08. And, I was going to seminars in '08, maybe '07 too, I don't know, before I even started chiropractic school because I was a CA. And so, I think I just saw the rah-rah and the "I see this many a week," blah, blah, blah. Then, I get in to be a business owner and then I have to start learning business outside of chiropractic because I'm like, "These numbers aren't adding up in the right way and we have to have the value here," and just learning all of the actual how to be a business owner. And then, I think you just hit these different places where you, you, what you see, like, you think of the curtain of like a performance, like, you don't always get to see behind the scenes. And I feel like I've seen behind the scenes so much now with like incredible leaders in our profession, and, and many of high integrity. So I'm not saying like when sometimes when we talk about the black curtain, it's like, oh, you don't know what goes on behind the doors. That happens too. But like, there's the behind the scenes of like incredible leaders. And, and no matter what phase or stage they get to, or no money's ever enough, right? If you're an achiever, no goal that you hit is ever enough. It's like you always keep pushing forward until you maybe start to see other currencies. Like for me, a currency is time with my kids and being present for every single milestone and activity and event in their life too. Like that is an important currency for me right now. Over, like, I can make— I do continue to make money without, without having to be the one, like, exchanging time for money, right? And so it's like just looking at what currency is important different times. But actually, like, right now as we're talking, my debrief went out and I talk about, like, the sage, which is what I call, like, the high level. It looks like it's the highest level of this ladder in leadership, but that's not necessarily what everyone wants to achieve. And that is, like, where you might think of them as, like, calm and confident and, like, the wealth whispers happens. But I think about, like, Kate's Kate Spade, who sold in 2006, she sold her business, which was her name. So her name got sold, which I always think is really interesting to think about in certain brands, right? And then I think it was about 12 years later, she committed suicide. And not that it was because of the sale or anything like that, but I think it's an example of when you have spent so many years pouring yourself into your identity, and literally that was her name too, being that business, and now that business isn't there anymore. Or even like, this happens to parents whose kids are now off on their own, and their whole identity was being a mom or being a dad or being a parent, and now it's like a whole new chapter in their life. Like, it can be a pretty detrimental time too. So even if we think like, oh, when I have true financial freedom, whatever that means to each individual, it's like mental health-wise and like internally, like, if we haven't done the work on like our shadow or our inner child or retraining our nervous system too throughout this journey of hustle or whatever it is, of building, if we haven't done that work, it can be so detrimental at something that can feel like a huge success, like an exit from a company or a sale of a business or whatever it might be, can literally like just, you know, like spark— yeah, yeah, their bodies like just start to degenerate, you know? Yeah. And so it's just interesting from a leadership standpoint too, of the awareness around it and being able to like talk about it or do the work around it too.

Yeah. No, that's so good. I mean, I, I've heard it, I've heard it mentioned as like the hedonistic treadmill, you know, where you're just, you're on that treadmill and you're just like focused on the next thing. Like if this, then that, if this, then that. You just keep postponing your happiness and your fulfillment. Yeah, I think as a leader and as a mission, mission-driven leader and as a visionary, we can— maybe, maybe we're like the, the most probable archetype to actually fall into that, you know, because like you said, it's hard to sit still, which means we're always moving, which means we're always looking at where we're going and where we're headed. Yeah. You know, as opposed to being present and grateful for what we have right here. Yeah. And, um, that can be a challenge. And so maybe that's where I was. It was like I'm always 2 steps ahead. I'm always looking forward on the direction that we're headed, and I typically know what actions it's going to take for us to get there. But now it's like I'm just like looking out into the fog and it's like, man, I'm still looking forward, but I don't know where we're going and I don't know how to get us there. Yeah. Like, what, what is next? Now it becomes another type of identity crisis where it's like I've always been able to rely on myself and depend on myself to be the navigational beacon and be able to be the one that could like muscle us through. But now I don't even know like where we're going and how to get us there. And now I'm like, well, am I the leader that I thought I was? Oh, don't do that.

Am I the entrepreneur that I thought I was? Shift this into an opportunity. Is you have hit the ceiling. Like if you've read Gay Hendricks' book, The Upper Limit, when— yeah, The Upper Limit is like the concept. And so like you've hit this point where it's like, okay, I don't— like if I asked you who you— whose businesses you've seen in chiropractic, who would be the next level of yours that you would want to, we'll say, mimic in a sense. I'm guessing there's not very many people on that list, if maybe not any. Like, you could be like, okay, well, this person does a lot more in revenue, but then I look at their business and I'm like, or their life, and I'm like, or their lack of retention in doctors or whatever it is. And I'm like, well, I don't want that. I don't want a revolving, like, door of team and doctors and all of, you know, like, it's just kind of figuring that out of Now, I don't see it. That's what it's been like for me for like a lot of chapters of this is like, especially as a woman too. And I was the income earner of my— I still am. I've always been the income earner of my family. And so, it's like, it's not only the stress of leadership and supporting everyone else who's on your team. And most of my team for many years have been the income earners of their family too, which is a huge pride thing that the business I developed can make especially all of these women be the bread earners or whatever it's called, breadwinner, bread earner, whatever that. But then I'm like, but then for me it's like the double, like it's not only is the pressure at the businesses, but the pressure is, you know, like these businesses have to thrive in order to continue to support my own family too. And so it's like getting outside of, and then it's really the point you've hit. It's like the upper limit. You're at this upper limit. And especially if you keep hitting a ceiling. If someone keeps hitting the ceiling, and you can see this really simply in like your body, and if you like, if your deadlift has always been the same or your bench presses, you always hit 220 and then that's all the farther you can get. And it's like, or your weight, if your weight always, you can always get to this point or your percentage of, you know, something that you can measure in your body, right? If it always gets to this upper limit, it's like, why do we, what's stopping us at that? That number or whatever that is. And so, it's fascinating because you can take something really simple in your own health, we'll say, or your own body, and then put that into your business. And it's like, why every time we hit this? How do we get past that? And it's usually expansion and getting outside probably other— with other business owners outside of chiropractic because now the levels you're hitting are revenues that we don't see commonly in chiropractic. And when we do, it could be in like a PI practice or something where you're like, well, that's not what I'm doing. You know? It could be in something that's just not a model that aligns with your values. So now you have to go and create it, but then you get to share it with the world. You get to share it with chiropractors too and make a greater impact that way too. But when you get the discomfort or the self-deprecating thoughts or the questioning yourself or anything where you just start to make yourself little A, you might need to go back to little Travis and see why. Was he not enough?

I do fairly often, Elise.

I do. Did he get in trouble or was it hard to get attention?

Regardless of people think about me. I'm, I'm very reflective of like all of my past experiences and how they, um, how they affect my behaviors and my actions and my filter and the way I see the world. So I'm, I'm reflecting on those things pretty—

yeah, well, then rewiring that too. So rewiring that in like meditation and journaling and all of that as well is like important because even if we had challenges or traumas in our childhood, like seeing how they— it's we see it all the time when people use that as their, like, as more of a victim mentality or as to why they won't get past a certain thing. And when you can just shift it into like, that trauma I had actually made me learn how to be scrappy and made me learn how to make— yes, yes. So, but then retraining that to be a positive— I hate to say a positive trauma because it's not what I'm saying. It's like just rewiring it in your brain so that it isn't like the PTSD effect, essentially. Yeah. That's the inner work. Yeah, yeah.

And I don't, I don't think it stops, you know. It's like every, every new, new rung that I access is a new layer I have to shed. And then every time I'm shedding those layers, it's just like bringing up other shit. And I'm like, okay, all right, now I gotta process and, yeah, manage through this and proceed.

Like, some of it you really can't talk about. Like, when it becomes legal, right, it's like, I— you can't be telling other people about that, you know. And, and even like your spouse, it's like you, you have to decide like what's supportive and what's not. And it's like, I think we have so many oversharers in our like empathetic service provider industry where I'm like, you just have to have the discernment too as a leader. And then if it's things you can't share, you know, for example, like if it is like an NDA you've signed or something legal that you've gone through and you really can't be sharing it because it could get you in trouble, then it's like, okay, well, that's literally stuck within you. And that's when you have to do get into some Joe Dispenza work or something to like get that out of being stored in your nervous system too. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's also why it's important to get around other people that are experiencing similar things. I always kind of go back to the cliché saying like it's lonely at the top, but I think like, like getting in a group like UAC or, you know, a group of other like-minded entrepreneurs that are in similar places in their career that value similar things so that you can have these conversations so that you can go back clear with your team and not have to depend on your team to be the people to counsel you through these things. No, they're looking to you. Definitely not what I'm going to do.

This is not a group therapy session.

No, it's not. That's why it's like they're like, yeah, let's talk about it. I'm like, I would prefer not to. Just, I, let us just proceed here, move forward with the things that we need to do to be productive during this hour of our time. But I will say, and I'll end on this, like I thought it was funny because Mike turned around at some point. He's like, are you all right, bro? I'm worried about you. I'm like, I'm fine, Mike. I just like, I'm just like having a— we all have moments. I'm just having a moment. Let me have a moment. Like, I'm just having a moment and we're all good. But so, Mike, if you listen to this, I'm fine. But cool. Well, you got to go. You're late for your call, I imagine. Yep.

I gave her a heads up. I was like, I'll text you as soon as I can get on. But yes. Well, thank you for having me. I feel like you and Mike, this is the flash that came to me. Someone should interview you and Mike on here because I think that'd be really cool for more people to learn of your guys' merge and like how you guys work as two autonomous leaders too. You know, like you both, you both and Mike had his practice for over 10 years, right? Or almost. And so I think you guys have a really fascinating story to share and it'd be cool to hear you guys share it together and to talk about it. It's almost like now like a marriage, you know, where it's like, okay, well, how do you guys work together?

How do you communicate? Yep. A lot of communication. Vision.

How do you vision together? Yep.

All of that. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that, um, if we can do it well for a long time, I would love to teach this model to other people because I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs and chiropractors out there that could use a support system and somebody that does have like synergistic strengths to them, um, that are also, you know, willing to do the work that it takes to grow the business. Yeah. But I mean, the way that I saw it from the get-go and what we've experienced thus far is like 1 1 doesn't equal 2, it equals 11 in this sense, you know. Yeah. And I think that a lot of us coming out of school, like we just wanna be autonomy, autonomous and we wanna like build our practice with our brand name and our representation and have our families be proud of us for doing that. But, um, what I've found is that him and I getting together, I think it unlocks an opportunity for us to go way farther.

Yeah. Yeah. That is awesome. I like that. Yeah.

It'd be cool for people to learn. Don't fast go alone, go far go together.

Let me ask you this. Do you feel? Less than being a partner versus 100% owner?

No, I don't actually. I feel, I feel more whole, to be honest. Yeah. Because I, I always, as a leader, like I put people first. Mm-hmm. And so when I knew that like I was inadequate in some areas and I didn't feel like I was equipped to lead people in the way that I knew they deserved to be led. But I just hadn't encountered the experiences that equipped me with those skills, then I always felt shame. But now that I have, you know, a partner that was also prior military, very similar background as me with very similar values, that has, you know, a few years of experience more than I do, that has slightly different life experiences and career-based experiences and perspective on things and and certainly has slightly different strengths. Now I know that like my team has a super comprehensive leadership team that they can depend on no matter what kind of challenges they come up against. And we're obviously evolving. We have to continue to grow, especially together as leaders. And we are doing that and time will allow us to do that better. But it does make me feel better knowing that. Yeah, I, I care so much about the honestly, like the quality of life that my team has that sometimes I think that, that I can be self-sabotaging in that, you know, I'm like, I want them to thrive. I want them to thrive and I want them to know that they're thriving and I want their family to get all of them because of what we're able to provide for them. And so, yeah, I think that's been like one of the greatest one of the greatest aspects of us merging together is like certainly knowing now that like the people that we provide for, um, have a such greater opportunity to just live a great quality of life in chiropractic, uh, but also have a great opportunity to build financial freedom and time freedom down the road. So that's really what, what our long-term goal is. That's incredible.

And I can imagine like the capacity, like the, the heaviness, if you think of like the weight on your shoulders that it took some weight off just getting to do this with another, another person as the leader who has as much skin in the game as you do. Well, I'm assuming again, I shouldn't make assumptions on how much.

Yeah, we're equal partners.

Yeah. So it's like, yeah, same amount of skin in the game, you know?

Yep. Yeah. And you know, obviously now with me having Theo and growing a family and expecting to, um, we're going to start trying again in January.

So I thought you were just about to give a birth.

And I, I, I, that's why I had to clarify, because I figured people thought that I was going to drop, I was going to drop that. No, we're not, we're not expecting, we're expecting to be expecting, you know, early next year. And so, um, like you said, like, I'm looking into different forms of currency. And so I just want to ensure that, like, I'm, I'm there for all of the moments, you know, and that he can't ever say that, like, well, I just wish you were around more. Yeah, you know, so we're really hoping— and that's what we want to build into our team as well, which is the hard thing to do because I don't think very many chiropractors do that, especially with the, the breadwinners and the primary earners in our office. We want to make sure that like if they're— and I will say that the majority of— well, uh, 2 of our associates are male, 1 of them are female right now. Um, but, uh, you know, the 2 males, like whenever their wife wants to, whenever they want to have kids, like what, just depending upon like how that goes, like we just want to give them optionality for anyone listening.

One of his docs— true, that's true— is partnered with one of my docs, so she runs our Golden office.

So that's actually hilarious because I'm like, that's right, it probably goes both ways, you know, like those amazing doctors for a period of time.

But that's like what you want, you want them to have time with their, with their baby.

That's right.

And if they have optionality, we can't make assumptions here, but you know, we can't. But, uh, they'd be cute babies if they did.

But yeah, they would be great babies. Yeah, probably chiropractic babies. Yeah, chiropractors. Yep. Awesome. Cool. Well, I think we— I mean, I had like a little talk track over here. I think we hit like 2 of the bullet points on my talk track. But I would love to get you back on at some point to talk about taxes. I'll just go ahead and plug your tax program because I was wanting to talk about that with you today. You have a great tax program. You have a great tax course that I purchased at full price. I think when I bought it, it was $697. I think— I'm not sure what you're selling it at right now. But regardless, you know, it saved me over $60,000 in taxes this year just being able to go through and actually send this stuff to my CPA and actually utilize a lot of these tax strategies. So I'm super grateful for all the work that you put into that. But I'd love if you listen to this far, go down in the show notes and go to the tax courses, the Rewire Methods Tax Course, I believe.

Is that what it is? Yep. It's Tax Strategies for Small Business Owners. Yep. There we go. Yeah.

And definitely like probably close to tax season. It's— we're, we're in the end of November right now. This probably be dropped either in December or January. So you're probably working on tax strategies. I would highly recommend you guys grabbing that course and implementing as many of those as possible with your CPA. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, thanks for having me on. Yeah, I feel like we could talk about all the business leadership, all the things. For many, many hours. But, um, just appreciate everything that you're doing for our profession too, and really leveling it up, and for caring for those— like your people-first model that you talked about. I feel like that is one of those core values of a, of a leader. That is, um, you know, that is why the success follows, is because you stick to that value too, of, of prioritizing the people, the people in your life, and the people that you are leading to. So That speaks, speaks volumes of you as a person too. Thanks, Elise.

I appreciate it. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. Um, we'll have to do this again sometime soon. Sounds good.

Thank you. All right. Yep.